Democracy Docket: A federal judge in Massachusetts Tuesday issued another order blocking the United States Postal Service (USPS) from implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping attack on mail voting and his attempt to create a national voter registration list before the midterm elections.
District Judge Indira Talwani agreed with a coalition of voting-rights groups led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts that Trump’s March 2026 anti-voting executive order (EO) was likely unconstitutional, noting that the administration didn’t even attempt to argue otherwise.
“Throughout the multiple actions before district courts, courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal government has declined to defend the constitutionality of the EO’s directives,” Talwani wrote. “Instead, the federal government has asked this court and others to postpone judicial review on standing and ripeness grounds, arguing that no party may challenge the EO’s constitutionality until the USPS promulgates a Final Rule.”
Despite the government’s requests to the contrary, Talwani decided to review the EO because less than 90 days remain before the midterm elections and millions of Americans who “rely on mail voting require clarity as to how or whether they will vote in November,” she wrote.
This is the second time Talwani has blocked implementation of Trump’s EO. But unlike the first, this preliminary injunction will now cover the entirety of the nation. In June, the judge ruled in a separate lawsuit and prohibited the order’s implementation in 23 states and Washington, D.C., which she alluded to in her order Tuesday.
After the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that earlier decision, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which accepted briefing on an emergency stay request last week and could issue a ruling any day now to either suspend Talwani’s order or affirm it.
Meanwhile, in two separate lawsuits, the federal appellate court for the District of Columbia has allowed the federal government to continue implementing the order.