Trump attacks Supreme Court justices after losing mail-in voting battle: ‘Set us back 100 years’

Donald Trump harshly attacked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, including the three justices he himself appointed, after the court refused on Monday to let the Postal Service enforce new rules that would limit mail-in votes ahead of November’s midterm elections — the elections that will determine control of Congress.

In a long social media post, the American president called the decision “another bad decision” that makes the country “a laughingstock” and wrote: “This Supreme Court has been blackmailed by the radical left to make decisions that have set America back at least 100 years… These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the Supreme Court.”

The decision, taken by a short unsigned order, upheld the block by federal judge Indira Talwani in Boston, who had declared the policy questionable and “impossible to implement” in time for the elections. None of the three justices appointed by Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — sided with him on mail-in votes; only Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted against.

This was just one of a string of Supreme Court election decisions: the court sided with the Trump administration in the cases of redrawing electoral maps in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama — which could add seats for Republicans — but sided with its opponents on maps in California and Missouri, and allowed states to have grace periods for counting mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day.

The blocked Postal Service plan required states to hand the Post voter lists to verify mail-in votes; a whistleblower had warned the system could “undo the midterm elections,” because a single barcode error could cause the rejection of a whole batch of votes. Nearly a third of Americans voted by mail in the 2024 elections.

Source: USA Today