Judge blocks Trump’s USPS mail-in voting limits

President Donald Trump holds up signed executive order that purports to limit mail-in voting via the U.S. Postal Service

(Image credit: Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday issued a second preliminary injunction, this one nationwide, barring the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit mail-in voting before the November midterms. The president “has no authority to regulate elections,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled, and protecting voters from “chaos” and confusion “heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation.”

Under Trump’s order, USPS is “supposed to compile lists of eligible voters from states and deliver absentee ballots only to people on those lists,” NPR said. Talwani initially blocked the order in the 23 Democratic states that had sued, and Trump appealed that ruling last month. Her expanded injunction “creates another legal hurdle”, should Trump “get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court,” The Associated Press said.

Trump has pushed Congress to limit mail-in ballots and other voting rules, but the Senate “bowed to political reality” early Saturday and adjourned for five weeks “without any concrete steps toward passing the voting restriction bill,” The New York Times said. Right-wing broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to enact his voting limits by declaring a “national security emergency for elections.” Trump, calling in for an interview, replied that “stranger things have happened.”