The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a blow to the Trump administration and some Republican states that had urged the justices to require all ballots to arrive by the close of polls.

In a 5-4 decision, the court found that federal law does not prevent states from accepting late-arriving ballots. The ruling is a victory for Democrats and voting rights advocates, who had said setting a hard, Election Day deadline for ballot arrival would risk disenfranchising voters amid fears of deteriorating mail service.

The case, RNC vs. Watson, centered on whether federal law overrides a Mississippi law that requires mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days of the election. Thirteen states have similar laws, which extend a “grace period” to ballots that arrive through the mail after polls close.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said that federal law didn’t preempt the state law because elections represent when voters make a decision, which must be done on or before Election Day. Voters who cast their ballot by mail have made a decision by Election Day, Barrett reasoned.

“The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Barrett wrote.

Barrett cautioned that the decision rested on the interpretation of federal law, not the U.S. Constitution. She noted that the court was not considering the scope of Congress’ authority to regulate federal elections — suggesting that if Congress passes a nationwide ballot arrival deadline that the justices might uphold such a law.

Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined part of the dissent.

“If ballots received after election day are added to the set of ballots that dictate the election’s outcome, the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated,” Alito wrote.

States with grace periods

In addition to Mississippi, other states with some form of grace period include Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, called the Supreme Court decision a win for these states, as well as 30 states that accept military and overseas ballots delivered after Election Day.

“This is a victory for all the states and for all those who respect the will of the Founders, who ensured the security of our elections by giving the power to run those elections to the states — not to one person sitting in Washington, DC,” Becker said in a statement.

Some local election officials had warned that requiring all ballots to be received by the close of polls would burden their offices as they try to quickly warn voters about the change just months before the midterms. More ballot drop boxes that let voters keep their ballots out of the mail could help, they say, but also cost money.

“Ultimately, the voters may be harmed as well,” election officials in California, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington wrote in a court brief, warning that some ballots may not be received in time, “despite best efforts by careful and proactive administrators and local governments.”

But some Republican secretaries of state had urged the justices to strike down “grace period” laws. Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wrote in a court brief that an Election Day deadline “provides the bright-line rule that effective election administration demands.”

At least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day 2024 and arrived within a legally accepted post-election window, The New York Times has reported, citing election officials in 14 of 22 states and territories where late-arriving ballots were accepted that year. 

Overall, about 30% of voters cast a mail ballot in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

RNC challenged law

The Republican National Committee challenged the Mississippi law, which was defended by Mississippi Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson. The RNC argued a longstanding federal law that sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day for federal offices preempted state laws that allow ballots cast by Election Day, but received later, to count.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2024 that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day. President Donald Trump last year also unilaterally attempted to require mail ballots to be received by the end of Election Day in a sweeping executive order on elections. Much of that order was blocked in federal court.

The Supreme Court “rejected the RNC’s radical attempt to rewrite election laws in a way that would have resulted in the rejection of hundreds of thousands of ballots and the disenfranchisement of voters nationwide through no fault of their own,” Elisabeth Frost, litigation chair at Elias Law Group, said in a statement. 

Elias Law Group represented two nonprofit voting rights groups, Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans, that had intervened as defendants in the case.

The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision against a backdrop of uncertainty surrounding mail ballots. Trump signed an executive order in March that would restrict voting by mail by requiring states to provide lists of possible mail ballot voters to the U.S. Postal Service in advance. A federal judge recently blocked major portions of the order, triggering a near-certain appeal.

Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters accused Democrats of inviting chaos by allowing elections to “drag on” for days and weeks after ballots are cast. He said Republicans wouldn’t be deterred by the decision.

“If we want fair and secure elections, Election Day should mean exactly what it says, which is why this decision makes it even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act,” Gruters said in a statement, referring to restrictive voter legislation pushed by Trump that lacks the votes to pass the U.S. Senate.

Trump said the decision was a “tremendous loss” in a social media post and again urged passage of the SAVE America Act.

Paul Clement, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, said during oral arguments at the Supreme Court in March the prospect that the outcome of an election could change because of ballots arriving after Election Day would be unacceptable to losing candidates. After the 2020 election, President Donald Trump demanded election officials not count ballots that came in after Election Day, but states kept counting ballots.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late-arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result. Full stop,” Clement told the justices.

Attorneys for Watson argued that both legal and historical precedent supported his position. States may decide that voters have made their final choices when ballots are submitted to state officials rather than when they’re received, according to Watson.

Watson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing report that will be updated.

California often takes days or even weeks to tally votes after its elections, a product of measures to protect voters and a deluge of mail ballots dropped off on Election Day. Incomplete vote totals reported in the hours after polls close don’t always reflect final results.

None of this is evidence of fraud. But President Donald Trump has spent more than a week baselessly alleging malfeasance in California’s June 2 primary election, in which votes were still being counted as of June 11, offering a window into how he may approach the November midterm elections.

Trump has claimed repeatedly, without evidence, that Democrats are stealing the election, even though the state is a party stronghold. California’s long count is a well-known feature of its elections, with election officials given about a month to process and tally all ballots.

Democrats and experts on elections aren’t surprised by Trump’s statements, saying he is turning to familiar tactics in an effort to discredit unfavorable results.

“Whenever they don’t like the outcome of an election, they spread lies about the election,” said David Becker, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Voting Rights Section. 

‘The Dumocrats’

After the 2020 election, Trump allies mounted a legal campaign to overturn the president’s losses in key battleground states, citing nonexistent fraud. When that failed, GOP lawmakers raised objections certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Finally, Trump rallied a crowd of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, that went on to storm the Capitol.

Trump continually cast the election as stolen during that period — a theme he’s returned to in hammering on California.

“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump wrote in a social media post on June 3. “They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

The U.S. Department of Justice is following the president’s lead. The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles has linked suspicions about California’s elections to the state’s refusal to turn over its unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive personal data on residents.

The Justice Department has sued California and 29 other states to gain access to the data, which it plans to feed into a Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizen voters. So far, no federal judge has agreed the DOJ is entitled to the information.

Eye on the midterms

The voter roll lawsuits are part of a proactive campaign by the Trump administration to exert influence and control over the midterms before voting begins. 

The president has signed an executive order restricting mail ballots that currently faces multiple lawsuits. And Trump wants Congress to require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, but the legislation has stalled in the Senate.

The stakes of the midterm elections are high for Trump and Republicans. Democrats retaking the House or the Senate or even both would mean the end of his legislative agenda and more aggressive oversight of the administration.

At the same time, Americans’ confidence in elections is declining. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they are confident or very confident that their state or local government will conduct a fair and accurate election, down from 76% in October 2024, according to a March poll conducted by Marist University.

The 2026 House landscape — and Trump’s past comments — suggest he may direct his ire at additional states in November. 

For instance, of the 18 House races that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter categorizes as a “toss up”, three are in Pennsylvania, a swing state that Trump alleged was the site of election fraud in 2020 (he won the state in 2024).

California has its own “toss up” House race and an additional three only lean Democratic, meaning they remain competitive. After California, Texas and other states gerrymandered their congressional maps in recent months, control of the House could again run through California.

“It’s been pretty clear to all of us that Republicans are laying the groundwork to do anything, and they will say anything, to hold power,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, a California Democrat, said at a news conference on June 9.

Evidence of fraud?

States Newsroom asked the White House to provide evidence substantiating Trump’s fraud claims in California. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded with a statement that didn’t directly answer the question.

“Countless Americans share the same concerns as President Trump watching the way California conducts its elections, including taking weeks to deliver results,” the statement says in part.

California’s slow vote count dates back years and is driven by multiple factors. California, along with seven other states, sends mail ballots to all voters. In a statewide special election last year, nearly 89% of voters cast their ballot that way.

This creates a flood of ballots arriving at election offices in the days leading up to and on Election Day, along with large numbers of voters who drop off their ballots in person. Voter signatures must be checked on ballot envelopes, adding more behind-the-scenes work that slows down election workers.

Voters with an issue related to their ballot, such as a missing signature or signature mismatch, also have an opportunity to correct the problem. The process, called ballot curing, adds more time.

Additionally, California has a week-long grace period for ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive late, creating a trickle of votes that come into election offices days after polls have closed. 

The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver an opinion soon that could strike down these grace periods nationwide, though such a decision could compound the ballot pileup on Election Day as voters move to get their ballots in sooner.

Need for faster count acknowledged

Evoking an image of a snake digesting a large meal, Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, likened the arrival of ballots on Election Day to “the thing in the python.” Her nonprofit group has long advocated for improvements to the state’s election process, including a faster count. 

“While I am dismayed by the unfair criticism being placed on California, I’m more concerned about voter confidence being undermined, not just by those fraudulent claims but also by the long count itself,” Alexander said.

The demand to know the winners of races on election night has been fueled by modern media, as news services and TV networks declare race winners. But these calls are almost always based on incomplete vote totals, and often rely on mathematical analyses of whether enough votes remain uncounted for other candidates to have a realistic chance of winning.

Candidates are officially declared winners by canvassing boards and other election officials in the days and weeks following the election, depending on each state’s procedures. Often election night vote totals match the actual outcome of a race, but not always — a gap Trump is now exploiting to claim fraud.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in May sent a letter to election officials that almost appeared to anticipate the reaction to the June primary and called for quick and accurate vote tabulation.

“Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold,” Newsom wrote.

House GOP leaders join criticism

While California’s slow process is normal for the state, Trump allies have latched onto it — conflating the pace of the count with evidence of wrongdoing, even if they aren’t always as explicit as the president in accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during an exchange with a CNN reporter on Monday that while he wasn’t saying the election was rigged, it “stinks to high heaven.”

“Whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, said of the slow count at a news conference.

But Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, analogized the vote counting to a football game. The vote totals available on election night represent the score at half time — but the final score at the end of the game will be different.

“It doesn’t mean there’s fraud, it just means the game was completed,” Lieu told reporters. “That’s what we’re seeing right now, we’re completing the vote count. And then we’re going to see who wins and who loses.”

A federal judge on Thursday declined to block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding that it was too early to challenge the directive.

The decision by D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, represents a setback for Democratic groups, lawmakers and other groups including the NAACP that have sued to stop the order ahead of the midterm elections in November. The March 31 order faces at least five lawsuits. 

The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. Under the order, the proposed rule is due this week.

The order also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, with the help of the Social Security Administration. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

The Department of Justice had told the judge that the federal government hadn’t yet implemented the directive. The judge’s opinion, released just after midnight in Washington, D.C., makes clear that he could arrive at a different decision if the Trump administration moves forward with enforcing the order. 

“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote in a 26-page opinion. 

“Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur,” he wrote. “Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”

Implications for midterms

Nichols’ decision is the first ruling in what is likely to be a protracted legal battle that could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Thursday’s opinion dealt only with whether the executive order should be blocked immediately — the underlying lawsuit to decide if the directive is unconstitutional and illegal will continue.

Whether Trump can successfully implement the order holds major consequences for the midterm elections. If the White House is able to block the Postal Service from sending or receiving mail ballots from voters not on state-provided lists, it could upend elections in states where voting by mail is the norm and disrupt procedures in others. 

About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Trump has framed the order as a needed measure to combat noncitizen voting, though it’s exceedingly rare. The directive marks the White House’s latest effort to assert authority over elections as the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, stalls in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats and voting rights advocates argue the executive order is unconstitutional. Under the U.S. Constitution, states administer elections and Congress has the power to pass regulations on them, but the president has no power to act unilaterally.  

Postal Service targeted

The battle over the executive order also carries ramifications for the future of the Postal Service. While the president used to appoint the postmaster general, since 1970 the Postal Service has operated as an independent corporation — a change intended to shield mail delivery from politics.

Postal law experts say that if Trump is able to enforce an order against the postmaster general, who now is appointed by a Postal Service Board of Governors, it will shatter the agency’s independence. 

“Today’s ruling is a decisive victory for the rule of law and deals a blow against the Democrat strategy of suing first and finding legal arguments later. The Trump Administration will continue fighting for the safety and security of American elections,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

The Democratic groups suing over the order, including the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement expressed confidence they would eventually prevail. They said the decision doesn’t change the principle that the executive branch cannot infringe on Americans’ voting rights.

The Democratic groups suing over the order, including the Democratic National Committee, in a joint statement expressed confidence they would eventually prevail. They said the decision doesn’t change the principle that the executive branch cannot infringe on Americans’ voting rights.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and one of the plaintiffs, in a statement called mail voting safe and secure. He emphasized that presidents don’t get to rewrite election law “by decree.”

“Trump’s strategy is simple: if he can’t win voters, he’ll silence them — and now a MAGA judge is enabling him,” Schumer said.

A group of Republican state attorneys general has also intervened in the case to defend the order. They argue that Trump has authority to gather and organize information within the executive branch. They say Trump can direct the Postal Service to propose rules.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who is leading the Republican legal effort, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Nichols’ decision.

Opponents look to Massachusetts

With Nichols’ decision, a federal judge in Massachusetts offers opponents their next opportunity to quickly halt the directive. 

Massachusetts District Court Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by President Barack Obama, will hold a hearing on Tuesday in a legal challenge brought by Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, along with the League of Women Voters and other civic groups.

Some legal analysts anticipate states may have an easier time challenging the order because its requirements, such as requiring states to submit lists of voters to send ballots through the mail, directly affect them. David Becker, director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, wrote on social media that the states have “much stronger standing claims” heading into the hearing.

After federal agencies begin acting on the order, the challenge in Massachusetts “will be the case to watch,” he wrote.

‘Maximum amount of confusion’

At a mid-May hearing before Nichols, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee, Democratic leaders Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and other interest groups had argued that, with the midterm elections less than six months away, there was no time to see how the Trump administration executes the order.

The proposal would result in a “maximum amount of confusion” and be a “nightmare for election officials,” Danielle Lang, who argued on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Nichols. “Waiting will only erode public confidence in elections.”

At the time, Nichols warned Justice Department lawyers to notify him of “anything even approaching a material change” on implementing the order.

Justice Department senior trial counsel Stephen Pezzi told Nichols the plaintiffs have a right to “prepare for the darkest fears,” but, he argued, they can’t win a preliminary injunction based on speculation about error-prone citizenship lists and a postal rule not yet created.

Ultimately, Nichols agreed.

“In any event, given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs,” Nichols wrote, “they have not suffered any harm at present, much less harm that is ‘certain,’ ‘great,’ and imminent.”

President Donald Trump is again demanding Congress pass a sweeping set of voting restrictions and refuses to rule out sending troops to the polls, as Democrats and voting rights groups assemble a sprawling effort to guard against federal election interference.

The fight over election security is intensifying in Washington, D.C., as the White House and its allies seek to rewrite rules around voter registration and mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections. The stakes of the contests are massive — control of Congress and the future of Trump’s legislative agenda.

Trump wants lawmakers to attach the SAVE America Act to unrelated housing and surveillance legislation after it stalled in the U.S. Senate. The SAVE bill would require individuals to show documents, such as a passport or birth certificate, proving their citizenship to register to vote. It would also mandate voters show photo ID to cast a ballot.

“Voter I.D., and Proof of Citizenship, must be approved, NOW,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social, his social media platform. On Wednesday, he took to social media again to call for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian and suggested she’s an impediment to passage of the bill.

“We need THE SAVE AMERICA ACT passed, and NOW,” Trump wrote.

Democrats and voting rights advocates say the measure would cause chaos if passed this close to the election. They warn it would disenfranchise voters and create additional obstacles to voting for married women and others who have changed their names.

Vote possible soon

The Senate may hold another vote as early as this week on adding the SAVE America Act to a budget reconciliation bill. Senators rejected a prior effort to advance the legislation in a 48-50 vote in April, but  Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, has vowed to try again. 

The SAVE America Act is popular among Republicans in the U.S. House, which passed the bill in February. But a handful of Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in opposing the proposal, which doesn’t have enough support to overcome a filibuster.

“It is voter suppression with a suit and tie,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday in a speech at a progressive conference.

Some House Republicans have kept up pressure on the Senate to act. During a House Administration Subcommittee on Elections hearing Wednesday, Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, called for the passage of the bill multiple times.

“American citizens deserve secure elections and to know that their votes are guaranteed,” Miller said.

Thune blames Democrats

Senators spent several weeks this spring debating the legislation before moving on to other business. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, on Monday said the chamber held a “robust debate” but indicated senators were unlikely to return to the legislation.

Speaking about the bill in the past tense, Thune cast the measure as a political cudgel that Republicans would use against Democrats in November.

“Democrats are on the record against all of it,” Thune said on the Senate floor. “And we’ll be sure the American people know that Democrats are blocking commonsense policies that have broad support from the American people.”

Democrats, fearing that Trump may try to assert unilateral control over elections regardless of whether the legislation advances, have begun outlining how they plan to combat any attempted election takeover. 

Schumer on Tuesday said Senate Democrats are launching an election protection task force. The group, which will include 11 senators and election experts, will be prepared to mount “lawsuit after lawsuit” throughout the election process.

“Let me be very clear: local officials run elections. Voters decide elections. Donald Trump does not,” Schumer said.

Troops at polling places

In describing their concerns, Schumer and others point to Trump’s refusal earlier this month to close the door on deploying troops to polling places. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also recently dismissed the possibility as a “gotcha hypothetical” without actually ruling it out. 

Federal law prohibits federal troops and agents at election sites in nearly all circumstances.

“I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” Trump told reporters when asked about sending troops of immigration agents to the polls.

Trump’s critics also emphasize his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his continuing portrayal of the contest as stolen. He has pardoned rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, disrupting Congress’ certification of the election. 

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who say they were victims of past administrations.

“This is pure fraud and highway robbery,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.

Executive orders

Preparations for possible interference in the midterms come amid a series of steps by the Trump administration over the past year aimed at giving the White House greater authority over elections — though the U.S. Constitution says they are administered by the states.

Trump signed an executive order last year that sought to mandate proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, but the measure was blocked in court. He signed another order in March restricting the sending of ballots through the mail; a federal judge is expected to rule soon on a request to halt its enforcement.

Trump this week attacked Maryland officials over a mistake that caused voters to receive incorrect mail-in ballots for the state’s June primary. Maryland election officials have faulted a vendor for the error and are resending the ballots, but the president has called for a Justice Department investigation.

“You want to have proof of citizenship, you want to have voter ID, you want to have all these things. But to me, maybe the worst of all is the mail-in ballots,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

DOJ battles states

For months, the Department of Justice has demanded states turn over sensitive personal data on voters, such as driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers and dates of birth. 

It has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the information, which it plans to run through a computer program called SAVE at the Department of Homeland Security to identify possible noncitizens.

Federal judges have so far ruled against the Justice Department. Several voting rights groups have also sued to block the DOJ effort, alleging the Trump administration wants to build an illegal national voter database.

Anthony Nel, a Texas resident and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that his voter registration was canceled a month after SAVE wrongly identified him as a possible noncitizen.

“The DOJ should not be building a national database out of our most sensitive, personal information when it can’t even get this right,” Nel said.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting would shatter decades of U.S. Postal Service independence intended to shield it from partisan politics, postal experts and attorneys say.

Postal experts said Trump ordering the postmaster general to take any action — let alone on a matter as sensitive as elections — violates guardrails in federal law against presidential control of the mail. Multiple people with deep knowledge of Postal Service history said they couldn’t recall a similar order in the agency’s modern era.

“For the president to direct the postmaster general to do anything, including handling these ballots, is contrary to the statutes, contrary to law,” said James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law.

The order, signed March 31, attracted swift condemnation as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to control state-run elections. If it stands, the directive would also represent a White House power grab over the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.

Trump’s order directs the postmaster general, who acts as the Postal Service’s CEO, to set out rules that would require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to send ballots through the mail during federal elections. States that want to use the mail would be required to provide lists of mail voters to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to individuals not on a list.

A Board of Governors leads the Postal Service, and holds the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party. 

While presidents nominate the governors and the Senate confirms them, they serve seven-year terms. The length, in theory, insulates them from political pressure.

S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton who served as its chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or a president directing the postmaster general to take certain actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.

“The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.

The board currently has only four members, all appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for the nominees.

Cash-strapped service

Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the mail. 

Last year, he floated the possibility of merging the Postal Service with the Commerce Department, a move that would require approval by Congress. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that Trump was expected to try to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.

The Trump administration takes a dim view of independent agencies. Many allies of the president subscribe to the unitary executive theory, the idea that the U.S. Constitution grants the president full power over the entirety of the executive branch — meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

Trump has moved to assert authority over a number of independent and quasi-independent agencies since taking office, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project, widely seen as a pretext to target Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate policy has angered Trump.

The Postal Service is under tremendous financial pressure — potentially making it more vulnerable to proposals to bring it under White House control. Mail volume peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces that year. The Postal Service today handles 109 billion pieces annually.

The current postmaster general, David Steiner, told a U.S. House committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year without changes to its prices and operations. The Postal Service is generally funded through stamps and other forms of user revenue, not by tax dollars.

Steiner emphasized the independent nature of the Postal Service throughout his prepared testimony. He has laid out a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising its borrowing limit from $15 billion, a level that’s remained unchanged since 1992.

“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-financed, independent establishment of the Executive Branch,” Steiner wrote.

Congress approved sweeping legislation in 1970 reorganizing the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent corporation. Before that, the postmaster general was a Cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s order marks “a dramatic shift away from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the Postal Service from interference,” Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched mail history, said.

Election security

The White House didn’t directly answer States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the independence of the Postal Service or the legal justification for the executive order.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

“The President will do everything in his power to lawfully defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering. 

The Postal Service didn’t answer questions about how it plans to respond to the order. A USPS spokesperson said only that the Postal Service was reviewing it. 

Lawsuits

Steiner has indicated he’s awaiting a court decision on how to proceed. 

“If a court says that’s not what the law means, we’ll follow that,” Steiner told The New York Times after the executive order was signed. “And so from our perspective, we don’t get involved in policy or law, we just follow the law.”

The order on mail ballots faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials have all sued. The legal challenges emphasize the Postal Service’s independence in federal law.

The lawsuit filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups, asserts the Postal Service is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint calls the Postal Service “indispensable” to voting by mail, noting that it delivered more than 222 million pieces of ballot mail in 2024, including nearly 100 million general election ballots.

A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed motions in court this week seeking to defend the executive order from the Democratic legal challenges. The motions call the order an example of cooperative federalism to provide states with optional resources to help protect their elections.

The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service hasn’t finalized any new rules on mail ballots.

The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking—it does not regulate the States directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.

The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Vote-by-mail 

Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.

American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a statement that the Postal Service doesn’t block mailers from sending letters or refuse to deliver letters because of the identity of the sender. Postal workers take extraordinary measures to ensure ballots reach their destinations promptly and securely, he said.

“Postal workers take the sanctity of the mail seriously, and every process and policy of the Postal Service ensures that mail is accepted, processed, and delivered, no matter who sent it or where it is going,” Smith said.

On Monday, more than 100 U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding he refrain from future actions that undermine the Postal Service’s independence and calling on him to rescind the executive order. The letter says the order sets “a dangerous precedent for political interference” in postal service operations.

Senate Democrats followed up with a letter to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors on Tuesday, urging the Postal Service to not implement the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.

“The Postal Service doesn’t care which politicians you may support,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said on the Senate floor last week. “Its only priority is to deliver the mail to every community in the country.”

“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees USPS, said. “If the president is successful in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in running elections, he will completely erode the trust of this storied institution.” 

A dozen Republican state attorneys general are moving to defend President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail ballots from legal challenges mounted by Democrats.

The GOP officials, led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, argued in multiple court filings Monday and Tuesday in response to Democratic lawsuits that the March 31 order provides states with “optional resources” to help secure their elections and doesn’t endanger voting rights.

The states “would like to access this resource so they may verify the accuracy of their own voter-registration lists. This flow of information between federal and state agencies is a common and critical feature of our federal system,” the Republican officials wrote in a court document.

The attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas joined Hanaway in the effort.

The order directs the postmaster general to put forward rules that would block the U.S. Postal Service from delivering ballots to or from voters not on lists of approved mail voters provided by states. Democrats and postal law experts have said the Postal Service has no authority over elections.

“The Constitution and multiple court rulings put it in stark terms: the President does not have the authority to issue an executive order that attempts to undermine the ability of states to run their own elections,” more than 100 U.S. House Democrats wrote in a letter to Trump on Monday.

Trump’s order also directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state. Democrats allege the Trump administration is building an unauthorized national voter list, despite the U.S. Constitution giving states the responsibility of running federal elections.

The Democratic National Committee, top Democratic lawmakers and Democratic state attorneys general and secretaries of state have all sued to block the order, as have voting rights groups. The Republican state attorneys general are seeking to intervene in those lawsuits.

The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service hasn’t finalized any new rules on mail ballots.

The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking—it does not regulate the States directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.

The executive order marked Trump’s latest attempt to assert power over federal elections. A previous order that sought to require voters to prove their citizenship was blocked in court. Legislation to impose such a requirement is stalled in the U.S. Senate.

The Department of Justice has also sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to unredacted state voter lists containing sensitive personal information, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. While federal courts have so far rebuffed those lawsuits, at least a dozen states have voluntarily turned over the data. 

DOJ plans to share the information with Homeland Security, which will use a computer program to look for possible noncitizen voters.