Second federal judge blocks Trump’s mail ballot order (57 characters)
A second federal judge has blocked the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting, adding a new obstacle to the plan as Trump awaits word from the Supreme Court on a separate challenge.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee who serves on the federal trial bench in Washington, D.C., ruled against the administration in lawsuits filed by Democrats and private organizations.
“The key portions of the Rule exceed any conception of the outer bounds of these authorities,” Nichols wrote in a 24-page opinion.
The lawsuits consolidated before Nichols include one brought by the Democratic National Committee, other party groups, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Private organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the League of United Latin American Citizens, filed separate challenges.
“The key portions of the Rule exceed any conception of the outer bounds of these authorities.”
Trump has long targeted mail-in voting, claiming it contributes to mass election fraud. Officials have identified limited instances of fraud but not at the scale Trump has claimed.
His March executive order instructed USPS to develop new requirements for casting a mail ballot. The agency’s final plan would require states to upload voter lists and ensure their envelopes meet design requirements, including an official logo and barcode, for mail ballots to be sent.
Blue states have warned that changing their designs at this point would risk making a significant number of ballots invalid in time for the midterms.
The Trump administration has argued that federal authorities will not second-guess states’ mail voter lists and has defended the policy by likening it to USPS rules on cremated remains and other sensitive items. Nichols rejected the comparison.
“But the Rule does far more than prescribe how ballot envelopes must be designed and processed.”
Like the earlier ruling, Nichols found that Trump’s mail ballot plan was not authorized by Congress.
Nichols’s decision halts USPS’s plan in its entirety. The earlier block, which covered only certain provisions, remains pending at the Supreme Court, which could rule on the emergency request to lift it at any time.
The Trump administration can appeal Nichols’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
