Judge Again Blocks Trump Mail Ballot Order Before Midterms

A federal judge on Thursday again blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, halting the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new ballot rules just about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the November midterm elections. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day temporary restraining order preventing the Postal Service from enforcing regulations tied to the president’s March executive order, according to AP News.

A Whipsawing Legal Battle

The ruling marks the latest chapter in a fast-moving legal saga that has careened between the courts and the Supreme Court in recent weeks. On Monday, the high court’s conservative majority lifted one of Talwani’s earlier injunctions on narrow procedural grounds, ruling that legal challenges had been filed too early—before the Postal Service had published its final implementing rule. The Court did not rule on the constitutionality of the executive order itself.

Days later, the Postal Service formally published its 95-page final rule on August 21, and it took effect on Wednesday. That allowed plaintiffs to restart their legal fight on the merits. A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed a new lawsuit on Wednesday, while the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups also refiled their cases, as NBC News reported.

Talwani found that states “have neither time nor funds” to redesign mail ballots, update election management systems, train election officials, and upload citizen data to the USPS portal before the midterms. She also concluded that plaintiffs are “likely to succeed on the merits of their claims,” writing that “USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote.”

The Executive Order and Its Scope

Trump signed the executive order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” on March 31, 2026—his second executive order on elections since returning to office. The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver mail ballots to voters on pre-approved lists submitted by state election officials and requires all ballot envelopes to bear unique barcodes. It also directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of adult U.S. citizens and send them to state election officials, as detailed in the White House executive order.

Under the Postal Service’s implementing rule, states must submit approved voter lists and follow new ballot formatting requirements before USPS will deliver mail ballots. The agency may refuse to deliver ballots that don’t comply or are associated with voters not on the lists. Votebeat reported at the time that experts immediately flagged the order as legally dubious and logistically impossible to implement before the November election.

The Constitutional Question

At the heart of the legal battle is a fundamental constitutional question: does the president have the authority to regulate federal elections, or does that power rest exclusively with states and Congress? Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution grants states and Congress the power to make election rules—not the president or the Postal Service.

Talwani, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote in her ruling that “the court is unaware of, and no party has proffered, any delegation Congress has made that would permit the USPS to regulate election mail.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a similar point in her dissent to the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling, noting that “the Government has not even bothered to assert, much less demonstrate, that the President has the constitutional authority to issue an order that directs the manner in which the mail-in ballot aspect of federal elections is to be administered,” as Democracy Docket reported.

This reasoning echoes the legal challenges that blocked Trump’s first executive order on elections, issued in March 2025, which attempted to require documentary proof of citizenship to register and prohibit counting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day but arriving afterward. Federal courts repeatedly ruled that the president lacks the authority to rewrite election law.

Political and Practical Implications

The timing of this legal battle is critical. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail, and election officials across the country warn they cannot comply with the new requirements in time for the midterms. All 50 states allow some form of mail-in voting, with 29 allowing voters to request ballots without providing a reason and 8 conducting elections entirely by mail. During the 2024 election, the USPS processed nearly 100 million ballots, with about 30% of voters nationwide casting ballots by mail.

A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast—a fact that undercuts the administration’s stated rationale for the rule.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of two dozen Democratic attorneys general who filed suit, said in a statement: “This rule is a clear attempt by the federal government to interfere in elections it has no power to control. Today, a federal court halted it before this administration could wreak havoc on our elections.” Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, called the ruling “an unlawful power grab that would sow chaos and confusion for the millions of voters who depend on mail ballots,” as The Guardian reported.

Trump has long targeted mail voting, which he falsely blames for his 2020 election loss—even though he himself uses mail voting to cast his ballot. He has previously posted on social media that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and said in February that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

What’s Next

The case is almost certainly headed back to the Supreme Court. The Trump administration is expected to quickly appeal Talwani’s latest ruling, and a hearing on the request for a longer-term preliminary injunction is set for September 3—just as ballots are set to go out for the midterms.

Al Jazeera noted that the timeline means whatever Talwani or a higher court decides next could take effect as voting begins, or after it is already under way. The whipsawing legal decisions have created significant uncertainty for election officials, who face a logistical nightmare in the weeks ahead.

The outcome will have major implications not only for how the midterm elections are conducted but also for the broader balance of power between the executive branch and states over election administration. As NY Post reported, the judge said the agency had presented no evidence regarding fraudulent mail-in voting that would necessitate such a rule, which she said likely was unlawful and adopted in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

For now, the immediate crisis is averted: the Postal Service cannot implement the new rules for at least two weeks. But with the midterms fast approaching and the legal fight far from over, the battle over mail voting is likely to remain at the center of American politics through Election Day and beyond.