The Trump administration has filed an emergency appeal with the US Supreme Court, asking the justices to overturn a federal judge's order blocking the US Postal Service from implementing new rules that would regulate how mail ballots are processed in the upcoming midterm elections. The appeal came on Thursday, hours before North Carolina was scheduled to begin sending out mail ballots — the first state to do so in what is expected to be a wave of ballot distributions ahead of November's vote.

At the centre of the dispute is an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that would require states to submit voter lists to an online portal before the Postal Service delivers their mail ballots. Ballots from states that fail to comply — including those using unapproved envelope designs — could be withheld from delivery. During a hearing in Boston, US District Court Judge Indira Talwani pressed Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik on a fundamental problem: the portal appeared to still be inactive. "As you sit here today, you can't tell me the government has a program ready to go?" Talwani asked. She said she had received "nothing" from the Postal Service explaining how the system would actually work, and suggested the administration was running an "experiment" on a live election. A recently published whistleblower report deepened concerns, warning that the new rules — which require ballots to be physically brought to post offices before dispatch — could result in millions of ballots never being sent, since a single barcode error could cause an entire batch, potentially tens of thousands of ballots, to be discarded.

This is not the first time the legal battle has reached the high court. Talwani initially blocked the executive order in June, ruling the changes came too close to Election Day. The Supreme Court reversed that order last month, finding it premature because the Postal Service had not yet published formal regulations. The agency subsequently did so, triggering a new round of lawsuits by Democrats and voting rights groups, who argue that setting election rules is a constitutional power reserved to the states and, in some cases, Congress — not the president. Talwani issued a fresh 14-day restraining order last week. The administration has now appealed simultaneously to both the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston and the Supreme Court, urging the justices to act quickly. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice responsible for the relevant circuit, set a 8 September deadline for plaintiffs to respond, meaning a ruling is unlikely before the middle of next week at the earliest.

The administration insists the changes are modest and lawful, arguing that states cannot use the federal mail system while claiming their election mail is exempt from Postal Service regulations. But election officials say compliance is impossible: most have already printed envelopes and ballots, and not a single state — including the twelve Republican-led states that intervened in court to support the administration's authority — has voluntarily opted into the new system. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of attempting to "destroy the integrity of our elections," while Trump, who has long and falsely attributed his 2020 election loss to mail voting, framed the restrictions as a necessary safeguard. The Supreme Court's conservative majority previously allowed the broader plan to proceed but has yet to rule on its legality — a question that may now be forced into sharp focus before ballots are cast.