California plans to sue again to stop Trump from restricting mail voting and could make blocking delivery a felony
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Monday that his state would sue the Trump administration again to block federal changes to mail voting, after the US supreme court ruled that a previous suit was filed too early in the process by his state and 22 others.
“California will be suing AGAIN to block these Orwellian rules from being implemented,” Newsom posted.
Newsom also highlighted two new proposed state laws that would make it a crime to interfere with the delivery of mail ballots.
In a press release, Newsom added that he and the California legislature “are doubling down to ensure California continues to defend democracy as new threats from Donald Trump and his election-rigging allies emerge”.
Two draft laws would establish three new felonies under California state law, punishable by up to four years in prison.
One of the laws would prohibit anyone “from seizing or causing the seizure of ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are certified”, and blocks “any person with authority from directing someone in their supervision to do the same”.
The second law makes it a felony “for a person in a position with authority” to direct another person “to interfere with a ballot’s delivery to a voter or return to the local elections official”. That same legislation would make it a misdemeanor to interfere with “the delivery of a vote by mail ballot to a voter”.
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The US supreme court lifted one of two injunctions that block the Trump administration from pressing ahead with a sweeping effort to restrict mail voting
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The court’s decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”, justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a blistering dissent.
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The NAACP, which sued in April to block the order to restrict mail-in voting, said that Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote in November because they “know full well that they are unpopular and will lose in a free and fair election”.
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The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for asylum status in the United States, according to US state department documents obtained by the Associated Press.
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Donald Trump responded to criticism of his new tariffs on Canadian imports from the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, by comparing him unfavorably to his late brother, Rob Ford, a former mayor of Toronto best known for smoking crack.
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US treasury secretary Scott Bessent announced that the US has begun an “unprecedented” sanctions campaign against Iran “and its enablers”.
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While the US supreme court on Monday lifted one of two injunctions that block the Trump administration from pressing ahead with a sweeping federal power grab over mail voting, a number of legal experts have pointed out that no changes can be made while the second injunction remains in place. The real action, they note, will come in legal challenges to a US Postal Service rule that would allow it to not deliver ballots in states that refuse to hand over lists of eligible voters, in line with an executive order issued in March by Donald Trump.
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“Please don’t overreact to Roberts Court decision on the contemplated USPS ballot moves,” Norm Eisen, a former ethics adviser in the Obama White House and a founder of the legacy advocacy group Democracy Defenders Action, wrote on social media. “They simply held that the injunction came too early in the process, before there was a final rule … Now we HAVE a final rule & we will litigate it. I’m as confident in our arguments here as in any of our cases!”
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Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, wrote in his newsletter: “Late Friday night, the U.S. Postal Service (finally) released the ‘Final Rule’ that was supposed to be published by the end of July that purports to implement Trump’s executive order. It’s that rule, not the executive order itself, that would be the basis for the USPS messing with mail-in ballots come October and November.”
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Vladeck suggests that, as soon as Tuesday, a federal judge could block the new USPS rule on mail ballots, which essentially requires states to hand over lists of eligible voters to the federal government before any mail ballots can be delivered. That rule is scheduled to go into effect on Wednesday.
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Something called the Purcell principle, which dictates that courts should not change the rules on how people vote too close to an election, could come in to play, Vladeck writes.
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With mail ballots set to go out to North Carolina voters in the military or abroad at the end of next week, the supreme court’s conservative majority could invoke the Purcell principle as an excuse to strike down any legal challenge to the new USPS rule as coming “too close to the election”.
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“That’s a genuine concern, and given the Court’s own repeated transgressions of the Purcell principle earlier this term in Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama, to hide behind it to allow the USPS Final Rule to go into effect would be as indefensible and anti-democratic a ruling as the Court has handed down in a very long time,” Vladeck argues.
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The two dozen plaintiffs that lost at the supreme court on Monday, 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued to block the Trump administration from implementing sweeping restrictions on mail voting, have lined up to express outrage and their determination to fight on in the courts.
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Officials in Oregon, which has conducted its elections entirely by mail since 1998, vowed on Monday to take legal action if the US Postal Service or any other federal agency “unlawfully takes steps to interfere with mail voting”.
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“We’re not going to let Donald Trump interfere in our elections—and we’re certainly not going to let him decide who gets a ballot and who doesn’t,” Oregon’s attorney general Dan Rayfield said. “Today’s court decision is a temporary setback, nothing more. This fight is far from over.”
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The state’s top elections official, secretary of state Tobias Read, said the midterms “will proceed as planned this November, free from any illegal federal interference”.
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“President Trump’s directive to the United States Postal Service is unconstitutional and an assault on our democracy and designed to silence voters,” Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said. “Oregon has been conducting elections by mail-in voting safely and securely for decades. My message to the President is clear: keep your hands off our elections.”
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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Monday that his state would sue the Trump administration again to block federal changes to mail voting, after the US supreme court ruled that a previous suit was filed too early in the process by his state and 22 others.
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“California will be suing AGAIN to block these Orwellian rules from being implemented,” Newsom posted.
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Newsom also highlighted two new proposed state laws that would make it a crime to interfere with the delivery of mail ballots.
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In a press release, Newsom added that he and the California legislature “are doubling down to ensure California continues to defend democracy as new threats from Donald Trump and his election-rigging allies emerge”.
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Two draft laws would establish three new felonies under California state law, punishable by up to four years in prison.
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One of the laws would prohibit anyone “from seizing or causing the seizure of ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are certified”, and blocks “any person with authority from directing someone in their supervision to do the same”.
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The second law makes it a felony “for a person in a position with authority” to direct another person “to interfere with a ballot’s delivery to a voter or return to the local elections official”. That same legislation would make it a misdemeanor to interfere with “the delivery of a vote by mail ballot to a voter”.
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Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, points out on his Election Law Blog that the supreme court on Monday only lifted one of two lower-court orders that blocked the Trump administration from implementing its planned restrictions on mail voting.
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The other injunction, not ruled on by the court yet, still stops the US Postal Service from implementing a new rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver ballots mailed by voters who are not on a list approved by the federal government.
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Hasen also observes that it is “just weird” that the court issued its opinion on Monday, in which it ruled that the states that sued to block the implementation of new federal rules around mail voting should have waited until the USPS proposed a new rule to do what Trump directed. While it is true that the 23 states and Washington DC filed suit before the USPS issued its new rule, the final rule was posted online late Friday, and is set to take effect this week if the court lifts the both injunctions.
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Monday’s supreme court decision, Hasen added, “just postpones any kind of ruling on the merits, but a week or two, when we will be even closer to the election and it will be impossible for states to comply with some of the rules that will come out”.
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As the North Carolina board of elections notes on its website: “Voting in the 2026 election officially begins on Sept. 4, with the initial sending of absentee ballots to voters who requested them.”
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The president of the NAACP, which sued Donald Trump in April to block his order to restrict mail-in voting, denounced the supreme court decision that allows the order to be implemented, despite claims that it is illegal and unconstitutional.
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The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, said in a statement:
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“Let this ruling be a reminder that democracy is never, ever, guaranteed. We have to fight for it, we have to fight to keep it, and we have to protect the rights we do have within it. Those in power know full well that they are unpopular and will lose in a free and fair election, and so they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make it difficult for you to vote.
n Trump’s order has nothing to do with election integrity. It has everything to do with maintaining power at all costs.”
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The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States, according to US state department documents obtained by the Associated Press.
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According to the documents and unnamed sources who spoke to the AP, the state department plans to announce within weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026, whose holders have sought or are now seeking asylum.
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A state department spokesperson told the news agency it is working with the Department of Homeland Security on the push.
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“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” the spokesperson, Tommy Pigott, said.
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Pigott declined to confirm the number of visas that might be revoked, since “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”
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The US supreme court’s decision on Monday that the Trump administration can move ahead with plans to restrict mail-in voting “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”, justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a blistering dissent.
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While the court’s unsigned opinion, from the six Republican-appointed justices, did not say that an executive order signed by Donald Trump to limit mail voting was legal, Jackson argued that permitting the administration to push ahead with changes, including a plan for the US Postal Service (USPS) to refuse to deliver ballots from voters not on a pre-approved list of eligible voters created by the federal government, “contributes to pre-election chaos instead of quashing it”.
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“Our Constitution expressly delegates the power to conduct federal elections to the States,” Jackson wrote. In a 31 March 2026 executive order, Trump “attempted to alter this longstanding, constitutionally assigned structure” that “requires a fundamental overhaul of the States’ existing mail-in ballot systems—changing from a state-administered process to one in which the Federal Government controls who gets a ballot and whose vote counts”.
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Jackson went on to accuse her conservative colleagues of “a stunning misinterpretation of the factual record” in their claim that a lower court had engaged in speculation that the United States Postal Service would change its rules to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that did not turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. As Jackson notes, the USPS has proposed a change to its rules, which is scheduled to take effect this week.
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