Federal judge halts Trump mail voting order again as midterms loom

A federal judge in Boston placed a temporary freeze on President Trump's executive order restricting mail voting on Thursday, marking the second time in weeks that the courts have intervened in what has become a chaotic legal battle over how Americans can cast ballots in the midterm elections now less than two weeks away.

Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day hold preventing the government from enforcing the directive, which would require states to submit voter lists to the Postal Service and format mail ballot envelopes according to new specifications before the agency will deliver them. The timing is critical: the first mail ballots are scheduled to go out in roughly a week, and election officials across the country say they lack both the time and resources to overhaul their systems to meet the postal service's demands. In her written ruling, Talwani noted that states would need to redesign ballots, secure approvals, arrange production, update election management systems, train officials on a new USPS portal, and upload voter data—all before Election Day. "Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds" to accomplish this, she wrote.

The legal landscape has shifted dramatically in just days. On Monday, the Supreme Court's conservative majority struck down one of Talwani's earlier injunctions blocking the same order, not by ruling on whether the restrictions were constitutional, but by finding that the initial legal challenge had been filed prematurely. The administration had argued that because it had not yet issued formal rules implementing the order, there was nothing concrete to challenge. That reasoning prevailed at the high court. Talwani removed a second injunction on Wednesday, but voting rights groups and Democrats immediately refiled their lawsuits, this time citing the postal service's newly published final rule as the concrete action they could challenge. The judge's Thursday order came ahead of a September 3 hearing on these refiled cases.

The stakes are substantial. Nearly one-third of American voters cast ballots by mail, and election officials have made clear that the postal service's new requirements are not merely inconvenient—they are logistically unfeasible and, in their view, unconstitutional. The Constitution grants states, and in some cases Congress, the authority to set election rules, not the president or the postal service. This constitutional argument mirrors the reasoning that led courts to block Trump's first election-related executive order last year, which had sought to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration.

Trump issued the mail voting order in March, his second election-focused directive since returning to office. The president has long opposed mail voting despite using it himself, and he has repeatedly blamed the system for his 2020 election loss—a claim without factual basis. A 2025 Brookings Institution report found that mail voting fraud occurred in approximately four cases per 10 million ballots cast, a rate so low that it does not support claims of systemic abuse.

The administration's legal strategy has hinged on procedural timing. When opponents first sued, the government won an initial case in Washington, D.C., arguing the challenge was premature. But Talwani, an Obama appointee, issued two separate injunctions in Boston blocking implementation for the midterms. The Supreme Court's decision to strike down one of those holds on procedural grounds has created an opening for the administration, but the refiled lawsuits have closed it again—at least temporarily. Election officials and voting rights advocates are now bracing for what many expect will be another trip to the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority's recent willingness to overturn Talwani's orders suggests the outcome remains uncertain. The 14-day hold buys time, but only barely, and only if the courts do not intervene again before the midterms arrive.