KQED61%
A Federal Judge in D.C. Declines to Block Trump's Executive Order on Voting by Mail 6%
By Hansi Lo Wang0%
5/30/2026, 5:00:25 PM
Topics: Local Politics
BS Summary: This article contains 13 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Begging the Question, and Hasty Generalization, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 26.1% saturation with 193 hits. Analysis detected 585 faulty-reasoning hits from 739 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 22.4% and a BS Rank of 6% (20,567 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.00% of the article peer group.
A federal judge has declined to temporarily block President Trump’s executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail.
The ruling released Thursday by U.S.
District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump nominee based in Washington, D.C., leaves in place — at least for now — an order that tests the limits of the president’s power under the Constitution.
A separate, 2025 executive order on voting was halted by courts.
The latest executive order, issued March 31, calls for the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state, and to send those lists to state election officials.
It also calls for the U.S.
Postal Service — a federal agency that’s independent of a president’s administration — to come up with lists of eligible voters and to only deliver mail-in ballots to people on those lists.
Nichols found that it’s too early for a court to issue an emergency ruling that halts key parts of Trump’s order because those directives have not been carried out yet.
“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws.
Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur.
Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted,” Nichols wrote about the decision not to block the order.
Nichols’ ruling comes as another federal judge is preparing to issue a decision, as soon as early June, for a similar set of lawsuits based in Boston.
The three D.C.-based lawsuits were filed by Democrats and voting rights groups, and it’s not clear if they will file an appeal of Nichols’ ruling before a 60-day deadline in late July.
“Mail-in voting is safe and secure, a hallmark of our free and fair elections.
Trump’s order is not about election integrity.
It is voter suppression, plain and simple,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement.
“Democrats will do everything in our power to ensure that every American can exercise their right to vote.”
Danielle Lang, an attorney at Campaign Legal Center, said the challengers led by the League of United Latin American Citizens “look forward to the next stage of this litigation.”
“Across the country, the administration is attempting to unlawfully shape the electorate to the will of the president and sow doubt in how our elections are run — but we will continue working to stop them at every turn,” Lang added in a statement.
Since Trump signed the order, it’s been unclear whether and how it would actually affect mail-in voting, which has been taking place for state primaries in this year’s midterm election.
In early May, the administration said in a court filing that federal agencies were still deliberating how to carry out the order.
Acting U.S.
Attorney General Todd Blanche later told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the Justice Department is working with other agencies to “make sure” the order’s goals are implemented.
Among other directives, Trump called for Postmaster General David Steiner to start a rulemaking process by late May.
But as of Thursday, the Postal Service had yet to put out a public notice about such a process.
Spokespeople for USPS did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for comment.
In total, the order’s opponents — which also include almost two dozen states, plus Washington, D.C. — have filed five lawsuits challenging the order.
They argue that Article I of the Constitution gives state legislatures and Congress — not the president — the power to set rules for federal elections.
Their lawsuits also contend that Trump’s order directs USPS to make rules about election mail that would overstep the mailing agency’s authority.
Trump, who himself voted by mail in Florida in March, has said he issued the order to stop illegal voting by noncitizens in federal elections, which reviews and research have found to be incredibly rare.
While there are voters across the partisan divide who rely on mail-in voting, more registered Democrats than Republicans say they voted by mail in the last national election in 2024.
Editor’s note: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR.
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright © 2026 NPR
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