President Donald Trump sharply criticized the Supreme Court and several of its conservative justices Tuesday after the court refused to allow his administration’s new Postal Service restrictions on mail ballots to take effect before the November midterm elections.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
President Donald Trump unleashed unusually severe criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday after the justices rejected his administration’s emergency effort to impose new mail-ballot requirements before the 2026 midterms, accusing the court of abandoning the conservative principles he expected from the justices he appointed.
The court on Monday left in place a lower-court injunction blocking a new U.S. Postal Service rule that would require states to submit lists of mail-ballot recipients and use federally approved envelopes equipped with unique barcodes.
The Postal Service could refuse to process ballots that did not comply with the requirements.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority in keeping the rule from taking effect for the approaching election but wrote separately that there is a “fair prospect” the Postal Service ultimately has legal authority to impose such requirements. He concluded, however, that election officials lacked sufficient time to implement the new system before voting already underway in parts of the country is completed.
Trump responded Tuesday with a lengthy statement condemning the decision and accusing the court of yielding to political pressure.
“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court, one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting ‘disaster,’ which is a laughing stock all over the World, and where we are the only country that has to endure such a Nation Destroying SCAM,” Trump said.
“Justices Alito and Thomas, legends both, strongly disagreed with this horrible, highly political, ruling. It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do – And now they have an open field to do so!”
The Supreme Court did not rule that fraud safeguards are unlawful as a general matter. Its immediate decision concerned whether the Postal Service rule could take effect while litigation continues.
The court’s brief order said the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction.” Lower courts had also raised questions about the Postal Service’s authority and the feasibility of changing election procedures shortly before the Nov. 3 midterms.
Trump has long argued that widespread mail voting creates opportunities for fraud. Election fraud does occur, but studies, prosecutions and election reviews have found widespread fraud involving mail ballots to be rare, and there has been no evidence establishing the large-scale fraud Trump has alleged in previous elections. Many countries also permit some form of postal or absentee voting, although rules differ substantially among nations.
The administration had argued that its new system was an appropriate exercise of federal authority over the Postal Service and would protect election mail from being used for fraud.
Opponents, including states and voting-rights organizations, argued that the executive branch was intruding into election rules constitutionally assigned primarily to states and Congress and that implementing an entirely new system once ballots were already being prepared or distributed could prevent eligible voters from receiving them.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the rule Sept. 4. A second federal judge, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — separately blocked the restrictions Sunday.
Trump’s response went far beyond disagreement with the mail-ballot decision.
“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down! Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America,” Trump said.
He then connected Monday’s decision to other major Supreme Court defeats his administration has suffered, including rulings involving tariffs and birthright citizenship.
“Their horrible decision on Tariffs will be costing the U.S.A., for many years to come, Trillions and Trillions of Dollars,” Trump wrote. “They didn’t even state, ‘money paid does not have to be paid back,’ much to the benefit of entities that truly hate our Country, and have been RIPPING IT OFF FOR YEARS, unnecessarily costing us, immediately, Billions of Dollars.”
In February, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give Trump authority to impose the sweeping global tariffs he had enacted under that law.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that such an extraordinary assertion of tariff power required clear authorization from Congress. Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the majority, while Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh dissented.
Trump responded at the time by pursuing tariffs through other statutory authorities.
Tuesday, he also revisited his dispute with the court over birthright citizenship.
“Likewise, the Supreme Court’s Decision on Birthright Citizenship is a complete and total disaster for America, and has already led to massive corruption with respect to ‘citizenship’ in our Country,” Trump wrote. “The damage done to America is incalculable, and they know this, just as everyone else does – It is an irreparable and unrecoverable harm!”
The Supreme Court in June rejected Trump’s initial attempt to restrict birthright citizenship for children born in the United States whose parents were neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents, finding that the policy violated the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause. A federal judge this month also blocked a subsequent administration effort to narrow birthright citizenship.
Trump said the series of rulings had fundamentally altered his view of a Supreme Court he helped reshape during his first term.
“This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years,” he wrote.
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal.”
Trump appointed three of the court’s current justices — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — creating the 6-3 conservative majority that remains in place.
Despite that ideological balance, the three Trump appointees have not uniformly supported his administration in disputes involving presidential power.
Monday’s mail-ballot case illustrated those differences.
Kavanaugh declined to let the Postal Service rule take effect before the midterms but stopped short of concluding that the administration ultimately lacks the authority it claims. He wrote that the legal argument may prevail later while finding that forcing election officials to adopt the new requirements at this stage would come too late for the current election.
Alito, joined by Thomas, disagreed and argued that the Postal Service possesses broad power to regulate the mail and that the challengers’ legal claims were unlikely to prevail.
Trump praised both men while directing his anger at the remainder of the court.
“The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,” Trump said.
“It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”
Reuters reported that Trump’s remarks represented a striking public break with a court whose conservative majority he played a central role in creating. His criticism was aimed not merely at the outcome of one case but at justices he selected specifically because of their judicial records and conservative legal credentials.
Trump closed his statement by acknowledging the gravity of a sitting president publicly attacking the nation’s highest court.
“It is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court – it will likely cost me dearly for years to come – but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love! Thank you for your attention to this very important matter. God bless the U.S.A. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
The decision does not permanently settle whether the Postal Service could impose similar requirements in a future election.
For the 2026 midterms, however, the immediate consequence is clear: states will continue distributing and processing mail ballots under their existing procedures while the litigation over the administration’s proposed federal restrictions proceeds.
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