US Postal Service cannot carry out Trump order on mail ballot delivery, judge rules

A federal judge in Washington DC blocked President Donald Trump's executive order directing the US Postal Service to restrict mail ballot delivery to states that submit voter lists and meet federal requirements. US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the directive violated a 2021 settlement stemming from an NAACP lawsuit against USPS over pandemic-era mail delivery slowdowns. The order would have given the federal government an unprecedented role in elections and required individualized barcodes on ballot envelopes.

Trump issued the March 2026 order after a Boston judge had already halted its implementation in two dozen states. Sullivan found that USPS regulations implementing the directive would violate the settlement's requirement that the agency prioritize timely election mail delivery, since ballots deemed noncompliant with the executive order's requirements would not be delivered to voters. The order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile voting-age citizen lists from federal databases for potential voter purges.