An Obama-appointed federal judge halted President Trump's executive order restricting mail voting for the second time in weeks, just days before states must begin sending out midterm ballots.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a two-week block Thursday preventing the federal government from enforcing the order, which would require states to redesign their mail ballots, submit voter lists to the U.S. Postal Service, and reformat envelopes to meet new federal specifications. The ruling came only days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to proceed, and it virtually guarantees another rapid appeal.
The back-and-forth amounts to a rolling legal confrontation between a Democratic-aligned judiciary and an administration trying to tighten controls on a voting method used by nearly one-third of Americans. A hearing is set for September 3, but the case could land back at the Supreme Court well before then.
Judge Talwani, who sits in Boston and was nominated by President Obama, had previously placed injunctions against the executive order in two separate cases. On Monday, the Supreme Court's conservative majority struck down one of those holds in what the AP described as a procedural decision that allowed the administration to move forward. The high court did not rule on whether the order itself is lawful.
Talwani then reluctantly lifted her second injunction. But within days, Democratic attorneys general and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits, this time citing a new legal trigger: the Postal Service had published a formal rule spelling out its requirements for delivering mail ballots. Under the rule, USPS will not deliver mail ballots unless states provide a list of voters who should receive them and format the envelopes to the agency's specifications.
That gave Talwani a fresh basis to act. On Thursday, she blocked implementation again.
In her written ruling, the judge pointed to the impossible logistics states would face if forced to comply before the midterms:
"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."
First mail ballots are due to go out roughly a week from the date of the ruling. States that rely on mail voting would have had to overhaul their entire ballot pipeline in a matter of days, a timeline Talwani found unworkable.
Approximately two dozen Democratic attorneys general filed one of the lawsuits challenging the order. New York Attorney General Letitia James, among the most prominent, issued a statement after Thursday's ruling:
"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."
James's framing, that the federal government has "no power to control" state elections, reflects the core constitutional argument opponents have pressed throughout the litigation. They contend the Constitution grants states, and in some cases Congress, the authority to set election rules, not the executive branch acting alone through an order and an agency regulation.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump issued the mail voting order in March. It was his second executive order related to elections since returning to office. The first, issued last year, sought to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Courts blocked that order as well.
The administration initially won an early round in Washington, D.C., where a court accepted the argument that the lawsuits were premature because no implementing rules had been issued. Once the Postal Service published its final rule, that argument evaporated, and opponents refiled.
The legal maneuvering reveals a familiar dynamic. The administration issues a policy aimed at election integrity. Opponents rush to court. A lower-court judge, in this case, one appointed by a Democratic president, blocks the policy. The Supreme Court intervenes on procedural grounds without reaching the merits. And the cycle restarts.
What remains unresolved is the central question: does the president have the authority to impose conditions on how states conduct mail voting through an executive order and a Postal Service regulation? No court has answered that yet.
Opponents of the order frequently cite a 2025 Brookings Institution report finding that mail voting fraud occurred in roughly four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast. That figure is meant to undercut the rationale for tightening controls.
But the executive order's supporters see the issue differently. For them, the question is not solely whether fraud is widespread today but whether the system has adequate safeguards to prevent it from becoming so, and whether the federal government has a legitimate role in ensuring those safeguards exist. Trump has long targeted mail voting and has argued it is vulnerable to abuse, even as he uses mail voting himself to cast his own ballot.
The administration's willingness to press the issue through executive action, rather than seeking legislation, reflects a broader pattern in Trump's second term. On matters ranging from election procedures to other policy areas, the White House has relied on executive orders and agency rulemaking to advance priorities that would face resistance in Congress. That approach, as National Review has noted in other policy contexts, can produce results quickly but leaves those results vulnerable to exactly the kind of judicial reversal playing out now.
Talwani's two-week block buys states time but settles nothing. The September 3 hearing will address the merits more fully, but given the pace of the litigation, the administration is widely expected to appeal Thursday's order before that date arrives.
If the case returns to the Supreme Court, the justices will face pressure to move beyond procedure and address whether the executive order is constitutional. Monday's ruling sidestepped that question. The next round may not allow that luxury, particularly with midterm ballots already heading to printers.
For state election officials, the uncertainty is the real damage. They cannot plan ballot production, update systems, or train workers when the rules change every few days. Whether one supports or opposes the executive order, the whiplash is real, and voters are the ones left waiting to find out how they will cast their ballots.
When judges and attorneys general can stall an election-integrity measure indefinitely through procedural gamesmanship, the question stops being whether the policy is right and starts being whether the elected president can govern at all.
