Trump continues effort to subvert midterms despite Supreme Court loss over mail ballots

President Donald Trump on Monday lost a battle in his long-running crusade to limit mail-in voting following an adverse Supreme Court decision, but it has not ended his campaign to influence the November midterms by changing the rules and hampering access to the ballot box. It is an effort his administration has been engaged in for months: a campaign to preserve “electoral integrity” built on exaggerations, baseless suspicions and conspiracy theories about an alleged mass voter fraud that supposedly always benefits his opponents.

The Supreme Court setback only voids part of a multi-pronged plan that Trump is not going to abandon, as Attorney General Todd Blanche made clear on Tuesday during an unusual Rose Garden news conference at the White House. There, acting as a spokesperson—replacing Karoline Leavitt, who left the post in August—he spoke for a presidency that, in theory, should be keeping a healthy distance from the election process. Blanche said the ruling does not affect ongoing investigations into “illegal voting,” and vowed that “Trump’s efforts to ensure free and fair elections will not stop in November, nor afterwards.”

The aim is to strip the states of the authority the Constitution grants them to run elections. That plan includes threats against election officials, Department of Justice lawsuits against those jurisdictions, advantageous redistricting, and pressure from Trump on Republican Senate leaders to pass an ambitious reform that could suppress the vote of millions of people. There is also concern that the government might deploy immigration agents at polling places.

Part of the strategy’s success depends on casting doubt over a vote scheduled for November 3, just as Trump did in the 2020 presidential race, which he lost to Joe Biden, a fact he refused (and still refuses) to accept.

The mail-in voting case is a clear example of that deterrence strategy. The Supreme Court’s decision (seven to two) comes after the first states had already opened early voting in a vast country where one-third of voters (and one-quarter of Republicans) send in ballots by mail, and eight Democratic jurisdictions vote exclusively by mail. The back-and-forth in the courts over the decree Trump issued in March to limit that avenue in time for the midterms has sown uncertainty among voters and election workers.

This week, about 30 of those officials received threatening letters from the Department of Justice in a renewed federal effort to access voter rolls. In February the White House occupant expressed a desire to “nationalize” elections, even though the Constitution assigns their administration to the states, not the federal government. The administration demands control over information to prevent alleged fraud, to locate flaws in voting machines and to stop noncitizens from voting—even though every analysis indicates such cases are residual and do not affect outcomes.

In recent months, Trump has cut funding to a cybersecurity department meant to guard against foreign interference and has pushed to redraw voting districts to favor his party, not always successfully. After wins in places like Virginia, the Supreme Court last week struck down a Wisconsin map that advantaged Republicans. The appointment of dozens of election deniers who champion the 2020 fraud lie to key posts—such as FBI director Kash Patel and deputy attorney general Harmeet Dhillon—also favors plans to subvert the midterms.

The high court’s Monday decision, written by Brett Kavanaugh, a judge Trump appointed in his first term, is limited to saying that a change like the one the government sought cannot be authorized so few days (49) before the vote. The conservative-majority court did not rule on the substance of what the administration wanted: forcing states to use uniform barcode envelopes and to share with federal authorities the lists of people authorized to vote remotely in their jurisdictions. The decree also authorized the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to withhold delivery of mail ballots to states that did not comply with those requirements.

Harsh message

Trump reacted on Tuesday to the ruling with a harsh message on Truth in which he again shamelessly described the Supreme Court as a body that should always rule in his favor (and has not done so lately, as he himself notes in the post, in important decisions on his tariff policy or on birthright citizenship).

Trump said the court will go down in history for having taken “some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our country’s history,” in a post addressed to the three justices he appointed during his first term at the White House: in addition to Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The three sided with the majority on Monday, against the government. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” the Truth post says. It is worth recalling that this is the same court that this year granted him broad immunity for acts related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack when examining his role in the events that led to the assault.

On that social network, Trump repeatedly posts messages—often forgetting that the Supreme Court this year handed Republicans a victory by curtailing minority voting rights—that aim to persuade Senate Republicans, and especially the majority leader John Thune, to pass the SAVE America Act, his ambitious electoral overhaul.

The measure, which also will not arrive in time for the midterms, includes tougher ID requirements to register (proving citizenship) and to vote (with a photo ID). In a country without a federal ID and where roughly 50% of residents lack a passport, those requirements threaten to hinder the participation of more than 21 million people (many of them women who changed their names when they married), according to Democrats and anti–voter suppression activists.

They do not rule out Trump deploying ICE agents to polling places—a force the president has turned into something like his shock troops—to prevent the fraud the administration alleges. The administration has denied it will send agents that day, although Democrats on Monday announced plans to train 10,000 volunteers to act if they do. On Tuesday, Patel was asked in the Senate whether he ruled out using FBI agents on November 3, and he failed to dismiss that option.

Pressure on the states has also taken the form of threats by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who warned in July that election workers who do not cooperate could end up in jail. And the agency charged with emergency management (FEMA) has threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal counterterrorism funding from states that do not comply with Trump’s electoral plans.

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