Judge Freezes Key Parts of Trump Election Order

President Trump's effort to reshape who gets a mail ballot just hit a major legal speed bump. A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday froze central parts of Trump's March executive order, which had instructed the Department of Homeland Security to build a list of US citizens and the Postal Service to assemble lists of voters eligible for mail ballots—steps that critics said could wrongly block eligible voters, the Washington Post reports. US District Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, sided with attorneys general from almost two dozen Democratic-led states who argued the president lacks constitutional authority to dictate such voting rules, which they say belong to states and Congress.

Her preliminary order halts implementation ahead of this fall's midterms, even as a separate case in Washington, DC, continues. There, Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, previously let the order stand because no rules or lists had yet been created. The executive order is also under fire from the Democratic National Committee and voting rights groups, who view it as the latest in a series of Trump moves targeting mail voting, despite studies showing noncitizen voting is rare.

• "In light of the EO's specific deadlines over the next three months, and the reality that elections will be occurring throughout this period with the November 3, 2026 midterm occurring in just five months, postponing judicial review is impracticable and may inflict significant hardship on Plaintiffs," Talwani wrote, per the AP.

Trump's efforts to overhaul elections have had multiple legal setbacks in recent days. On Wednesday, a federal judge permanently blocked the administration from implementing most of Trump's first executive order on elections, issued months after he returned to office last year. She blocked moves including requiring people to present proof of citizenship when they vote. In a Monday ruling in a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters, a federal judge found that the effort to build a national voter database was illegal, saying "the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote."