The guardrails held at the Supreme Court yesterday. The question is how many more times they’ll be tested.
Maybe we’ve been looking at the wrong envelope.
I’ve spent the last few weeks writing about the Trump administration’s attempt to give the Postal Service a new job in American elections. Apparently delivering the ballots wasn’t enough. Under the new system, election offices would have to submit voter and barcode data, get their envelopes approved and clear a federal verification process before USPS accepts the mailing.¹ That already seemed like plenty of Washington involvement. Then I started looking at what else the administration has been doing, and the Post Office began to look less like the story and more like one component of a much larger system.
The postal plan, at least for this election, has now run into something sturdier than an envelope. Judge Indira Talwani blocked it in Boston, the First Circuit refused to lift her injunction, and Trump-appointed Judge Carl Nichols separately blocked the rule in Washington. The administration went to the Supreme Court and asked to turn the system on while ballots were already being mailed.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said no.
The Court left Talwani’s injunction in place, concluding that the government was unlikely to succeed in its challenge and that the equities did not justify emergency relief. Justice Brett Kavanaugh took a narrower route. He said USPS may ultimately have authority to adopt this kind of system, but imposing it in the middle of the 2026 election would be arbitrary and capricious because state and local officials did not have enough time to implement it. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.¹