An Obama-appointed federal judge is drawing heat after stepping in again to halt part of a new U.S. Postal Service mail-ballot policy just as the 2026 midterm season gets closer. The ruling has sparked a fresh fight over whether the court is protecting voters or slowing down a rule meant to tighten how ballots are handled in the mail.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day temporary restraining order last week that blocks key parts of the USPS plan. The policy was built after President Donald Trump’s executive order and would require election officials to get ballot-envelope designs approved and send voter data plus unique tracking barcodes through a new USPS portal.
That move lit up critics fast. Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Election Project, said the court is trying to “run out the clock,” and argued that the delay could keep the rule from being in place before states start mailing ballots for the midterms.
“Because of the antics of the left in this case, it’s very possible that we will not be able to get this rule put in place for the 2026 midterms,” Snead said. “Ballots do go out in just a couple of days, and I think, to a certain extent, their campaign to run out the clock may have succeeded.”
North Carolina county election boards are set to begin mailing absentee ballots Friday, which makes the timing especially tense. Snead and Gregory Teufel, founder of OGC Law, LLC, both said officials in the state had already started working toward compliance with the USPS requirements.
Talwani said the states did not have enough time or money to redesign envelopes, get USPS approval, update election systems, train workers on the new portal, and upload voter information before the midterms. In her view, the burden was “practically impossible,” and she warned that eligible voters could end up getting squeezed out by the court fight.
Snead pushed back hard on that logic. He said the rule mostly turns existing USPS guidance into mandatory steps and is built around data states already have on hand.
“It’s a fairly straightforward rule,” Snead said. “It’s largely premised on best practices that are already in place and gathering data that states already possess. The burdens are extraordinarily minimal as far as compliance is concerned, and the Postal Service is really just trying to better regulate the mail not attempt to seize control of elections or to take away fundamental constitutional questions, like who is eligible to vote, away from the states.”
The dispute has already bounced through several legal turns. Talwani’s June 25 permanent injunction stopped USPS from finishing parts of the rulemaking process for the 2026 election, and the case then reached the Supreme Court after the administration kept pressing its argument that the challenge came too early.
The justices stayed Talwani’s earlier ruling on Aug. 24, saying the Trump administration was likely to win on the claim that there was no final rule yet to challenge. They did not decide whether the executive order or the USPS policy itself was lawful, which left the bigger fight very much alive.
Once USPS finalized the policy, the Democratic-led states updated their lawsuit to go after the rule directly. Talwani then issued the new temporary restraining order, and that is the order now at the center of the latest clash.
Teufel said the judge helped create part of the problem by blocking USPS earlier than she should have. He argued that if the process had been allowed to move sooner, the states would have had more time to adjust if the Supreme Court eventually let the rule stand.
“When the judge points to expenses and practical difficulties, those are expenses and difficulties created in part by the court itself not by the rule and not by the attempted implementation of the rule,” he said.
Talwani rejected that idea in her latest order, writing that “no such delay occurred” because USPS still moved forward with a proposed rule, took comments, and issued a final policy even after the earlier injunction. That back-and-forth shows how deeply both sides disagree over who actually caused the crunch.
Teufel still stopped short of calling the judge partisan. “It’s hard for me to accuse the court of partisanship based on the information I have at the present time,” he said. “Certainly, the court exceeded its authority in issuing the initial injunction against the executive order, which is not a good look.”
Talwani is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday on the challengers’ request for a preliminary injunction, which could lock the USPS rule in place for a much longer stretch while the case moves ahead. The current 14-day restraining order stays active for now, and the Trump administration’s appeal is still pending before the First Circuit.
Snead says the real issue is simple: whether USPS is regulating elections or just setting basic rules for the mail it carries. He compared it to ordinary postal requirements and said the government is treating the policy like standard mail regulation, not a grab for power over who votes.
Even if the rule misses the midterms, Snead said states should still have time to get ready before the next presidential race. For supporters of the policy, that makes the current court battle look less like a paperwork headache and more like resistance to cleaner, tighter mail-voting rules.
2 Comments
JUDGES SUCH AS THESE SHOULD TO BE SUMMARILY DRUMMED OUT OF OFFICE, NEVER TO HOLD A POSITION OF AUTHORITY IN THERE LIFETIME.
Extreme left partisan hack judge first illegally places a hold on it, and now tries to pretend it is not her fault the time is running out. She is hoping enough voter fraud happens this year the dems can impeach Trump.