A federal judge has blocked President Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting rules, preventing it from taking effect before November’s congressional elections. US District Judge Indira Talwani, sitting in Boston, sided Thursday with a coalition of 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, ruling that Trump exceeded his constitutional authority when he signed the order in March.
“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Talwani wrote in her ruling. Elections in the United States have been administered by state and local governments since the republic’s founding in 1789, and Talwani concluded that Trump’s order ran directly against that constitutional structure.
The order, signed March 31st, directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state — pulling from citizenship records, naturalisation data, and other federal databases — and transmit those lists to state election authorities. It also required the US Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to voters on each state’s officially approved list, and directed the Justice Department to prioritise prosecution of election officials who send ballots to people deemed ineligible.
Talwani ruled that any DHS citizenship list would necessarily be incomplete because of privacy restrictions governing how sensitive personal data collected by federal agencies can be shared. She also found that USPS had no statutory authorisation to adopt binding regulations on mail-in voting.
A Split Between Federal Courts
Thursday’s ruling creates a direct conflict with an earlier decision from a different federal judge. US District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee sitting in Washington DC — declined in May to issue a preliminary injunction in a related lawsuit brought by Democrats, finding that their challenge was premature because the order had not yet been fully implemented. That case is currently on appeal.
USPS Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress Wednesday that under the proposed rules, the postal service would refuse to deliver ballots in states where officials decline to provide the required voter lists — though Steiner said he would comply with any court order blocking the restrictions. Thursday’s ruling from Talwani is precisely that.
Trump signed the order as part of a years-long effort to restrict access to mail-in voting, rooted in his repeated and false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through widespread mail ballot fraud. That claim has been rejected by courts, election officials, and his own administration’s officials across dozens of legal proceedings.
The order’s political timing is significant. November’s congressional elections will determine control of both chambers of Congress. Mail-in voting expanded dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic and has become a flashpoint in partisan election law disputes ever since. Democratic-led states have argued — and Thursday’s ruling confirms — that the president simply does not have the constitutional authority to dictate how states conduct federal elections, regardless of his policy preferences.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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