Democratic Secretaries of State are hailing a Thursday court ruling shutting down key components of Trump’s March executive order that, in part, directed the U.S. Postal Service to clamp down on mail-in voting.
The ruling came just hours after the postmaster general sparked outcry when he testified before Congress that only voters in states that complied with Trump’s mandate to hand over voter information for the creation of federal citizenship lists would be allowed to vote by mail. During testimony on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed that the Postal Service will not deliver absentee ballots if a state does not hand over the sensitive voter information to the federal government, per a new USPS rule that was created in response to Trump’s executive order.
Democratic lawmakers immediately pushed back.
In a letter to Steiner on Wednesday, a group of Democratic senators described the USPS rule as an “unconstitutional and illegal attempt to transform the United States Postal Service (USPS) into an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump.”
On Thursday, however, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, sided with the 23 states and the District of Columbia that challenged the order, blocked key provisions of Trump’s executive order, noting in her ruling that parts of the executive order exceeded the president’s authority.
“The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone,” Talwani wrote in her ruling. “Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power.”
Talwani also noted that the USPS “lacks statutory authorization to promulgate any binding regulations on mail-in voting.”
Oregon Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read — whose state votes almost entirely by mail and was involved in the lawsuit against the executive order — called Thursday’s ruling “a win for Oregon voters.”
“Today, in yet another a [sic] win for Oregon voters, a federal court blocked President Trump’s March 2026 executive order restricting mail-in voting and infringing upon states’ authority to administer elections,” Read said in a statement on Thursday.
“The Constitution protects our right to run free, fair elections, and we will defend it,” he added. “Oregonians decided many years ago that vote-by-mail was our preferred way of voting, and it remains the gold standard for integrity and access nationwide.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in a statement to TPM, celebrated the ruling.
“On the same day as the Postmaster General’s testimony, two federal courts affirmed that the administration shouldn’t ask election officials to violate one federal law to comply with another,” Benson said.
“This morning a third federal court did the same,” she said Thursday. “We agree and will follow the law and the courts’ rulings on this. Every eligible Michigan voter has the constitutional right to vote by mail. We will continue to fight every attempt by this administration to interfere with our state’s free and fair elections.”
Democratic Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold similarly called Thursday’s court ruling a “a major victory for American democracy.”
“Trump will not be able to use the Postal Service to control which voters receive a mail ballot, and cannot use the DOJ to intimidate election officials into following his unlawful order,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “The Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Trump.”
And California Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the court decision a “victory.”
“This court decision is a victory for all those voices that were too often silenced,” Weber said in a statement. “In California, we will always stand on right side of democracy, and we refuse to allow anyone to come between voters and the ballot box.”
For now.
Yes, our originalists on the SCOTUS know that words often don’t mean what they actually mean.
Doesn’t the presidential oath of office say the n00b will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”?
Seems to me trump is breaking his oath of office.
You mean, until it doesn’t?
Been doing it since he took the oath. Hell, he didn’t even follow the tradition of putting his hand on the Bible (possibly the same one he held up in front of the church a bit later).
He had no intention of doing anything that didn’t personally enrich him and keep him out of prison.
For 250 years the states were very jealous of their rights. One of the rights they guarded most closely was the right to vote. It is in the constitution. The Federal Goverment can’t dictate to states how they run their elections. Beyond some specific individual constitutional voting rights (think 14th amendment insuring the rights of individual citizens) the Federal government is supposed to keep their hands off voting. See Overview of Federal Election Laws | U.S. Election Assistance Commission . Trump can take his executive order concerning voting and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. States don’t have to pay any attention to the SOB.