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WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”

He was unimpressed.

“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”

“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”

Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.

Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.

Independent or a Trump ‘pawn’?

When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.

He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.

“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”

The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.

Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.

During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.

Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.

Steiner didn’t follow the traditional path to power in Trump’s Washington

The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.

While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.

Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.

“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”

By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.

“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.

He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.

Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.

Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.

“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.

That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.

“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.

The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.

“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.

Challenges ahead for the Postal Service

Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.

The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.

And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.

The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.

Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.

“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 23, 2026 1:23 PM PT

SALT LAKE CITY — A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state’s June primary, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter said during a news conference that Damon Matai Seei was arrested Tuesday and appeared in federal court in Salt Lake City to be arraigned.

The 34-year-old from Payson, Utah, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of destruction or delay of mail. If convicted, he could face up to five years in federal prison. A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.

Seei was delivering mail in Eagle Mountain, a conservative suburb of Provo, when he threw the ballots and other mail into a dumpster in a church parking lot not long after his shift started, McCotter said.

Melissa Holyoak, the U.S. attorney for Utah, said Seei indicated to authorities that he had no political agenda and did not intend to discard the ballots. He told investigators in an interview that he acted out of “laziness,” throwing away mail to “lighten his workload,” according to court documents.

In a written statement quoted in court filings, Seei said he felt overwhelmed that day by the quantity of mail, and he decided to toss out advertisements so he could focus on other deliveries.

He told law enforcement he had set aside the ballots at the beginning of his shift, prosecutors said, arguing it was implausible that Seei didn’t know they were in the discard pile.

Most voters in Utah cast ballots by mail or deposit them in drop boxes. Nationwide, nearly a third of voters use mail-in ballots.

All active registered voters in Utah are automatically sent ballots by mail, though that system is set to end in 2029 under a new state law requiring voters to opt in.

Several Eagle Mountain residents complained to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson that they never received their ballots, leading him to investigate. He determined that the rate of voter participation in the community was unusually low and learned through outreach that the number of voters who did not receive ballots was in the hundreds, according to court documents.

Seei is no longer employed by the Postal Service. The investigation remains ongoing, officials said.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s attempts to impose new Postal Service rules that would have restricted mail voting for the midterm elections.

Catalini and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.

The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.

Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.

Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.

Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.

Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”

“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”

He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.

Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.

Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.

“Compliance with the 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 state attorneys general told the court last week.

The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.

But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.

In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”

“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.

Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.

Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”

And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.

But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.

The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.

What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.

Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.

“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.

Sept. 10, 2026 12:04 PM PT

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on President Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, a decision that comes as the Supreme Court considers the same case and states have already started sending out ballots for the high-stakes midterm elections.

The three-judge panel refused to lift a preliminary injunction against the order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani. It prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing Trump’s directive. The Postal Service has said it would not deliver ballots from states that did not pre-clear their envelope design with the federal government and submit a list of voters to an online portal, which has yet to be activated.

Election officials warn that it’s impossible to comply with those terms, especially with the first mail ballots already being sent out in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The panel of three judges nominated by former President Biden agreed with the plaintiffs that the president does not have the power to regulate states’ election policy.

“Appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court erred in determining that the Final Rule is likely unlawful,” they wrote, a reference to a rule published by the Postal Service to implement Trump’s order.

The panel wrote that the Trump administration had done little to dispel arguments by many election officials that the changes would bring “chaos and widespread disenfranchisement.”

“Indeed, appellants have not even seriously challenged this aspect of the district court’s ruling, much less demonstrated why it is clearly erroneous,” the order states.

The government also hasn’t shown evidence of past fraud to justify the restrictions, the judges said.

A request for comment from the White House was not immediately returned.

The panel’s decision comes even as the Supreme Court is already considering the same case, which is part of a frenzied legal rush as states are beginning to send out mail ballots for this fall’s midterm elections. Democrats and civil rights groups in a separate lawsuit in Washington, D.C., also are trying to halt the executive order.

The 1st Circuit also had upheld a previous hold Talwani placed on the executive order. But that ruling was lifted by the Supreme Court in a procedural decision that did not determine whether the plan was constitutional.

The plaintiffs swiftly filed new lawsuits after the Postal Service finalized its rule governing mail ballots.

Riccardi and Whitehurst write for the Associated Press.

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.

Sept. 6, 2026 8:33 AM PT

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Sunday renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge blocked new restrictions on mail ballots ahead of the midterms.

The filing came after U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani extended an order against the U.S. Postal Service enforcing President Trump’s executive order for the November elections.

The legal wrangling comes even as states start sending out mail ballots, leaving the administration little time to make big changes in mail ballot rules.

“Ballots have already begun to be mailed in North Carolina, and more States will begin the mailing process as the injunction remains in place — including Alabama on September 9 and at least five States the week of September 13,” Solicitor Gen. John Sauer said in the filing.

“Once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them. And while the injunction allows the Postal Service and the States to continue taking steps to ensure that their envelopes satisfy the Rule’s requirements … each day the injunction is in place risks sowing confusion and chaos because the injunction makes those preparatory steps voluntary, rather than mandatory.”

The appeal marks the third time the administration has asked the high court to intervene. The high court has allowed the plan to move forward but not ruled on whether it is legal.

The battle could have major ramifications for this year’s elections, when control of Congress is at stake. Nearly one-third of voters in the U.S. cast mail ballots. Mail ballots are sent to every California voter.

Democratic states and voting rights groups say the changes are unconstitutional and amount to voter suppression. Election officials contend that there isn’t enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new Postal Service directives.

The Trump administration has framed the restrictions as commonsense changes that are within its power to regulate the mail.

“Simply put, the best way to address respondents’ fears about inability to comply with the Rule is to grant an immediate administrative stay of the order, followed by a full stay pending further review,” Sauer said. “That will remove the improper cloud of uncertainty that the district court has cast over the Rule, making clear to all involved that compliance with the Rule is not optional and must start without further delay.”

Trump has long sought to limit mail voting, even though he himself often uses that method to cast his own ballot. He has falsely blamed mail balloting for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, spreading baseless claims of fraud. But so far, he has been unable to change the long-standing voting procedure.

Whitehurst and Fields write for the Associated Press.

A federal judge again Friday blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enacting President Trump’s sweeping new mail ballot rules for the November election, finding that the Postal Service lacks such authority over elections and that neither it nor states such as California are capable of implementing the changes without causing chaos and disenfranchising voters.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani noted that election officials from across the country told the court that it is “likely impossible” to comply with the rules, which “makes disenfranchisement more than likely, if not probable” if the Postal Service were to proceed with them.

Talwani’s order — her latest of several halting the plan since this summer — came after a Postal Service whistleblower alleged the agency’s new computer systems for the project are fundamentally flawed; a top Postal Service official acknowledged a key online portal was unfinished; and the Trump administration filed an emergency petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the plans to proceed anyway.

All this unfolded this week as some of the first mail ballots of the election cycle started going out.

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

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

Trump has said the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by non-citizens, though independent election experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Leading Democrats and elections officials in California and other states say the new rules constitute an unlawful federal overreach into state-run elections and a thinly veiled effort by the Trump administration to suppress the vote in a midterm election the GOP is poised to lose.

Talwani, an appointee of President Obama, agreed, finding that the states and voting rights groups are likely to succeed in their claims that the U.S. Constitution reserves the right to regulate elections to the states and Congress — not the executive branch.

Talwani issued her order after holding a contentious hearing in federal court in Boston on Thursday, where she questioned the Postal Service and the dozen conservative-led states supporting it on their ability to implement the changes in time for the Nov. 3 elections. She also heard from California, other liberal-led states and voting rights groups that it would be impossible.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office is helping lead the states’ challenge, hailed Talwani’s order as a crucial reprieve.

“We’ve now secured longer-term relief that will keep the USPS changes blocked while our case moves forward,” Bonta said in a statement to The Times. “We will continue to take all steps to stop the Trump Administration from trampling on voting rights and restricting mail voting.”

Bonta’s office also criticized Department of Justice attorneys for rushing to the Supreme Court before Talwani could issue her order or the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals could weigh in on an appeal the department had already filed on the matter.

Walter Garcia, a Bonta spokesman, said the Justice Department had “flouted standard procedural rules” by approaching the high court before the lower courts had weighed in, despite the fact that the Postal Service acknowledged Thursday that it was not ready to launch its new portal.

“It defies common sense that they would seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court when USPS is unprepared to implement the rule now,” Garcia said.

State law requires that all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections.

In its emergency petition to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued that an earlier temporary restraining order by Talwani to halt the new rules from taking effect was “baseless” and would cause “serious irreparable harm” to the federal government, states and voting public.

“To forestall those harms and protect the public interest, this Court should grant an immediate stay, making clear to States that they should begin efforts to comply if they have not done so already,” wrote Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer.

The swirl of litigation has created uncertainty around the Nov. 3 election. It also reflects the Trump administration’s desperate race to get the lower court orders lifted and the new rules implemented in time for that election — the rushed nature of which was a prime focus of the whistleblower.

The unidentified Postal Service employee alleged in a statement released Tuesday by congressional Democrats and submitted in court by Bonta’s office that the agency has been rushing to implement the changes — in defiance of an earlier court order — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” and disenfranchise millions of voters nationwide.

The Postal Service in a statement Friday said that while its system was developed on an “accelerated schedule,” quality and security standards “were not compromised,” and the agency stands behind “both the rigor of our process and the resulting system.”

At Thursday’s hearing, Talwani appeared frustrated when a Justice Department attorney was unable to tell her the status of the portal.

In a subsequent declaration hours later, Steven W. Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer, said officials were still making “refinements” to the portal, but anticipated being able to make it available “for voluntary use by sometime next week.”

Talwani previously issued an order blocking the Postal Service changes from being implemented in California and more than 20 other suing states in June. The Trump administration appealed that decision to the 1st Circuit, which declined to lift it, and then on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court. In early August, Talwani issued a second ruling for the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups, blocking the changes nationwide.

On Aug. 24, the Supreme Court set aside Talwani’s order in the states’ case, finding that the states’ challenge was essentially premature because the Postal Service had yet to formally initiate the changes or require state compliance. However, the court explicitly noted that it was not reaching any conclusions as to the legality of the pending rules themselves. “On that score, time will tell,” it said.

The states and voting rights groups promptly filed new lawsuits challenging the legality of the rules, which the Postal Service formally issued Aug. 21. And it is in those cases that Talwani issued her ruling Friday.

She wrote that the voting rights groups had standing to challenge the Postal Service rules nationwide in part because the “chaos” created by the rules’ stiff deadlines significantly interfered with their mission to provide voters with accurate and reliable information about how to vote — and whether to use mail ballots to do so.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said in remarks prior to Talwani’s Friday order that he was “very, very confident” that the Postal Service changes will be blocked for the upcoming elections, and that “mail voting is going to go forward as conveniently and securely as it always has.”

That’s in part because election officials nationwide are “telling the courts that even if they wanted to, they could not implement it,” he said — including in a legal filing Becker helped nearly 100 local elections officials from red and blue states file in separate litigation challenging the rules.

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.

SACRAMENTO — California could have some zany theater this fall: county prosecutors charging federal postmasters with felonies for obeying President Trump’s order to withhold delivery of mail ballots to voters.

Does Trump then federalize the California National Guard to protect his postmasters from local sheriffs bent on hauling them off to the jailhouse?

Just wondering after reading legislation whipping through the state Capitol.

None of it seems likely to happen, but with this unhinged president and his conservative Supreme Court hardly anything is certain — except chaos.

Trump keeps making himself even more unpopular with Democratic voters and tarnishing the GOP image.

One glaring example is Trump’s hypocritical move to interfere with state elections and cripple voters’ ability to cast ballots by mail.

“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump asserted in March, while escalating his crusade against popular “absentee” voting. “Cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It’s horrible what’s going on.”

It’s a big lie. There has never been any hard evidence produced by anyone, anywhere of significant mail-ballot cheating.

It’s also hypocritical because Trump routinely votes by mail himself in Florida elections.

Why is mail-voting OK for him but not for other Americans? “Because I’m president of the United States,” he told reporters. “I had a lot of different things” to do. As if the rest of us don’t. Voting apparently only needs to be convenient for him.

But Trump obsessively keeps trying to justify his false claim that Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over him was rigged. It’s sick.

It may please his MAGA base, but Democrats and independents across America — especially in California — frown on Trump’s attack against their voting rights. They favor mail voting.

Overall, 58% of Americans support allowing ballots to be cast by mail, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. But there’s a huge difference between the parties — 83% of Democrats and left-leaning independents favor mail voting while 68% of Republicans oppose it.

In California, 72% of all voters approve of balloting by mail, according to a recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. But there’s a big split ideologically: 93% of Democrats and 72% of independents approve, but 62% of Republicans disapprove.

Regardless of what GOP voters tell pollsters, they must be overwhelmingly voting by mail. That’s because 81% of all California ballots were cast by mail in the 2024 presidential election. In this year’s gubernatorial primary, it was up to 89%.

In March, Trump issued an executive order directing the Homeland Security Department to compile a list of eligible citizen voters in each state and commanding the U.S. Postal Service to handle only the ballots of people on the list.

Gosh? What could possibly go wrong with Trump’s Homeland Security agency — the overseer of divisive ICE — deciding who is entitled to vote in the pivotal midterm elections?

California, along with a coalition of several blue states, sued.

The nation’s Founders decreed in the Constitution that states could decide on “the times, places and manner” of federal elections — unless Congress wanted to alter the rules. Trump persuaded the House of Representatives to pass legislation restricting mail voting, but the bill died in the Senate, blocked by Democrats.

Trump’s executive order was an effort to bypass Congress and essentially enact a law by himself.

The Supreme Court decreed on a 6-3 vote last week that Trump could proceed with his planning. But since no precise regulations had yet been announced by the administration when the opposition lawsuit was filed, it was premature to rule on their constitutionality.

But now Trump’s draconian rules have been revealed. And California has joined other states in filing a new lawsuit.

“Donald Trump does not run elections. States do,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared. “California will continue to lead the way in defending democracy.”

In the Legislature, a bill was introduced to make it a felony punishable by up to four years in prison for a person in authority to order the withholding of a ballot’s delivery to a voter or its return to a local election official.

A person like a postmaster? Who else could order mail carriers not to deliver ballots to some registered voters?

“That’s for law enforcement to decide,” says the bill’s author, Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), who was just elected to finish the current term of resigned U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell.

“My bill is trying to protect all voters. They may be on vacation, they may be ill. They may want to vote early or late. Whatever. They remain entitled to vote by mail.”

Her bill breezed through three Assembly committees in 24 hours — Democrats voting yes and Republicans no.

The measure is unlikely, however, to ever result in a postmaster being jailed for obeying the president.

For starters, it’s hard to envision the president’s executive order ever being ruled constitutional — even by this lackey court.

“Trump is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so,” UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in a Times opinion piece last week.

If the Supreme Court shockingly did rule that Trump has the authority, then could his postmasters be arrested under the new state law? Under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, the answer would seem to be “no.” Federal law generally supersedes conflicting state law.

“An executive order cannot supersede state law,” says UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, who specializes in election law. “But there are all kinds of immunity doctrines and other reasons why a state would have a hard time prosecuting a federal official for violating state law in the conduct of official duties.”

The real answer is for Trump to stop trying to concoct a solution to an election problem that only exists in his warped imagination.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Will Trump interfere in the midterms? Democrats and their allies are preparing
California vs. Trump: Racist ‘Magic Deportation Bus’ isn’t the way for Trump to keep Latino voters
The L.A. Times Special: Two of California’s top law enforcement leaders trade barbs over state election integrity

Until next week,
George Skelton

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