Supreme Court Grants Another Trump Victory, Threatening Mail‑in Voting

Justice Elena Kagan recently tried to remind everyone that the high court isn’t a partisan toolbox for President Trump. Her comments about a "bad rap" seemed aimed at past cases on tariffs and birth‑right citizenship, where the justices pushed back against the administration.

But the tone has shifted. In the past few weeks the court has handed the former president a string of victories, from a White House ballroom showdown to a handful of mail‑in voting disputes. The result? A growing sense that the bench is leaning, however subtly, toward Trump’s agenda.

Now the latest ruling clears the way for an executive order that tells the Department of Homeland Security to assemble "state citizenship lists" – essentially rosters of adult U.S. citizens that will be handed over to each state at least 60 days before an election. The U.S. Postal Service, the order says, would then use those lists to decide who gets a mail‑in ballot. Constitutionally, that power belongs to the states, not the federal government, and many legal scholars are already raising eyebrows.

Mail‑in voting isn’t a fringe practice any longer. Roughly one in three Americans cast a ballot by mail in the 2024 general election – about 25 % of registered Democrats and 20 % of Republicans. Trump himself has used the system repeatedly, yet his recent focus on it feels less about convenience and more about control.

In a case brought by 23 blue states, the Supreme Court paused an injunction that had barred the administration from rolling out the order for the upcoming 2026 midterms. The court said Trump could suffer "irreparable harm" if the freeze stayed in place. A parallel lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters kept the Postal Service from acting on the order – at least for now – but that decision sits on a shaky legal foundation that could be revisited.

The majority opinion leaned on a doctrine called "ripeness," arguing that the Postal Service’s rule‑making hadn’t been finalized yet, so the courts shouldn’t wade in. A whistleblower, however, warned that the agency was moving ahead with a "secretive, rushed" implementation that might cause a "catastrophic failure" of the mail‑ballot system. Imagine millions of voters either not receiving a ballot in time or not receiving one at all.

Three liberal justices pushed back hard. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the majority of "taking its eye off the ball" and called the outcome a "Kafkaesque nightmare." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Kagan, blasted the government for trying to have it both ways – claiming the order was speculative while simultaneously demanding immediate action to prove it wasn’t.

Jackson’s dissent invoked the Purcell principle, which cautions courts against changing election rules too close to the polls. Legal scholar Stephen Vladeck warned that letting the order stand would be "as indefensible and anti‑democratic as the court has handed down in a very long time."

At its core, the controversy hinges on a simple question: Who decides who can vote by mail? The Constitution says states, but this executive order tries to hand that power to a federal agency, potentially reshaping the electoral landscape for years to come.

James D. Zirin, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, contributed this perspective.