U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks during the signing ceremony for an executive order on mail ballots, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 31, 2026.
A week later after the decision, the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing ballroom construction that is “likely illegal,” according to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., to proceed anyway is resounding in ways that are far more consequential.
At the time, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson labeled the court okay to lift a temporary injunction as reflecting the Trump administration’s “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude.
This week, we see the same thinking driving the start of unauthorized and seemingly unconstitutional work on Donald Trump’s 250-foot memorial arch in Washington. More importantly, we see a Trump demand to skip all the usual legal hurdles to have a favorable Supreme Court weigh in on approving his attempt to halt delivery of mail ballot applications and mail ballots — unless states allow the Postal Service to decide that voters are citizens in an untested system that the government still cannot explain or defend.
Cleverly, perhaps, the Justice Department is writing its plea about new Postal Service voter limitations narrowly – to cover a decision only about whether to lift a federal court injunction to halt the process. That is to avoid any decision on whether the Postal Service reviews are “likely illegal” as well.
But we are seeing a repeat of this now familiar Trump technique to act first and ask permission later.
North Carolina’s deadline to mail out its mail application ballots was Friday – before any resolution of these legal niceties, though the Postal Service said it hurriedly approved the envelopes that state is using with individual barcodes. State officials met to confirm that they were sending out ballots without knowing what the legal disputes may mean.
Questions Over Stopping Mail Ballots
For those who have passed on the daily back-and-forth about mail ballot delivery, here is the summary.
Trump wants to bigfoot the November elections (and beyond) that pollsters and pundits see increasingly running against Republicans; he has pushed for early redrawing of congressional districts to force districts that appear more Republican, he has backed unsuccessful legislation to require documents to vote that will disenfranchise voters, he is sending monitors – and perhaps Homeland Security or even military troops to the polls to intimidate voters.
With looking at evidence to the contrary, Trump claims “fraud” among voters using mail ballots and he wants them erased. His vehicle is the use of the Postal Service to refuse delivery unless states comply with an untested, unexplained process in which that agency will somehow vet the citizenship of every person on voter registration rolls.
Many states, especially Democratic-voting states, have told him that the Constitution says states run elections, not the feds, and certainly not a president’s executive order. Thus, the court fights, which have resulted in a Boston federal court telling the Postal Service it cannot proceed temporarily, and this week considering making that decision permanent.
The Supreme Court earlier had ruled that opponents mistakenly filed for an injunction before the rule was written. That same day, the Postal Service issued its rules, which are impenetrable even to Justice’s own litigators.
Under its new rule, for example, it turns out that finding even one errant voter registration in a batch of 10,000 will allow the Postal Service to drop delivery of all in the batch. And no one understands how and why a voter registration – not a vote, just registration – would constitute fraud by a noncitizen who may be eligible to vote, for example, in a local election.
The government is assigning scores of agents to review publicly available voter registration databases.
Now federal court Judge Indira Talwani has made permanent her order to block the Postal Service non-delivery of mail ballot materials — indefinitely. The judge reported was exasperated in court at government lawyers who could not explain the Postal Service rules. She wrote that the Trump administration argument that it was only a rule change for the Postal Service “rings hollow. The final rule explicitly and exclusively regulates election mail.”
Government appeals were immediate, including the emergency turn to the Supreme Court.
Where’s the ‘Emergency’?
Naturally, there is an “emergency” aspect to the mail balloting issue. We are looking at election chaos.
It is just that sort of chaos that Trump seeks to create for these elections. It takes little imagination to see that Trump will try to declare null any results that he sees as adverse to his personal and party fortunes. We – and pundits – are wildly spinning tales of emergency declarations allowing military deployment on U.S. streets, a recreation of Jan. 6 , 2021, madness, endless court battles over “election fraud” without evidence.
By contrast, of course, the start of ground preparation for a Trump-desired huge arch in Washington in the same week, or threats to dissemble the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts or completing the gilded White House ballroom project with our money unauthorized by Congress, have no “emergency “ or time pressure.
Yet, the Trump do-it-now before questions can be settled has become the order of the day.
The pace of the law, the role of balance of power in government, even our voting rights are all now secondary to whatever Trump’s gut is telling him in the middle of the night.
“Catch me if you can” is not the way to run government – regardless of policy leanings. The Constitution to which Trump pledged an oath calls for congressional review and in this case, says the power is with the states.
As with children, what the attitude calls for is a huge turnout in November with an unmistaken Time Out message at its heart.
