Supreme Court overturns injunction on changing mail-in ballots

Democratic Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, all were named plaintiffs in one of the cases in DC. So they obviously knew after seeing the executive order, the consequences that would play out if the executive order went into full force. Now I don't think, and I've written three times on this, actually four times, I think, the original article on my substack back in early April when those complaints were first filed, sort of kind of highlighting what it was I thought was very interesting about that executive order and the reaction to it in the case of the five cases. But none of the cases, it was just a matter of a few days after the indictment filed. So nobody yet knew what was going to happen. As I've written in three articles just in the last couple of weeks, the three cases in DC, there was some hanky-panky trying to get it assigned to a Trump-pating judge named Mn. Collar Catelli. She has been a pain in the Trump administration side going back to the first term. She had adjudicated a couple of or handled a couple of election related issues, election related cases last year. 2025 ruled against the Trump administration, those now upon appeal. So when these cases were filed challenging the executive order, they filed what was called a related case notice trying to have these three cases on the executive order assigned again to her with an understanding that she was a friendly antitrump judge and they would likely get outcomes that they expected. Now in a bunch of caution it appears, they also went to the District of Massachusetts where every judge on that court is a bomber by an appointee hospital to the administration. And the District of Massachusetts has been a favorite location for law fair being filed against the Trump administration, changes to executive and federal policy. And they drew Judge Indira Tauwani in Boston. Most famous were injunction against Congress, preventing Congress from cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. The very funding that Congress had given to Planned Parenthood in past budgets she held Congress didn't have the authority to take away. That was summarily eliminated by the first circuit court of appeal. But to say Judge Tauwani is a little bit imbalanced is probably being kind to her. Some of the stuff she has decided had written leading to her decisions in the two cases before her filed in Massachusetts, you know, just lead your scratching your head as a lawyer. So what is half so you have these five cases, the three cases in DC as I've written, if you read it, you're probably just hearing a lot of stuff I've already read. The three cases in DC don't end up with Judge Colle Catelli. They get transferred to Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee for the first term. And in my experience is dealing with just about every judge in DC during the January 6 cases, Judge Nichols about the smartest guy on the bench there. Very cerebral, very thoughtful. In fact, Judge Kelly, Judge Nichols was the only judge out of the entire 17 or 18 judges sitting in DC who granted the motion to dismiss the obstructing Congress counts for January 6th offendance that ended up making its way to the Supreme Court and a 6th Revo at the Supreme Court upheld Judge Nichols when at the district court level, the decisions had been 16 to 1 the other direction, 16 out of 17 judges had found the opposite direction of Judge Nichols, but it was Judge Nichols who was vindicated on the case made the Supreme Court. So Judge Nichols, the first efforts to get injunctions in place against the executive order, the first motions were filed in the three cases before Judge Nichols in the district of Columbia. The cases in Massachusetts took a little bit longer to get started in terms of injunction motions being filed. Judge Nichols rejected all three motions for injunction and in fact he did so along the same lines as what you're going to hear about in a little bit on what Supreme Court did this afternoon. He found that the executive order as an executive order which is all there was in April, April and May of 2026, all there was was an executive order. There were no agency action had been taken to follow through on the executive order at that point and Judge Nichols said, none of you have been harmed, nothing has happened. The executive order on its own, it's not self-authenticating, self-executing. It doesn't do anything itself. It directs agencies of the federal government to take certain steps if lawful, if appropriate, if able. And it left the discretionary decision making on what to do, how to do it, and if to do it to those executive agencies. And Judge Nichols simply in denying the motions for injunction said, there's nothing to adjoin because nothing has happened. All of your claims, all the claims raised by the defendants in those cases or the plaintiffs in those cases were all speculative. They required events in the future that nobody could say for sure we're going to happen. And the Postal Service is given an instruction by the executive, by the president executive order that says, consider a proposed notice of rulemaking to do X, Y, and Z with regard to handling mail-in ballots until the Postal Service does something. In response to that, there's no potential harm to anybody. So Judge Nichols said, nothing has happened. There's no basis to join it. In effect, come back after something has happened and you have something more than mirror hypothetical or speculation about how you might be harmed by what the administration does in carrying out the executive order. Now Judge Tawani up in Boston about a month later, six weeks later, she came to a different conclusion. She said, the harm to the plaintiffs, and in one particular case, she had 23 states as plaintiffs, and then a collection of the second case in front of her out of collection of interest groups, like the League of Women Voters and other kind of similar advocacy, liberal advocacy groups, were a collection of plaintiffs. And the reason that was necessary is when the 23 states, 23 blue states filed a complaint at solid injunction, the reach of that injunction would have only been those 23 states. She should have no basis, no jurisdiction, over other states who work parties to enjoy anything in those states. In fact, you could make the argument that the 27 states that didn't join the complaint were happy with the government's action. They had no objection to what the executive order put in motion, and they were perfectly willing and accepting of the idea of complying with whatever the Postal Service put forward as a new Postal Regulation for Handling, Mail and Balance. So Judge Tom Wani, even by issuing an injunction, could only issue an injunction in 23 states. She could not do it nationwide. That's where the second state became important, or the second case became important. One of the plaintiffs there, and there were several, but one of them there are the League of Women Voters, it's a nationwide organization, it has members in all 50 states. It filed in its representative capacity on behalf of its members. And it does voter outreach and voter education and other kinds of public service that it argued was going to be hampered and taxed and changed as a result of the proposed potentially proposed changes in the voting processes, the use of mail and balance. So those were the two cases before Judge Tom Wani. Well, she immediately focused, in the first case she heard the preliminary junction motion in, which was the case of voting in 23 states, she focused almost exclusively on the illegality of the executive order. That it didn't matter to her that the executive order didn't, wasn't self, got the lost the target. The executive order was a self-effective. Her only concern was that it was the president, the executive branch directing the conduct of other executive agencies to do things that the executive didn't have the authority to direct them to do. It was in her words, the legal term as ultra-virus. It was telling agencies of the government to do things that they did not have the authority to do. And her ruling ultimately was that without any stated basis of authority and in the face of the constitutional provisions that give to the states the responsibility for the mechanics of conducting elections, that any interference or requirements placed upon the states in the manner in which they conducted the elections by the president, the executive branch, the postal service, whatever you want, whoever you want to focus on, that all of those are ultra-virus. They are beyond the authority of the executive to tell any other government agency be at state or local how to conduct their affairs, how to conduct an election. Now let me back up just a bit. What is the executive order? It's executive order 14399. And if you come in here to listen to night and you have no idea what I'm talking about, I probably shouldn't start with this. But let me explain just briefly the three primary provisions of executive order 14399 that have caused so much controversy. The overall basis of the order is that the population of the United States, citizens of the United States need to have confidence in the outcome of elections. And it's the policy of the United States that only citizens are eligible to vote in the elections. And part of the president's responsibility to see that the laws are faithfully executed includes his responsibility to see that federal election law is respected and complied with. And there is a federal statute that makes it illegal for a non-citizen to vote in an election that involves federal offices. Well, you only have federal office elections every two years. You have the midterm elections, you have the presidential year elections. Beyond those two sets of elections, except special elections for Congress, I guess, you don't have federal elections. Well, the two things, so the executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to work with other federal agencies, and I think it specifically referenced the Social Security Administration. And to use information already in the possession of the federal government in a variety of databases, to use that information to create for every individual state a citizen's list, basically delivered to the states a list of here are the citizens of the United States currently residing in your state based upon this aggregation and synthesizing through of, I'm not sure that's correct, but of information in federal databases that's collected for a variety of reasons and a variety of ways over a period of time. And so they deliver that citizens list to the states. Now obviously the application is only citizens are supposed to vote so the state should make use of the citizens list to evaluate against their registered voter list. Now the executive order is very specific. It says states ought to have no obligation to do anything with this list. It's just a tool. It's provided to them their choice to use it or ignore it. So no consequences are directed towards any state that refuses to make use of the list. Now the Department of Justice has come out subsequently and said, well of course a failure or refusal to use the list could be evidence of a nefarious intent or motive with regard to some other practice that might result in non-citizens voting. In other words, you had a tool available you made a specific decision to not use the tool and therefore we can infer from that decision that you were lack of intent to respect federal law required the only citizens vote.