KVIG Informative

Less than three months before the midterms decide control of Congress, a federal judge in Boston has barred the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing any part of the president’s order restricting mail-in ballots — not just in the two dozen states that sued, but everywhere.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday expanding an earlier block on Section 3 of Executive Order 14399, barring the U.S. Postal Service from refusing to deliver mail-in or absentee ballots, or from creating new mail-ballot regulations, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.

Talwani’s ruling extends nationwide a block she first issued in June, which covered only the roughly two dozen states and the District of Columbia that filed the original lawsuit. In her written opinion, Talwani said Congress never delegated authority over mail-in voting to the Postal Service.

Trump’s executive order, signed in March, directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed citizens eligible to vote and share them with states, and instructed the Postal Service to refuse ballot delivery in states that didn’t cooperate in building those lists. It also directed the Justice Department to prioritize investigations into state and local election administration.

Talwani wrote that the timing made the stakes especially high, noting that with less than 90 days remaining before the midterms, the risk of the federal government changing election rules at the last minute justified a nationwide injunction rather than a narrower one.

The ruling marks at least the second major setback this year for the administration’s effort to expand federal oversight of elections through executive order. A related 2025 order requiring documented proof of citizenship to register to vote and imposing an Election Day ballot-receipt deadline was permanently blocked by a separate federal judge in Washington state.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal Talwani’s ruling to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. The injunction does not stop the federal government from issuing nonbinding guidance to states about ballot-mail envelopes, only from enforcing the order’s mandatory provisions.

Voting rights groups that pushed for the broader, nationwide version of the injunction got what they asked for this week. Whether it holds through November now depends on an appeals court — and on how many more times the administration is willing to test the same legal theory before the votes it’s trying to regulate are actually cast.