mail ballot

California and nearly two dozen other states warned the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that allowing the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots in the November election would cause “chaos” and could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

“In some States … compliance with USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the states argued. “In the remaining States, there would be chaos — and a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

The Democrat-led coalition — which includes California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia — also cited objections from lower-ranking state and elections officials in conservative states that have not objected to the Postal Service’s position, including the lieutenant governor and other officials in Utah saying implementation of the new rules would “be an unmitigated disaster.”

Similar warnings have emanated from Florida, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.

“Whatever else may be said of USPS’ new rule, it would wreak havoc on States and their voters if it takes effect at this late point,” the Democrat-led states wrote, pointing out that some States, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, have already begun to mail out ballots.

The states’ arguments were in response to the Trump administration over the weekend filing an emergency appeal to the high court, asking it to overturn a lower-court ruling halting the plan from being implemented for the Nov. 3 election.

The new rules — developed in response to a March executive order from Trump — require states to submit their complete voter lists to the Postal Service, and to adopt new ballot envelopes with individualized voter bar codes designed by the Postal Service. They require the Postal Service to then reject any mail ballots that don’t match those lists.

Trump’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own list of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists.

Trump and other supporters of the changes — including top officials from a dozen Republican-led states — argue they are necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud, including by non-citizens. Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

The Democrat-led states sued to block the changes on multiple grounds, including that neither Trump nor the Postal Service have any authority to regulate state-run elections, that the changes would illegally prevent eligible voters from casting ballots, and that the timeline imposed by the new rule — formally issued by the Postal Service on Aug. 21 — made compliance by November impossible.

Independent voting rights groups also sued, alleging the new rules threatened to disenfranchise voters and make their work educating voters on their options for casting a ballot impossible to carry out.

A Postal Service whistleblower recently added skepticism to the agency’s ability to implement the new rules on its end, alleging in a statement published by congressional Democrats that the agency’s online portal for verifying ballots was built in a “slapdash” manner, is “fundamentally flawed” and threatens as built to reject thousands of ballots if just a single one cannot be properly read.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted requests from the states and the independent groups to halt the plans from being implemented nationwide, issuing a preliminary injunction requiring the Postal Service to cease all work on them.

The Trump administration then bypassed the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to ask the Supreme Court for relief from Talwani’s order.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, argued that the warnings from states that the changes are unworkable, represent an overreach of federal authority or would cause chaos in November are all baseless.

“The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” Sauer wrote. “The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

Sauer argued that if the court does not allow the changes to proceed, it would cause “serious irreparable harm on the federal government, the States themselves, and the voting public” by “nullifying the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud.”

Experts have consistently rejected those claims — including in their own filings before the high court.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, joined three other election experts to argue to the lower court that the Trump administration’s claims of injury were “speculative and weak.” They noted that the administration had “offered no evidence” in court that the new rules would “stop any appreciable amount of voter fraud or even that voter fraud through the mails is a widespread problem that USPS should address.”

Meanwhile, they wrote, there was “undisputed evidence” presented to the lower court that the Postal Service is “still not prepared to implement its new rule or do so accurately and efficiently, even as states have begun mailing out their ballots,” and that the “harm to the states and to voters is enormous, as the rule threatens to disenfranchise millions of elderly voters, disabled voters, military voters and all others including the most vulnerable who depend on mail voting, in both red and blue states.”

The Democrat-led states also noted that the Trump administration hadn’t proven that widespread voter fraud is a legitimate threat, but had shown it is ill prepared itself to implement the changes without causing widespread disruption — as evidenced in part by the whistleblower’s claims.

It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will rule, though a relatively quick decision is expected given the emergency nature of the appeal.

BERLIN  — Leaders of an extremist, far-right party in Germany have quietly borrowed pages from President Trump’s playbook to cast doubt on the integrity of absentee voting — alleging without evidence that residents of nursing homes have had their ballots manipulated and calling for an end to postal voting.

The attack on mail ballots comes as Germany approaches a potentially historic state election that could shatter one of the taboos of its postwar political order by opening the door to a far-right government.

Politicians across the ideological spectrum, mindful that polls show Trump to be widely unpopular, don’t invoke his name.

But the specter of the American president nevertheless hangs over the election that could have reverberations across Europe if the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party — tacitly echoing Trump’s attacks on migrants, the media and the integrity of elections — pulls off an unprecedented political shock in postwar Germany.

In a country where the guilt of its Nazi past is never far from the surface, the AfD has unapologetically campaigned against what it portrays as the shackles of Germany’s history and won over many new supporters, in part by adopting Trump’s hard-line stance on migrants and his drumbeat of attacks on mainstream news outlets.

The AfD leader, Tino Chrupalla, surprised Germans recently with warnings of voter fraud in the Sunday election in Saxony-Anhalt state, telling a national television audience that some senior citizens in nursing homes had had their absentee ballots cast and signed for them without their knowledge.

This week, in neighboring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, the AfD candidate for governor, Leif-Erik Holm, declared, “Postal voting is more vulnerable to potential attempts of manipulation.”

Election officials and organizations representing nursing home caregivers have rejected the allegations and say there is no evidence of voter fraud.

The AfD, considered one of the most extreme far-right parties in Europe, has surged so far ahead in opinion polls that it could emerge as the dominant political force in Saxony-Anhalt and potentially lead a German state government for the first time, either with an absolute majority or with a junior coalition partner.

Trump has spent years attacking mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud, despite scant evidence of widespread abuse. Trump himself has voted by mail in recent elections. His administration continues to fight court battles to limit voting by mail.

“Sowing distrust in political institutions is part of the strategy of right-wing populist parties,” said Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist at Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany.

“The ‘rigged election’ lie is a powerful narrative within the MAGA movement,” he added, “and serves as a crucial element that fosters a shared identity” with far-right parties in Europe. (Such messaging has also been employed by many rightist politicians in Latin America.)

An AfD victory in one of Germany’s 16 federal states would in one fell swoop obliterate a central tenet of the postwar order: that the far right must never return to power in the country responsible for the Holocaust and the devastation of Europe in World War II.

Many fear that taking power there could serve as a springboard for the ostracized party at the national level, where it is leading opinion polls with about 29% support, putting it far ahead of the other four parties with seats in the federal Parliament.

“Trumpism and the MAGA movement have undoubtedly been an inspiration and model for many European radical right parties,” said Lars Rensmann, a political scientist at the University of Passau who has studied the far right. “In many ways, Trump has been the successful model many European radical right parties try to follow while adopting it to European conditions.”

The AfD’s ascent has parallels across Europe, from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party to Britain’s Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Herbert Kickl in Austria. In France, the far-right Rassemblement National is looking to the 2027 presidential race with its candidate, Marine Le Pen, having perhaps her strongest chance yet of winning after reaching the runoff in 2017 and 2022.

Meloni`s relationship with Trump has cooled during her nearly four years in power, due in part to the war in Iran, tariffs and security policies that have strained U.S. relations with Italy and all of Europe.

President Trump greets Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a summit Egypt in 2025. Their once warm relationship has since cooled.

(Evan Vucci / Pool via Associated Press)

Yet there is no pan-European alliance of the far right, in part because these parties champion their own national interests.

“Some components of Trumpism can be shared and exported, such as hostility towards migration and ‘wokeism,’ but it is very clear that national interests that the far-right champion cannot be defended the same way as the American national interests,” said Giovanni Orsina, head of the political science department at LUISS University in Rome.

“If you put your nation first and do so aggressively, you have diverging national interests and so it’s not possible to have an international network of nationalists,” Orsina added.

But many far-right leaders are united in one sense. They admire not just Trump’s tactics, but the “boldness of his transgressions, dismantling liberal and civil norms by repeating things that were once deemed unacceptable for someone seeking public office,” said Rensmann.

“Trump is unpopular in Germany, even across the political right,” Lewandowsky said. “It would be risky for the AfD to embrace him openly, especially because he failed to keep his promise not to start any further wars and large segments of the public feel threatened by the United States under Trump.”

The AfD was created in 2013 as a small anti-euro party before morphing into an anti-migrant force that tapped into voter frustration over immigration and the strains many Germans perceive on housing, jobs and public services.

Despite being ostracized by mainstream parties and kept out of coalition cooperation, it has survived and thrived as a disruptive force.

In the last decade Germany has sheltered millions of refugees, mainly from Syria and other troubled countries in the Middle East. It provides housing, medical care and generous financial support to refugees that AfD politicians say serve as a magnet. Trump once accused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel of “ruining” her country by allowing in so many refugees.

“I think this could be a watershed moment for Europe,” Orsina said of the upcoming election.

An election poster touts the far-right Alternative for Germany party, AfD, right, in Berlin in 2025. It reads “Now AfD.”

(Michael Sohn / Associated Press)

He said the election in 2022 of Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, which traces its origins to Italy’s postwar neo-fascist movement, sparked fears across Europe that, in hindsight, may have been exaggerated. But Germany is a different story when it comes to the far right.

“Some said she is a neo-fascist and a danger to democracy, but most people in Italy didn’t believe that,” he said. “Italy isn’t a better democracy after four years of Meloni but it isn’t any worse either. But Germany isn’t Italy. And Germany’s relationship with its past is a lot different.”

David Bebnowski, an author who has written books on far-right populism and who is a history instructor at the Free University in Berlin, said there is another important connection among far-right voters across Europe that the AfD is tapping into — a yearning for change in countries where establishment parties have struggled to respond to voter frustration.

Trump’s success as a force for disruption, he said, has provided a powerful example.

“You can’t really trace a grand MAGA strategy adopted by the far right, but you can see that they are, in part, very much in line with the ‘spirit of Trumpism,’” Bebnowski said. “What aligns them is a sense of disruption and optimism that they will be able to change the way politics are done in a way the other parties can’t.”

Kirschbaum is a special correspondent.

Sept. 3, 2026 9 AM PT

BOSTON — A federal judge in Boston said Thursday the U.S. Postal Service has told her nothing about how it would implement a plan to regulate mail ballots for the midterms as she considers whether to let the plan proceed in the weeks before Election Day.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani is deciding whether to extend her prohibition on the proposed regulation of mail ballots, an effort undertaken as part of an executive order by President Trump. The hearing in the closely watched case came a day before the first state begins sending mail ballots to voters.

“We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” Talwani told Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer representing the Postal Service.

Last week, Talwani imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order to keep it from being used. That order expires next week as more states begin sending out mail ballots. Velchik said the administration will most likely go to the Supreme Court by the end of the week to seek permission to resume implementing the plan.

Talwani has been here before. In June, she prohibited the administration from implementing Trump’s order for the November election, ruling the changes came too close to voting for the federal government to embark on such a project.

But the Supreme Court late last month ruled that Talwani’s order was premature because the Postal Service had not yet published regulations governing how it would apply Trump’s order. The agency did so just before the high court ruling came down, prompting Democrats and voting rights groups to swiftly re-file their lawsuits.

They counter that the president has no authority to set election rules, which is a power designated in the Constitution to the states and in some cases Congress.

They won an initial victory with Talwani’s restraining order, which has already been appealed by the administration.

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot.

Election officials say there’s simply no way they can comply with the Postal Service directives, which could require a complete overhaul of their operations. Before it delivers mail ballots for any state, the Postal Service would have to approve the design of the envelopes that contain them and have the state upload a list of voters receiving them to an online portal.

Some ballots have already gone out. A few municipalities in Wisconsin opted to send mail ballots to voters earlier this week, but Friday marks the full kickoff of voting as North Carolina starts shipping its mail ballots to all voters who requested them.

The administration has contended the changes are relatively minor and legal. But the portal was still not active this week, and most election offices have already printed their envelopes and ballots.

Velchik told Talwani that the federal government is offering states the choice to opt into the system. But the Postal Service has yet to identify a single state that has done so.

A whistleblower report made public this week warns that the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent. The new rule requires all ballots to be physically brought to post offices before being mailed to voters, but if a single one’s bar code registers an error, the whole batch gets thrown out, even if it contains tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.

Riccardi and Casey write for the Associated Press. Riccardi reported from Denver.

Two of the highest-ranking law enforcement officials in California are publicly sparring over the integrity of state elections, trading barbs on social media that highlight the fierce partisan divide on the issue heading into the November midterms.

In a post to X on Wednesday, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, accused California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement official, of fighting to “preserve non-citizens’ access to mail ballots” and “shield fraudsters and illegals from accountability.”

On Thursday, Bonta fired back, accusing Essayli of being “more interested in currying favor with a desperate wannabe dictator” — a reference to President Trump — “than upholding the law himself.”

Bonta and Essayli’s back-and-forth followed an announcement from Bonta that California and 24 other Democratic-led states were suing to block the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new nationwide rules on mail ballots that were developed at Trump’s behest.

Late Thursday, a federal judge sided with the states, issuing a temporary restraining order halting the implementation of those rules as the litigation continues. An appeal is likely.

Such a public and personal rift between Bonta and Essayli is highly unusual and has broader implications, given the California Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles coordinate on statewide law enforcement initiatives and traditionally maintain a cordial relationship.

They have worked together in recent years to target Los Angeles street gangs trafficking guns and drugs statewide, as well as international drug syndicates trafficking fentanyl and other narcotics through L.A.

The U.S. Justice Department at times finds itself on the opposing side of litigation involving local or state law enforcement partners, including in cases in which it investigates local police departments for civil rights violations and forces them into consent decrees, as it has done with the Los Angeles Police Department.

However, it is extremely rare for U.S. attorneys and top state law enforcement officials to engage in direct attacks on each other’s integrity — or the integrity of state voting processes, which both are tasked with defending. Federal prosecutors in particular have historically sought to avoid the appearance of political partisanship and rarely taken aim at elected officials over policy matters.

That tradition certainly has faltered under Trump, who has filled the Justice Department with outspoken loyalists who make no secret of their allegiance to him. And Essayli, the administration’s embattled appointee to lead one of the largest federal prosecutor’s offices in the country, has been no exception.

Essayli did not respond to a request for comment on the public exchange Thursday.

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office, which has sued this Trump administration more than 85 times, said in a statement that office staff regularly work with the U.S. Justice Department and federal prosecutors to keep Californians safe, and that work won’t stop “just because some are dead set on politicizing our work and theirs.”

At a news conference this week touting major crime declines in the state, Bonta said partnerships with both local and federal law enforcement remain a vital part of public safety in the state.

“That remains the secret sauce — the magic — when it comes to making our communities more safe. Working together, collaborating, sharing intel and resources and teaming up,” he said. “That remains a priority and is behind a lot of our success.”

Still, the new Postal Service rules sparked a clash. The rules require states to submit lists of eligible voters to the Postal Service and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes that would allow the Postal Service to identify and reject ballots that don’t match those lists. Trump requested the changes as part of a broader executive order in March to combat what he claims is widespread voter fraud across the country and particularly in big blue states such as California.

Independent election experts say there is zero evidence of such problems existing in significant numbers. The Trump administration has said that is because states are keeping voter rolls secret and refusing to cooperate with federal efforts to vet them for noncitizens and other ineligible voters.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a separate lower court ruling blocking the Postal Service changes, on the grounds that they had yet to be implemented and had not yet caused any harm to the states challenging them. The high court made clear, however, that it was not weighing in on the substance or merits of the rules themselves.

Essayli has long made allegations of voter fraud in California, and lawyers in his office were involved in an unsuccessful lawsuit in which the Justice Department sought California’s unredacted voter rolls. After the Supreme Court issued its ruling, and Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged the state would sue again, Essayli responded to defend the administration’s efforts.

“These measures wouldn’t be necessary if states like California didn’t allow non-citizens to easily register to vote and get mail ballots,” he wrote. “We are actively identifying ineligible citizens on California’s dirty voter rolls and will soon announce criminal arrests related to our election fraud investigation.”

Essayli’s office did not respond to a request for information on those alleged arrests or its broader investigation.

Then, on Wednesday, Bonta, who is seeking reelection in November, announced the latest lawsuit challenging the merits of the Postal Service rules, which he noted had been formally issued last week. He called the rules “an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections,” and the state’s lawsuit an effort to “protect election integrity.”

Essayli soon replied, writing, “What election integrity? You’re fighting to preserve non-citizens’ access to mail ballots. I’ve never seen a state AG fight this hard to shield fraudsters and illegals from accountability. Imagine if he used his efforts to protect citizens.”

On Thursday morning, Bonta replied. “Simply untrue. We’re fighting to uphold the constitution and protect California’s right to administer our own elections,” he wrote.

“If you’re really concerned with election integrity, might I suggest starting with Donald Trump who: asked for 10,000+ votes from election officials in Georgia, fueled January 6, seized ballots, and issued two blatantly unlawful elections executive orders,” Bonta said.

After he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to “find 11,780 votes” for Trump to swing the state from Biden to him.

A later congressional investigation found that Trump provoked his supporters into attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s win. This January, the FBI raided and seized ballots from an election center in Fulton County, Ga. — a focus of Trump’s 2020 election denial.

“Trump has repeatedly shown he’ll stop at nothing to interfere in our elections. He’s repeatedly broken the law, so we’ve repeatedly taken him to court,” Bonta continued in his post. “Unfortunately, it appears that the First Assistant is more interested in currying favor with a desperate wannabe dictator than upholding the law himself.”

In agreeing late Thursday to halt the Postal Service rules, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’s “interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote.”

Bonta, back on X, praised the ruling, writing, “President Trump must keep his hands off our elections.”

California and a coalition of other Democratic-led states sued again Wednesday to block the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new nationwide rules for mail ballots, arguing they usurp state authority over elections at President Trump’s behest, expose voter information unnecessarily and threaten chaos in the rapidly approaching November election.

The Postal Service formally issued a 95-page “final rule” on Friday asserting that it was amending its mailing standards for mail ballots in federal elections to comply with Trump’s March executive order.

Trump demanded the rule changes as part of a broader plan to combat what he alleges — without evidence — is widespread voter fraud in the U.S., including by noncitizens voting through the mail. Election experts say there is zero evidence of such problems existing at scale.

“This mail-in voting rule is an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections, but as I’ve said before, this fight is far from over and we are confident that the facts and the law are on our side,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement.

“Donald Trump does not run elections. States do. And his latest attack on democracy is proof of how weak he has become,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “California will continue to lead the way in defending democracy — using every tool at our disposal and every minute in our day. This perilous moment in history demands no less from us.”

The new postal rules require states to submit lists of eligible voters — including their names and addresses — to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital barcodes that would allow the Postal Service to identify and reject ballots that don’t match those lists.

The rules do not give the Postal Service authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists. However, the rules do acknowledge that the lists would provide state voter data to federal law enforcement for the first time, and would put those authorities in “a better position to identify any potential issues regarding compliance with federal law that may merit further investigation.”

Trump’s March executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security to use available federal data to compile its own state lists of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to compare them with the mail voter lists provided by the states to the Postal Service, and identify and pursue any ineligible voters.

Wednesday’s lawsuit follows a Monday decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that found an earlier challenge from the states was premature, in part because it sought court relief to a rule-making process that required nothing of the states and before the Postal Service had moved to implement any changes.

“On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to fully close the door on the President’s attempt to interfere in our election administration. Today, we’re taking legal action to stop this unlawful rule in its tracks and ensure that voters can exercise their constitutional right to vote,” Bonta said.

The White House did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the latest lawsuit.

However, it has defended Trump’s executive order as overdue and badly needed to secure U.S. elections, and hailed the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the rule-making to proceed as “a major win for the security of American elections.”

“These are commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said.

The high court allowed the Postal Service to move forward with its work to comply with Trump’s order, but explicitly noted that it had reached no conclusions as to the legality of the pending rules.

Trump administration officials have said they are pursuing fraudulent voters, and have warned state election officials that they could face legal consequences personally if they don’t do everything in their power to prevent voter fraud, including by noncitizens.

Critics contend Trump’s executive order was devised as an end run around laws and a slew of recent court rulings blocking the Trump administration’s demands for state voter rolls — which states, including California, have refused to provide.

States have argued the administration’s demands are in bad faith, intended to bolster Trump’s baseless claims that U.S. elections are compromised rather than enhance election security.

In issuing its new rules, the Postal Service rejected a slate of concerns from critics who submitted comments on the proposed rules, including that the changes are being proposed far too close to the November election and will cost states and localities a huge amount of money to comply with.

It also rejected concerns that creating a single nationwide voter database — which has never existed before — will provide a massive new target for foreign adversaries and other bad actors interested in disrupting U.S. elections.

The Postal Service concluded that the cost to the states is outweighed by the benefits of the changes. It said it has sufficient staffing to implement the changes, and is ready to safeguard the database it builds using “multi-layered security controls.”

The lawsuit, brought by 24 state attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania, asks for immediate court intervention to halt the Postal Service changes from being implemented while the litigation continues.

“Let’s be clear: the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate elections — not the President and not USPS,” Bonta said. “Ballots are an extension of our voices and we’re asking the court to ensure that every person has the right to make theirs heard.”

Independent voting rights groups have also sued to block the Postal Service rules from being implemented.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for President Trump to seek new limits on the use of mail ballots, but they are not likely to take effect this year.

Acting by a 6-3 vote, the court’s conservatives granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside a judge’s order that blocked new federal regulations on states and their use of mail ballots.

It’s not clear, however, what happens now, since the midterm elections are less than three months away.

About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast their ballots by mail in 2024. Trump, however, has long maintained the voting by mail leads to fraud, including voting by noncitizens.

The court’s order stressed the new regulations do not put new requirements on the states this year.

Trump’s executive order “is internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies. It neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the Executive Branch,” the court said.

The Department of Homeland Security will compile state-by-state lists of citizens who are over 18 and eligible to vote.

“States are not required to use the Lists,” the court said, although they could lead to future prosecutions.

The most disputed provision could have authorized the Postal Service to restrict mail ballots to those who are on the Homeland Security lists, but that is a future proposal, not a rule that will take effect this year.

The unsigned order spoke for the six Republican appointees. The three liberals, all Democratic appointees, dissented into two separate opinions.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Trump’s order was unlawful and should have been struck down. “It needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” she said.

“Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan. “Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”

Trump issued his executive order on March 31 with the aim of “ensuring citizenship verification” in federal elections. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued a few days later and said Trump sought to use the Postal Service to impose new restrictions on voting by mail. They also argued the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to regulate elections, not the president.

A federal judge in Boston and 1st Circuit Court agreed with the challengers and blocked Trump’s executive order from taking effect for the November elections.

The case on appeal was Trump vs. California because California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta was a leader of the Democratic state attorneys who sued.

Californians are more concerned about the Trump administration interfering in the state’s midterm elections than they are about voter fraud, noncitizens voting illegally or foreign interference, according to a new poll.

A majority of voters — 61% — identified potential federal interference as a “major concern” heading into November, slightly more than the 59% who cited possible foreign interference as such, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times.

By comparison, 41% of California voters identified voter fraud and 37% identified noncitizens voting as major concerns, the poll found.

The polling reflects the liberal leanings of the state, where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, as well as the nation’s hyperpartisan divide on voting issues and vulnerabilities.

That divide has been driven for years by President Trump’s relentless criticism of U.S. elections, particularly in large blue states such as California, and recently by his administration’s attempts to wrest control over voting processes from the states based on unverified claims of widespread fraud and the fierce pushback against those claims from California Democrats and other liberal leaders around the country.

The White House has dismissed concerns about interference and accused Democrats of obstructing its efforts to protect American elections from fraud, including through the proposed SAVE America Act — which would enforce strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters nationwide.

While 80% of Democratic respondents to the poll said potential federal interference in the state’s elections was a major concern, just 28% of Republican respondents identified it as such.

Voter fraud was identified as a major concern by 84% of Republican voters but just 21% of Democratic voters, the poll found. Noncitizens voting illegally also was identified as a major concern by 85% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Republicans also have substantial concerns about the security of mail ballots and how slowly California counts its vote, while Democrats were far less concerned about those issues, the poll found.

Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director, said it clearly reflects the partisan divide around election issues and “shows that in this state, federal interference is a big deal — more so than in other places around the country.”

He called that a “big finding” in line with previous polls that found “Californians are very concerned about prioritizing efforts to defend democracy and to protect election systems,” including in the face of threats from Trump — who routinely has focused on the state in his regular attacks on election integrity.

“For 61% of Californians to say that’s a major concern to them in terms of the threats to the election system, I think that’s very newsworthy,” DiCamillo said.

He also noted the particularly stark difference between state Democrats and Republicans on the issue of noncitizens voting.

“Nearly 90% of Democrats say that’s not a concern, whereas 85% of Republicans feel it is,” he said. “Californians have a lot of noncitizens in the state, but Democrats don’t think they’re infecting the voter rolls, so they’re not concerned about it.”

That was striking, DiCamillo said, given how much Trump has pointed to California to claim that noncitizens are voting.

“Obviously, the Democrats are very strongly opposed to the president, what he’s trying to do, and the Republicans are supportive,” DiCamillo said.

Other findings in the poll also support that conclusion.

For instance, while Trump has claimed without evidence that mail ballots are a major source of fraud and their use should be reined in, the poll found that 72% of Californians approve of mail ballots as a primary method for voting in the state — with 58% saying they strongly approve.

California law requires every registered voter in the state to be sent a mail ballot, and more than 80% of voters have used such ballots in recent elections.

Trump also repeatedly has accused California officials of failing to secure state elections against fraud and of cheating as they count later-arriving mail ballots. But the poll found that Californians by greater than a 2-to-1 margin — 65% to 31% — are confident local election officials are accurately and fairly counting ballots. However, the poll did find that more than half of respondents, 53%, had concerns about delays in California’s vote-counting process.

Overall, 64% of respondents were confident in the integrity of the state’s election system, compared to 34% who were not.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, downplayed the threats of voter fraud and noncitizens voting in the state, but acknowledged they are real concerns for some voters — which is a problem in itself.

“I see election security as both a matter of actual security and perceived security. And the truth is that we have a great deal of actual security in California elections, but, unfortunately, that security is not being perceived by some voters,” she said. She attributed that in part to the “constant drumbeat that we’ve had now for a decade, coming from the occupant of the White House, that our elections are rigged.”

Alexander said California law requires registering voters to prove and attest to their identity and has multiple verification measures to ensure people casting ballots are who they say they are. She said there are “common sense” reasons why noncitizens do not try to vote — including that it requires them to turn over personal information and could be grounds for criminal charges and deportation, which is “a huge disincentive.”

Alexander also said Trump administration interference in the midterms is a real concern, but so is overhyping the threat to the point it discourages voters from casting ballots.

“Not to dismiss the threats — the threats are real — but the more we talk about them, the more we scare voters,” Alexander said. “I’ve encountered voters who’ve said this to me: ‘What’s the point in voting when they’re just gonna cheat?’ Or, you know: ‘It’s all rigged.’ And that’s part of the play here — is to scare people into thinking that voting doesn’t matter.”

To counter that, Alexander said it is “really important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating or to allow them to dissuade people from wanting to participate.”

The poll surveyed 4,207 registered voters in California from Aug. 3 to 9, online in English and Spanish, and has an estimated margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction.