The Supreme Court's unsigned Monday order rejecting the Trump administration's request to stay a universal injunction against new U.S. Postal Service mail-in ballot rules drew an immediate rebuke from President Donald Trump. Writing on Tuesday, he labeled the outcome a "disaster" and a "Nation Destroying SCAM" and declared it "a big loss for Republicans, and America itself."
What the blocked rule would have required
The USPS rule at issue would have required federal ballot mail to travel in envelopes bearing an election-mail logo, scannable by high-speed equipment and carrying a voter-specific barcode. State and local election officials would also have been required to submit envelope designs to the Postal Service for review and upload basic voter information to an online USPS portal. Non-compliant mailings would not have been accepted; they would have been returned to election officials to correct and resubmit. A lower court blocked those requirements under a universal injunction, and the administration's bid Monday to stay that injunction failed.
The Kavanaugh concurrence: timing, not merits
The order carried no majority opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately, and his concurrence keeps the administration's underlying legal theory alive beyond the 2026 cycle. Kavanaugh argued that applying the rule this year would be "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local officials lack "sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections." He also wrote that there is "at least a fair prospect" the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority. That framing leaves the merits question open for a later term.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from Monday's order. Trump praised both by name as "legends" and went on to list a series of other Supreme Court decisions he views as adverse, citing the court's rulings on his tariff policies and on his executive order ending birthright citizenship among them.
Trump claimed the decision gives what he called the "Radical Left" an open field on mail-in ballots, described the U.S. as the only country that contends with such a voting system, and wrote that he views the public attack as a presidential duty he cannot avoid. He acknowledged in the same post that the criticism would "likely cost me dearly for years to come."