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Elon approves.
I'm not even sure they use real postal carriers anymore. One Saturday, I saw a middle-aged woman in a moo moo putting mail in our community box from the back of a post office vehicle.
Elon approves.
Cool story bro
more (apparent) backtracking
Susie Wiles isn't Trump, tho
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2702320.htmlThe White House is denying President Donald Trump is considering moving the U.S. Postal Service under the control of his administration, marking a potential first step toward privatizing the 250-year-old government agency, despite recent reports.
It may well have been a feint..."Look over here I'm going to take over the Post Office. And you can't stop me! Ha!" While over there Musk is firing a load of bureaucrats, or, Trump is sneaking a Big Mac in the well of his Oval Office Desk.
looks like House (R)s might bow up to Trump on this one
Ten voting House Republicans have now signed on to a resolution that says Congress "should take all appropriate measures" to make sure USPS remains an independent government agency and "not subject to privatization,” including Reps. Sam Graves and Thomas Keanwww.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...
Oregon hasn't had in-person elections in 30 years -- there's not enough time left before the midterms for it to create election infrastructure
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/u...-android-shareNYT: "If the regulations are enacted, the Postal Service said that it would not deliver mail ballots in states that do not share voter data with the federal agency."
Only these 16 states have complied with Trump's data demands:
AL, AK, AR, FL, IN, IA, LA, MS, NE, OH, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, WY
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-in-voter-ruleThe USPS acknowledged in the text of the final ruleposted online Friday, which is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register next week, that two injunctions issued by federal courts in California and Massachusetts currently bar it from moving ahead with the changes to comply with a March executive order signed by Donald Trump.
incidentally, interfering with the delivery of the US mail is a jailhouse crime
https://electionlawblog.org/wp-conte...le-comment.pdfAs mentioned in my comment on USPS's new ballot rule, the American postal service was born in 1774 _because_ the alternative system (the Crown's post) let the executive decide which mail not to deliver.
For a Court riveted by bespoke historical analogs, this rule is 252 years of unAmerican.
Last edited by Winehole23; 08-22-2026 at 11:18 PM.
The USPS can't decide which paychecks to deliver and which to toss.
The USPS can't decide which tax returns to deliver and which to toss.
The USPS can't decide which Christmas cards to deliver and which to toss.
And the USPS can't decide which ballots to deliver and which to toss.
Judge Indira Talwani (Obama/MA) orders feds to respond by Tues 8AM to emergency motion challenging Trump mail-in ballot regs, contends USPS created emergency by posting the final rule after courts closed Fri. Will extend deadline to Thursday if govt consents to a TRO in meantime.
partisan mail delivery, or delivery according to Trump's say so, is crazypants
https://www.nrlca.org/Do ents/WebContent/EditorDo ents/userFiles/File/public/NRLCA%20Statement%20on%20USPS’%20Final%20Rule%20Go verning%20FederaThe National Rural Letter Carriers' Association's Patrick Pitts "strongly objects" to U.S. Postal Service's final rule in response to President Trump's order to limit mail voting for the midterms, adding USPS should deliver mail "neutrally" and not take on state & local election officials' jobs
Trump's rather obvious plan here is to create enough confusion around the midterm elections to justify throwing out the results.
Finger in the wind, if Trump does so he'll accelerate his own political demise. Stealing elections seldom works when your party loses by a lot. Especially when everybody can see what you're doing.
SCOTUS standing on procedural formalism -- not taking a position on whether the intended action is legal to begin with -- when Trump has a gun ed in the direction of states led by Dems and all their mail-in voters
https://ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/s...2026-midterms/In its ruling on Monday, the Court decided that Talwani went too far. The thrust of the majority opinion is that because Trump’s order doesn’t impose obligations on states, states are not “harmed” in any meaningful sense. For example, the opinion casts the Department of Homeland Security’s creation of Trump-approved voter eligibility lists as a mere “internal directive from the President to a subordinate” that does not affect states one way or the other. The requirement that the Justice Department focus its attention on certain state officials, the Court says, is within Trump’s Article II power to set “prosecutorial priorities.” The provision that requires the Postal Service to draft a restrictive mail-in balloting rule merely “initiates” a “process” that “might bind the States in the future,” but “imposes no legal requirements” on them now.The Court allows that the Postal Service’s rule—again, a rule the Postal Service issued at Trump’s direction and according to his specifications—will not “necessarily” be lawful, and that states are free to challenge it. But at this stage of litigation, the majority concluded, blocking the executive order would cause Trump “irreparable harm,” because it improperly “interferes with the internal operations of the Executive Branch.”
This framing only tracks if you possess the critical thinking skills of a goldfish. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan, the order must be read as a “unified whole.” By simultaneously mandating the creation of Trump-approved eligibility lists and targeting state officials who allegedly issue ballots to ineligible voters, the White House is sending a clear message to its political enemies: Use its list, or else. The Court’s treatment of these provisions as independently innocuous is roughly analogous to arguing that because a bank robber hasn’t actually opened fire, the teller staring down the barrel of his gun should not understand “empty the safe” as a threat.
so much for the Purcell principle
State officials have been preparing for the 2026 general election since the 2024 general election ended. They have spent time and money buying equipment, printing ballots, checking voter rolls, and training staff to work at polling places. Eight months before Election Day, Trump issued an illegal executive order that would disrupt all that careful preparation, and only on Friday did the Postal Service unveil its plan for implementing that order. Now, with just ten weeks to go until Election Day, the Court is essentially telling states, so sorry, you actually sued too early, better luck next time.
The government’s strategy—slow-rolling a rule while fast-tracking a demand for the Supreme Court’s preemptive blessing—is “tailor-made to weaponize this case as a means of destabilizing the nation’s vote-by-mail systems through court-assisted procedural maneuvers,” Jackson wrote. Trump’s actual objective, she continued, is to “foment chaos.”
narrator: the government did not even bother to argue that what it is trying to do is legal, i.e., founded in law and cons utional
In the context of the shrinking timeline, Purcell remains a dire threat to the integrity of the 2026 midterms. No matter how quickly lower courts move on the Postal Service’s proposal, as the calendar changes over to September and then to October, it is not hard to imagine this Court suddenly rediscovering the virtues of Purcell and declaring that with Election Day so near, it is too late for judges like Talwani to intervene.
because the USPS dragged its feet and waited until a time close to the election to issue the rule, SCOTUS, incredibly, can say it is too late to challenge, even though the rule itself will throw the election into chaos
e.g., Oregon has not had in-person voting for 30 years -- it's 100% mail-in voting
is it equitable to require a 100% mail-in voting state to set up in-person voting this close to an election?
SCOTUS is blind to the equities, it seems
new USPS rule blocked temporarily
reportedly, mail-in ballots start shipping to some states as early as next week, so the 14 day stay is consequential
"the USPS's interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely uncons utional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens"
Last edited by Winehole23; 08-31-2026 at 02:12 PM.
Judge Talwani upholds the TRO, enjoins USPS from effecting the new rule
Will be appealed to SCOTUS
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