Trump Administration Seeks Supreme Court Backing for Mail‑Ballot Restrictions Ahead of Midterms

Washington – On Sunday the Trump administration lodged yet another petition with the nation’s highest court, asking justices to let a set of newly‑issued postal‑service restrictions on mail‑in voting take effect before the November midterms.

The move follows a recent order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who extended an injunction that blocks the Postal Service from enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order on ballot handling. In its filing, Solicitor General John Sauer warned that dozens of states, including North Carolina and Alabama, have already started mailing out ballots, and once those envelopes are in the mail there’s essentially no way to pull them back.

“Each day the injunction stays in place risks sowing confusion and chaos,” Sauer wrote, noting that the court’s stay makes what would otherwise be mandatory steps merely optional for election officials. “The best way to address respondents’ fears is to grant an immediate administrative stay of the order, followed by a full stay pending further review.”

This is the third time the administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene. While the justices have allowed the plan to move forward in lower courts, they have not yet issued a definitive ruling on its legality. The outcome could ripple through the 2026 elections, where roughly a third of all voters are expected to cast a mail ballot.

Democratic‑leaning states and voting‑rights groups are pushing back hard. The ACLU’s Voting Rights Project called the rule “unconstitutional and unlawful,” with director Sophia Lin Lakin stating, “With fewer than 60 days to go before the November election, there is not a shred of evidence that states could comply without disenfranchising voters who rely on mail ballots.”

State officials, on the other hand, argue that the timeline is too tight to overhaul their existing systems. They maintain that eligibility for absentee voting remains a matter of state law, and that the Postal Service should not be deciding who can vote or whose ballot gets counted.

Trump himself has long championed limits on mail voting, even as he routinely uses the method for his own ballot. He has repeatedly blamed absentee voting for his 2020 loss, a claim that courts have repeatedly dismissed as baseless. Yet, despite the rhetoric, the longstanding practice of mail‑in voting has proven resilient—until now, at least.

As the Supreme Court weighs the petition, election officials across the country are left scrambling, trying to balance legal uncertainty with the practical need to get millions of ballots out on time. The next few weeks could shape not just this year’s races, but also set a precedent for how the nation handles voting by mail in the future.