U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked President Donald Trump again Tuesday, stopping the Postal Service from carrying out major parts of his March executive order on mail voting before the November midterms.
The Obama-appointed judge had already ruled in June that key provisions exceeded presidential authority.
From the Associated Press:
Tuesday’s ruling creates another legal hurdle for the Trump administration to overcome should it get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“That it is now less than 90 days before the November 3, 2026 midterm elections underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election,” she wrote.
The Trump administration in late July requested that the Supreme Court halt lower court decisions that have blocked the sweeping changes in nearly half the country.
In the latest lawsuit, Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, sided with the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups.
Her ruling granting a preliminary injunction barred the Postal Service from taking any steps to implement the order for this year’s midterm elections. She said the administration has so far declined to defend the constitutionality of the executive order.
“The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections,” she wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This ruling is a victory for voters and for the Constitution,” Marcia Johnson of the League of Women Voters said in a statement. “Neither the president nor the U.S. Postal Service has the authority to rewrite election rules.”
Plaintiffs argued in two lawsuits, both filed in federal court in Boston, that the Republican president’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. The League of Women Voters also argued that Trump lacked the authority to issue his order and the U.S. Postal Service and other defendants lack the authority to carry it out.
Trump's order directed federal agencies to compile state citizenship lists from federal records and instructed the Postal Service to develop new rules for mail ballots, including unique barcodes and participating lists. The goal was to verify voter eligibility and make ballots moving through the mail more traceable.
There is a legitimate constitutional fight here. Article I gives state legislatures authority over the time, place, and manner of congressional elections and allows Congress to change those rules.
The president isn't mentioned. Trump's order, however, invokes existing federal election laws, federal criminal statutes, Article II enforcement authority, and Postal Service rulemaking powers.
Courts should decide where those boundaries lie. The disturbing part is how quickly every Trump policy becomes another political emergency. Opponents sue, seek an injunction, celebrate the roadblocks, and then resume warning that Trump is dismantling democracy.
The administration hasn't ignored Talwani; it appealed. The First Circuit refused to stay her ruling, and the administration turned to the Supreme Court.
Whatever anybody thinks of Trump's order, using appeals courts to challenge a federal judge is constitutional government in action.
Yet Trump's critics keep reaching for Hitler.
Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb appeared on national television Monday and compared Trump's current circle to Adolf Hitler's consolidation of power in 1934, invoking Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Joseph Goebbels.
CNN's Erin Burnett asks Ty Cobb about Emil Bove swearing in Todd Blanche as AG and he had a pretty wild response, "Well, I think there was a summer night in 1934 when Hitler consolidated his power surrounded by Himmler, Goring, and Goebbels. This is reminiscent of that to me... .… pic.twitter.com/SdKh72DxAc
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) August 11, 2026
Cobb then predicted Attorney General Todd Blanche could seize voting machines and ballots.
The host responded by describing his prediction as "sobering."
And yet whenever a Mamdani, Piker, El-Sayed, or Hong spews their socialist thoughts on the justification for the government to seize private property, the news readers simply nod and move to the next question.
Joe Biden's presidency deserves some memory here, too. His Homeland Security Department created the Disinformation Governance Board and later terminated it.
When the Supreme Court struck down Biden's sweeping student-loan cancellation plan in 2023, his administration obeyed the ruling but immediately began pursuing another debt-relief route under different statutory authority.
That didn't end the way whoever was running the Oval Office wanted it.
Trump's opponents can challenge him, judges can rule against him, and Republicans can argue those judges have read executive power too narrowly.
Our system was built for friction among branches of government.
Calling Trump Hitler while he complies with injunctions, files appeals, and asks the Supreme Court to decide his authority has become beyond ridiculous.
The Postal Service had published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register, but it was put on hold by Talwani’s first ruling.
In a separate lawsuit filed against the executive order, a federal judge in Washington in May agreed with the Trump administration that it was too early to block the order because it had yet to be implemented. That lawsuit was brought by Democratic and civil rights groups. In July, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the May ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols that said an injunction against the order was premature.
Other rulings have gone against the Trump administration’s first executive order on elections, signed just months after he took office in his second term. That order would have required people to show documents proving their citizenship when registering to vote, among other changes.
And of course, the AP continues to ridicule any notion Trump has regarding election fraud in 2020:
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
The people warning that Trump will destroy democratic institutions might notice one of those institutions just stopped him again, and he responded through the legal process.
A tyrant who keeps asking courts to reverse rulings against him is doing a remarkably poor job of tyranny.
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