Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid to Enforce New Mail-Ballot Restrictions for Midterms

The Supreme Court on Monday, September 14, 2026, rejected the Trump administration's emergency request to lift US District Judge Indira Talwani's injunction blocking a new USPS rule — issued under Trump's March 2026 mail-voting executive order — that would have let the Postal Service withhold ballots from voters not on state-supplied eligibility lists and required DHS-approved envelope barcodes, across the 23 states plus D.C. that sued. In an unsigned order, the Court found the administration unlikely to succeed on the merits; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by the majority, wrote that applying the rule to the 2026 elections 'would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act' because election officials lack time to implement it before November, while signaling he could rule for the administration if the case returns later. It is the second time in three weeks a court has blocked this specific USPS rule; a separate SCOTUS order on August 24 had lifted a different injunction on the executive order's DHS citizenship-list provisions in the same litigation, leaving the order only partially in effect. Trump reacted on Truth Social, calling the ruling 'a big loss for Republicans, and America itself' that 'makes cheating by the Radical Left "Dumocrats," on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do,' and criticized his own appointees on the Court.