The Supreme Court Just Told Trump He Can’t Rig Mail-in Voting. But the Fight Isn’t Over.

Donald Trump has spent months trying to seize control of how Americans vote by mail, and this week the Supreme Court told him no. In a 7-2 order, the justices refused to let his administration force through a Postal Service rule requiring states to submit mail ballots to a rapidly built and minimally tested federal database and barcode every mail ballot before delivery. Other federal judges had already found the rules were almost certainly illegal. District Judge Indira Talwani, who first blocked the rules earlier this summer, put it bluntly: no law Congress ever authorized the Postal Service to regulate election mail. Even Justice Kavanaugh, no ally of voting rights, conceded states simply didn’t have time to comply before ballots go out. But Republicans are not backing off. They are using the same playbook everywhere else they can reach:

• Federal agents may show up at the polling place. FBI Director Kash Patel has refused to rule out sending agents to polling places this fall, confirming the bureau has “election crimes coordinators” posted in all 56 field offices without committing to keep them away from voters, while Denver and a coalition of civil rights groups are already suing to block ICE from deploying armed officers to polling sites nationwide.
• DHS and ICE are rifling through voter rolls. ICE agents pulled voter files in Texas and North Carolina hunting for a noncitizen voting crisis that doesn’t exist, while DHS pushed states to run mass voter-list checks through its retooled, court-blocked SAVE database, a program voting rights groups warn will purge eligible citizens by mistake.
• Trump is Still Pushing the SAVE Act. Having already passed the House, the anti-voter bill would force voters nationwide to produce a passport or birth certificate just to register, a burden that could strip tens of millions of married women of their vote over surnames that don’t match their paperwork, not to mention the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have a birth certificate or passport readily available.
• The rest of Trump’s mail order still stands. The same Supreme Court that just blocked Trump’s anti-voter mail-ballot scheme let other pieces of it move forward, including a DHS citizenship list and a directive for prosecutors to target local election officials.
• Trump’s next target is the census. His administration just proposed adding a citizenship question and stripping noncitizens from the count used to draw congressional districts, a mid-decade rewrite the Brennan Center calls flatly unconstitutional and designed to shift power away from diverse, growing communities.

Challenge, Fight, Vote, Win

This is all happening because Republicans know they don’t have a winning message and they know they can’t win a fair fight. Every scheme shares one goal: confuse voters so they stay home, or rig the rules so their votes don’t count anyway.

Election protection organizations cannot let up. That means staying in court everywhere Republicans try this, from state courts to federal courts to the Supreme Court itself. It means winning the argument in public, loudly and constantly, so reporters and voters understand every one of these moves for what it is: a rigged-game strategy from a party that can’t win on the merits.

And voters need to hear one message above the noise: don’t get discouraged, get registered, and vote. Voting by mail, early, or in person is safe, secure, and still the law in every state, whatever new hurdle Trump tries to throw up. Check your state’s specific rules and deadlines at VoteAmerica or Vote.org. Trump is betting voters give up before they even try. Prove him wrong. Vote.