Saqib S. Qureshi | SCN NEWS
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sharply criticised the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday after the justices blocked his administration from enforcing new restrictions on mail-in ballots ahead of November’s midterm elections, escalating his increasingly public attacks on a court dominated by conservatives, including three justices he appointed.
Trump accused the court of being pressured by the political left and suggested that some justices had changed significantly since being appointed. His criticism followed an unsigned Supreme Court order on Monday that left in place a lower-court injunction preventing the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new requirements governing the handling of mail ballots during the 2026 elections.
“This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He added that the justices he had selected were “not the people I interviewed to serve” on the nation’s highest court. Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during his first presidential term, helping establish the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
The dispute centers on Postal Service rules developed following Trump’s March executive order targeting mail voting. The regulations would require states and local election authorities to provide voter-specific information to the Postal Service and use approved ballot envelopes equipped with identifying markings and barcodes. Ballots that failed to meet the requirements could be rejected by the postal system and returned to election authorities for correction.
State election officials and voting-rights groups argued that imposing the system only weeks before the November 3 midterm elections could disrupt established voting procedures and prevent legitimate ballots from reaching voters or being returned on time. The Supreme Court concluded that the government was unlikely to succeed in its challenge to the injunction and that the circumstances did not justify allowing the rules to take effect immediately.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh separately indicated that the Postal Service rule might ultimately fall within the agency’s legal authority, but said implementing it for the 2026 elections would be unreasonable because state and local officials lacked sufficient time to comply. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from the court’s decision. Trump praised the two dissenting conservatives as “legends.”
The decision represents an important setback for Trump’s efforts to tighten mail-voting procedures before elections that will determine control of Congress. Mail voting accounts for a substantial share of ballots cast nationwide, while Democratic voters have generally used the method at higher rates than Republicans in recent elections. Trump has repeatedly alleged that widespread mail voting creates opportunities for fraud, although documented election fraud involving mailed ballots remains rare.
Trump described the ruling as a major loss for Republicans and broadened his criticism to previous Supreme Court decisions involving his administration, including rulings concerning tariffs and birthright citizenship. The comments underline an unusual political confrontation between a Republican president and a conservative-majority Supreme Court whose ideological balance Trump himself helped shape.
The ruling also effectively preserves existing state mail-voting systems for the approaching midterms. Several states have already begun sending absentee or mail ballots, making major nationwide procedural changes increasingly difficult as Election Day approaches. The underlying litigation over the federal government’s authority to regulate ballot mail can continue, meaning the broader legal fight over Trump's election rules is not necessarily over even though the restrictions have been stopped for the immediate election cycle.