Trump Urges Supreme Court to Unblock Election Integrity Order

A Boston judge issued a new nationwide order this week blocking the post office from enforcing the president’s mail-in ballot policies.

The Supreme Court in Washington on July 13, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump again asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 12 to lift a lower court ruling that blocks key parts of his executive order restricting voting by mail ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

Specifically, the federal government is asking the Supreme Court to stay a new order—the second in recent weeks from a federal judge in Boston—that prevents implementation of the president’s election integrity policies.

A ruling in favor of the Trump administration would allow the federal government to fully enforce the president’s executive order 14399, dated March 31, which aimed to tighten mail-in voting rules in 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, which challenged it in court.

The order requires federal agencies to develop state-by-state lists of verified U.S. citizens of voting age. It directs the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to begin the process of creating new government regulations about how mail-in and absentee ballots are handled, publish the proposed regulations to allow for public comment, and eventually publish the final, binding regulations.

The order forbids the postal service from sending mail ballots to anyone not on the verified citizen lists. It also requires the USPS to impose new envelope design and barcode standards for election mail.

The federal government previously asked the nation’s highest court on July 27 to stay Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s June 25 order that held parts of the order were beyond the president’s power and blocked its enforcement in the jurisdictions that filed suit over it.

That ruling applies only to the jurisdictions that sued, which include California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Arizona, Maine, New Mexico, among others.

Specifically, the judge blocked Section 2 of the executive order, which directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, and Section 3, which directs the USPS to propose standards for mail-in and absentee ballots to be used in federal elections.

Section 2 is an attempt “to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete … lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution,” Talwani said.

The judge said Section 3 could not stand because “no law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS.” The postal service does not have statutory authority to finalize “any binding regulations on mail-in voting.”

On July 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld Talwani’s order, finding that allowing the executive order to take effect before elections happening in September and November “would sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters.”

The ruling dealt a blow to Trump’s election-integrity efforts ahead of the November midterm elections as Republicans try to hold on to slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.

On Aug. 11, Talwani issued a fresh order in a separate case known as League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump. The lawsuit was brought by several activist groups that are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The nationwide preliminary injunction blocks the postal service from implementing Section 3 of the executive order. Unlike her June 25 ruling, the new order prevents the USPS from carrying out the provisions of the section with respect to upcoming federal elections throughout the entire United States.

Throughout multiple lawsuits pending in district courts, appeals courts, and the Supreme Court, the government “has declined to defend the constitutionality” of the executive order’s directives, Talwani said.

However, the court “finds it prudent to review the [executive order] now, where less than 90 days pend before the midterms and the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting require clarity as to how or whether they will vote in November.”

Talwani said protecting the right to vote was more important than allowing the executive branch “to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation.”

Executive order 14399 “is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy,” and with fewer than 90 days remaining before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, an injunction was needed to prevent the federal government “from changing election rules on the eve of the election.”

In the new supplemental filing in Trump v. State of California, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the high court needs to rule promptly on the government’s already-pending application.

If the justices fail to act, “the district court’s erroneous orders will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement Section 3 of the Executive Order for the federal elections in November, thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity.”

Talwani’s order was procedurally premature, Sauer said.

“Courts cannot enjoin implementation of an Executive Order that merely instructs agencies to pursue a proposed policy in a manner that is consistent with law, while leaving open material issues for them to resolve, unless and until those agencies actually take concrete actions that injure the plaintiffs.”

In other words, based on the Trump administration’s argument, because no final regulation yet exists, the opposing side cannot have experienced an injury that gives it standing to sue.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will issue a ruling in Trump v. State of California.