The Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Midterm Power Grab

Mail-in voting will go ahead as usual this November

Photo by Donald Teel on Unsplash

In a dramatic win for free and fair elections, the US Supreme Court has ruled against Donald Trump’s anti-Democratic restrictions on voting by mail, rejecting his efforts to inject chaos and confusion into the midterm elections.

The emergency ruling, released on Monday, effectively overturns a last-minute push by the Trump administration to transform the United States Postal Service (USPS) into a tool for widespread voter suppression.

With just over a month before Election Day, the decision allows states to keep mailing ballots to voters through the USPS using the same processes they have for years — including in states such as California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington, where elections depend mostly or entirely on mail ballots.

Had Trump’s executive order gone into effect, states would have been required to submit their voters’ personally identifying information to the Trump administration, and the USPS would have been required to send ballots only to a list of approved individuals. This would have given the federal government unprecedented power over state elections and could have disenfranchised as many as a third of all voters, since it would have been impossible to build a working system in such a short window.

Earlier this month, for example, a whistleblower report warned of the USPS adopting an untested barcode system to comply with the rules, in which a single error could result in the rejection of hundreds, if not thousands, of ballots.

Mail-in voting is safe, secure, and has been credited with expanding ballot access to many who would not otherwise participate in our democracy. Fraud in the system has been statistically nonexistent and has always been prosecuted wherever it’s found. Trump’s failed crackdown, therefore, had nothing to do with security, and was instead a desperate attempt to eliminate a popular voting method on the eve of an election he knows he’s destined to lose.

Even Trump’s own appointed judges, including Brett Kavanaugh, criticized the obvious implications of the order. “Applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capacious,” he argued, “and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

Only Justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs who challenged Trump’s illegal orders are praising the ruling as a critical step to ensure ballot access ahead of one of the most consequential elections of our time.

“This ruling is a critical step to ensuring free and fair elections this November by maintaining access to mail voting for millions of eligible voters across the United States and lifting the dire threat that the Postal Service would disenfranchise them,” they wrote. “Mail voting is safe, secure, and reliable — and the Trump administration has presented no evidence to the contrary.”

“The Postal Service exists to deliver Americans’ mail — not to rewrite election rules,” added Celina Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters. “Voters should never be caught in the middle of a political power warfare. The League fought back, and we will keep fighting because the fundamental right to vote cannot depend on the whims of any president or federal agency.”

While this particular threat has been cleared, voters must remain vigilant, as Republicans and the Trump administration will continue to use every means at their disposal to undermine the democratic process for their benefit. After all, Trump only left office in 2021 kicking and screaming — we shouldn’t expect him or his allies to relinquish their power willingly.

Their shameless attempt to rig the midterms is yet another pressing reminder of everything at stake in this election. If given another two years of unchecked power, there’s no telling what other damage the Trump administration could deal to our elections and the many freedoms we used to enjoy as Americans.

We can’t rely on the courts to save us. This year, we have to make our votes count, because if everything had gone to the president’s plan, many of us wouldn’t get the opportunity to vote at all.

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