Swift appeal likely as judge blocks Trump mail voting order – US politics live
The Guardian · L · trust 61/100
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A federal judge has halted, at least temporarily, attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.
The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections.
In the US district court, judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.
double quotation mark Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms.
The latest ruling came in advance of a 3 September hearing after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent supreme court decision.
The high court’s conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order. Still, it said the legal challenges against it that led Talwani to initially freeze it were filed too soon. Since then, the administration has issued a formal rule intended to govern whether the US Postal Service will deliver states’ mail ballots – effectively restarting the legal fight.
The president has long targeted mail voting, which he falsely blames for his 2020 election loss even though he himself uses it to cast his ballot. 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.
The legal battle has major ramifications for the midterms. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail and election officials contend there is not enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new postal service directives.
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