{"id":162955,"date":"2026-09-15T15:11:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/15\/trumps-own-justices-are-a-shell-of-their-original-selves-for-not-handing-him-the-midterm-election\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T15:11:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T23:11:54","slug":"trumps-own-justices-are-a-shell-of-their-original-selves-for-not-handing-him-the-midterm-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/15\/trumps-own-justices-are-a-shell-of-their-original-selves-for-not-handing-him-the-midterm-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Own Justices Are \u2018A Shell Of Their Original Selves\u2019 For Not Handing Him The Midterm Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s white whale got away again Monday night. In U.S. Postal Service v. California<\/a><\/em>, the Supreme Court denied the administration\u2019s application to stay Judge Indira Talwani\u2019s injunction \u2014 the one blocking the USPS rule that would have routed every mail-in ballot through a citizenship-verification portal before November. This means the rule stays dead, at least through the midterm elections. And the Court needed exactly three sentences to say so:<\/p>\n

\n

The application for stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the Court is denied. The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court\u2019s preliminary injunction. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note the majority went out of its way to identify two independently fatal problems for the government, that they\u2019re likely to lose on the merits and the equities don\u2019t favor a stay. Which is a vastly different tune than just three weeks ago. Recall that when this same shadow docket handed Trump his mail-in ballot wish<\/a> in August, the conservatives insisted the blue states had sued too early<\/em> \u2014 that they\u2019d have to wait for the Postal Service to finalize its rule before anyone could complain. So the Postal Service finalized the rule. Talwani reviewed it, exactly as ordered, and found it just as unconstitutional as before<\/a>. And now the Court is considering the finalized rule, and left the block in place.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Kavanaugh wrinkle. He concurred in the denial but on his own theory. In his view, there\u2019s \u201cat least a fair prospect\u201d the rule falls within the Postal Service\u2019s statutory authority. What killed it for him was timing, cramming the rule into the 2026 elections is arbitrary and capricious under the APA because state and local officials don\u2019t have anywhere near enough time to implement it. In other words, the administration spent months insisting the harm was too speculative and distant to sue over<\/a>, then rushed a rickety verification portal<\/a> into production so late that even a sympathetic justice had to bounce it for showing up without its homework.<\/p>\n

Alito, joined by Thomas, spent eight pages disagreeing. His theory: some plaintiffs lack standing, and the rest are running an ultra vires<\/em> \u201cHail Mary pass\u201d that \u201crarely succeeds\u201d because the Postal Service\u2019s power to regulate the mail is broad, and the states are leaning on a \u201chighly technical provision tucked away in a corner\u201d of the Postal Reorganization Act. He\u2019d have let the rule take effect, midterms be damned, and faulted the states and the courts for the timing crunch \u2014 even sparing a swipe at his own colleagues for burning late July through August \u201cdrafting nearly 40 pages of opinions\u201d while the government waited.<\/p>\n

What you will not find anywhere in those eight pages is the voter. Confronted with the reality that his preferred outcome would disenfranchise millions of people who vote by mail, Alito\u2019s answer was: \u201cI take that problem very seriously, but it is not enough to convince me to deny the application.\u201d Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Steve Vladeck called it a \u201crather stunning disregard for the interests of eligible voters in having their lawfully cast votes counted\u201d and it\u2019s hard to read the dissent any other way, the disenfranchisement isn\u2019t weighed and rejected so much as noted and shrugged off.<\/p>\n

Rick Hasen put it more bluntly<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

Totally absent from Alito\u2019s balancing were the voters. They weren\u2019t an afterthought; their interests were not considered at all. This is unsurprising, considering that the justice has done more to hurt the cause of voting and voting rights than anyone else on the court in at least a century.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trump, predictably, is taking the loss just about as well as he takes every loss. In a lengthy Truth Social post Tuesday, the president declared that the Court\u2019s \u201cinability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,\u201d and that a bench he largely built is now \u201cbullied and cajoled by the Radical Left.\u201d His own appointees, he lamented, are \u201cnot the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,\u201d a Court that has, per Trump, \u201cset America back at least a hundred years.\u201d He signed off by casting his tantrum as an act of statesmanship: \u201cIt is not easy for me to write this criticism,\u201d he wrote, predicting it \u201cwill likely cost me dearly for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cost him? The president wins at this Court roughly 84% of the time<\/a>, most of it through the very shadow docket that spent this summer bailing him out. He has been busy stacking the federal bench, and it has repaid him handsomely. Losing the ability to unilaterally disenfranchise millions of elderly, disabled, military, rural, and Native American voters \u2014 the people who depend on voting by mail \u2014 is not a steep price. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Trump\u2019s Own Justices Are \u2018A Shell Of Their Original Selves\u2019 For Not Handing Him The Midterm Election<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s white whale got away again Monday night. In U.S. Postal Service v. California<\/a><\/em>, the Supreme Court denied the administration\u2019s application to stay Judge Indira Talwani\u2019s injunction \u2014 the one blocking the USPS rule that would have routed every mail-in ballot through a citizenship-verification portal before November. This means the rule stays dead, at least through the midterm elections. And the Court needed exactly three sentences to say so:<\/p>\n

\n

The application for stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the Court is denied. The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court\u2019s preliminary injunction. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note the majority went out of its way to identify two independently fatal problems for the government, that they\u2019re likely to lose on the merits and the equities don\u2019t favor a stay. Which is a vastly different tune than just three weeks ago. Recall that when this same shadow docket handed Trump his mail-in ballot wish<\/a> in August, the conservatives insisted the blue states had sued too early<\/em> \u2014 that they\u2019d have to wait for the Postal Service to finalize its rule before anyone could complain. So the Postal Service finalized the rule. Talwani reviewed it, exactly as ordered, and found it just as unconstitutional as before<\/a>. And now the Court is considering the finalized rule, and left the block in place.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Kavanaugh wrinkle. He concurred in the denial but on his own theory. In his view, there\u2019s \u201cat least a fair prospect\u201d the rule falls within the Postal Service\u2019s statutory authority. What killed it for him was timing, cramming the rule into the 2026 elections is arbitrary and capricious under the APA because state and local officials don\u2019t have anywhere near enough time to implement it. In other words, the administration spent months insisting the harm was too speculative and distant to sue over<\/a>, then rushed a rickety verification portal<\/a> into production so late that even a sympathetic justice had to bounce it for showing up without its homework.<\/p>\n

Alito, joined by Thomas, spent eight pages disagreeing. His theory: some plaintiffs lack standing, and the rest are running an ultra vires<\/em> \u201cHail Mary pass\u201d that \u201crarely succeeds\u201d because the Postal Service\u2019s power to regulate the mail is broad, and the states are leaning on a \u201chighly technical provision tucked away in a corner\u201d of the Postal Reorganization Act. He\u2019d have let the rule take effect, midterms be damned, and faulted the states and the courts for the timing crunch \u2014 even sparing a swipe at his own colleagues for burning late July through August \u201cdrafting nearly 40 pages of opinions\u201d while the government waited.<\/p>\n

What you will not find anywhere in those eight pages is the voter. Confronted with the reality that his preferred outcome would disenfranchise millions of people who vote by mail, Alito\u2019s answer was: \u201cI take that problem very seriously, but it is not enough to convince me to deny the application.\u201d Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Steve Vladeck called it a \u201crather stunning disregard for the interests of eligible voters in having their lawfully cast votes counted\u201d and it\u2019s hard to read the dissent any other way, the disenfranchisement isn\u2019t weighed and rejected so much as noted and shrugged off.<\/p>\n

Rick Hasen put it more bluntly<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

Totally absent from Alito\u2019s balancing were the voters. They weren\u2019t an afterthought; their interests were not considered at all. This is unsurprising, considering that the justice has done more to hurt the cause of voting and voting rights than anyone else on the court in at least a century.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trump, predictably, is taking the loss just about as well as he takes every loss. In a lengthy Truth Social post Tuesday, the president declared that the Court\u2019s \u201cinability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,\u201d and that a bench he largely built is now \u201cbullied and cajoled by the Radical Left.\u201d His own appointees, he lamented, are \u201cnot the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,\u201d a Court that has, per Trump, \u201cset America back at least a hundred years.\u201d He signed off by casting his tantrum as an act of statesmanship: \u201cIt is not easy for me to write this criticism,\u201d he wrote, predicting it \u201cwill likely cost me dearly for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cost him? The president wins at this Court roughly 84% of the time<\/a>, most of it through the very shadow docket that spent this summer bailing him out. He has been busy stacking the federal bench, and it has repaid him handsomely. Losing the ability to unilaterally disenfranchise millions of elderly, disabled, military, rural, and Native American voters \u2014 the people who depend on voting by mail \u2014 is not a steep price. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump\u2019s white whale got away again Monday night. In U.S. Postal Service v. California, the Supreme Court denied the administration\u2019s application to stay Judge Indira Talwani\u2019s injunction \u2014 the one blocking the USPS rule that would have routed every mail-in ballot through a citizenship-verification portal before November. This means the rule stays dead, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}