In the latest twist in the saga of President Trump’s efforts to get the U.S. Postal Service to restrict or condition mail-in voting, a federal judge once again has enjoined the Postal Service from moving ahead with its plan. District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s order yesterday came after the Supreme Court had admonished her on Monday, overturning her earlier injunction on the grounds that the Postal Service had not finalized any changes; thus the suit and injunction were supposedly premature.
But as Judge Talwani wrote in her latest order, the Postal Service had actually gone ahead and issued a final rule providing that unless a state provides voter information to the USPS and meets other arbitrary conditions, the Postal Service will not deliver mail-in ballots. She wrote that the states which had sued “face irreparable harm where they are required to comply with a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away … Most Plaintiff States have already ordered their mail ballots, and some are required by state law to send them to eligible voters as early as next week.”
In fact, the Supreme Court overruled her previous order late last week just as the USPS was preparing to issue its final order. In a remarkable rebuke to the high court, Judge Talwani added, “The Supreme Court gave no indication that it was aware of the Final Rule when the [Court’s] Order was issued.”
What now? Judge Talwani’s order blocked the rule from taking effect for 14 days. A previously scheduled hearing on the legality of the rule is set for September 3. As this cat-and-mouse game continues and the clock runs, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the administration will be able to execute its plan to block or condition mail-in voting in time for the November election.
The courts have already held that Trump’s earlier effort in March by executive order to take direct control over voter lists was unconstitutional. Trump also instructed the USPS to refuse to deliver ballots in states that were not following rules issued by the federal government or the Postal Service.
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How does Trump get to dictate Postal Service meddling in partisan politics? As our colleague David Dayen has been writing for more than a decade, one reason is that the last two Democratic presidents, Biden and Obama, have been asleep at the switch.
Obama did not fill a single vacancy on the Postal Service Board of Governors during his entire eight-year term of office. As Dayen pointed out in a piece for The New Republic in 2014 (long before he joined the Prospect), the inspector general of the Postal Service proposed that the USPS provide basic postal banking, but it never happened—because the Postal Service’s board was still dominated by George W. Bush appointees. And Biden left in place Trump appointee Louis DeJoy as postmaster general because he never bothered to appoint enough board members to fire him.
Trump has recently appointed four new members of the Postal Service board to fill vacancies. They face Senate confirmation in September. Three of them are explicit election deniers.
The Constitution explicitly says: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” subject only to congressional conditions, as in the case of the Voting Rights Act. It makes no provision for presidential executive orders.
Now, ironically, it will fall to the Supreme Court (with a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees) to prevent the Postal Service from helping Trump steal the election. The high court has been playing games with this, but the scheme is so flagrantly unconstitutional that in the end the Court will probably do the right thing, but barely.
