A voter drops a ballot into an official ballot box inside City Hall during the primary election in San Francisco, California, USA, on Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to tighten rules for voting by mail, preventing it from taking effect ahead of November’s election that will determine control of Congress.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani sided with a coalition of Democratic-led states that argued that the Republican president was trying to illegally interfere with the administration of federal elections in their states.
“The Constitution does not give the president any specific powers regarding elections,” Talwani wrote.
A judge appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama concluded that Trump’s order violated the U.S. Constitution and exceeded the power of a Republican president to overhaul election procedures that have been run by state and local governments since the founding of the republic in 1789.
He said the president does not have the authority to create voter lists for each state and the USPS does not have the legal authority to adopt binding regulations regarding mail-in voting.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
President Trump signed the order on March 31 after a years-long campaign to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, including false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. He has long called for stricter rules regarding mail-in voting.
His order directed the Department of Homeland Security to create and send to each state a list of verified U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state, based on citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases.
Talwani, supporting a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued over President Trump’s order, said the list of citizens compiled by DHS will necessarily be incomplete because of privacy restrictions governing the sharing of sensitive personal data collected by government agencies.
President Trump’s order also required the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to voters on each state’s approved list of mail-in ballots. The USPS recently moved to implement President Trump’s directive by issuing new proposed rules that would require states to provide names and barcodes associated with mail-in ballots.
The order also directs the U.S. Department of Justice to prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local election officials who issue federal ballots to people deemed “ineligible” to vote. Trump administration officials and law enforcement agencies are fanning out across the country to reinvestigate previously dismissed fraud cases.
Mr. Talwani’s ruling came after another Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., refused to issue a preliminary injunction in a related lawsuit brought by Democrats challenging Mr. Trump’s order.
Nichols ruled that the Democrats’ request was premature because President Trump’s order has not yet been implemented. They are fascinating.
President Trump has made winning approval of a divisive package of domestic voting restrictions a top priority, surprising lawmakers on Wednesday by abruptly canceling a signing ceremony scheduled to unveil a newly passed bipartisan bill to address soaring home prices.
U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress Wednesday that under the proposal, the USPS would not deliver ballots in states where officials have refused to provide a list of voters who received mail-in ballots, but said it would abide by court-ordered blockade restrictions.
