Obama Judge Slaps Down SCOTUS’ Trump Decision

Evelyn Hockstein / REUTERS President Donald Trump’s attempt to curtail mail-in voting before the midterm elections in November has hit another obstacle.

United States District Court Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama administration appointee to the District of Massachusetts in 2014, issued a Temporary Restraining Order on Thursday night preventing the government from implementing Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting for another two weeks.

The move came after the Supreme Court overturned Talwani’s earlier injunction barring the federal government from applying the executive order’s provisions before the November election in 23 blue states (along with the District of Columbia).

Talwani’s decision included a “satisfying slap at the Court,” former U.S.

Attorney Joyce Vance said in a Substack post explaining the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision, and the subsequent significance of Talwani’s new TRO.

On the same day SCOTUS overturned the injunction, the post office issued its ‘final rule’ on the way it would handle and administer mail-in ballots.

The Supreme Court, the judge argued, did not take that rule into account when making its decision.

It was not supposed to be happening, given the injunction was designed to halt all activity toward implementing the Executive Order, but since it had been done anyway, Talwani encouraged the plaintiffs to refile.

The ‘final rule’ changed the case, Talwani’s ruling argued.

The Supreme Court justices had made their decision on a “purely procedural” basis, determining the district court lacked jurisdiction to review challenges to the Executive Order’s constitutionality when the implementation of it hadn’t been finalized.

Now that the states had that information, they could determine how they might be materially affected and how it might also run afoul of the Constitution.

In these new circumstances, the judge asserted their jurisdiction to stop the administration from moving forward with the plan for the next two weeks, and possibly for longer.

In doing so, Vance argued, “this opinion is a signal to the Court that this case too is one where the government must be reined in, lest the Court lose all authority to act as a check and balance on an out of control executive.” She cited Talwani’s opinion, which outlines the ramifications of the Final Rule for states trying to administer midterms in just over two months.

“Through the Final Rule, the USPS is refusing to send mail ballots to eligible voters unless States or local election officials submit their mail ballot envelopes and return envelopes and receive advance approval from the USPS without regard to impending deadlines for the November 3, 2026 election,” she said, going on to outline how that would impact states.