Appeals Court Deals Trump Another Loss in His Bid to Rig the Election in His Favor

WASHINGTON, DC — For the second time this summer, a court has told Donald Trump he cannot use the Postal Service and a flawed federal database to decide who gets to vote in November. On Saturday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift a lower court's block on Trump's executive order targeting mail voting, keeping his scheme frozen in 23 states and the District of Columbia. It's another sign the courts see this for what it is: a desperate, illegal power grab from a White House that knows it can't win a fair fight.

“Two courts in one month have now told Donald Trump the same thing: he doesn't get to put his cronies at the Postal Service and Homeland Security in charge of who gets a ballot,” said Abhi Rahman, Try and Stop Us Spokesperson. “Even in the face of multiple losses, Trump and his allies will use this as an excuse to run to the Supreme Court and ask five justices for what voters already refused to give him. Republicans can't win a fair fight, so they're trying to rig the rules instead of earning the votes. The will of the people will win in November, whether Trump likes it or not.”

It's the latest move in a coordinated effort to put the White House in charge of who gets to vote.

The panel's 2-1 ruling leaves in place U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani's June injunction, which blocks the Postal Service from enforcing new mail-ballot rules and blocks DHS from handing states federal “citizenship lists” built from a database experts say routinely misidentifies eligible voters. The court found Trump's order directs “unprecedented levels of involvement by federal officials in how states administer elections” and would sow confusion and threaten disenfranchisement if it took effect before November.

Even the panel's lone Trump appointee, Judge Joshua Dunlap, wouldn't sign onto the administration's defense of the scheme, agreeing states faced a real and “concrete injury” from the order.

The ruling comes days after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened to prosecute and jail election officials in all 50 states who won't hand over their voter rolls. It's the same playbook every time: manufacture a crisis, threaten the people who won't go along with it, and ask the courts for permission to rig the game.