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This Week in Democracy

This week saw major developments in court cases regarding President Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting.

• On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a lower court ruling that barred federal officials from implementing the president’s executive order. Twenty-four state officials brought the case in April, but the high court ruled that they did so too early.
• On Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts lifted a separate ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, allowing the Postal Service to move forward with new rules for mail ballots that would conform with Trump’s executive order. The rule would empower the agency to refuse to deliver mail ballots to voters.
• Later on Wednesday, voting rights groups and 25 state officials filed new complaints against the Postal Service, asking the judge to block implementation of the new rules.
• On Thursday, the judge issued a new order, temporarily blocking the Postal Service from implementing the new rule for the November elections. The judge’s order pauses the rule for two weeks while she considers whether a longer-term order is appropriate.

“Mail-in voting is safe, secure, and relied on by millions of voters, including the President himself,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a statement announcing Wednesday’s lawsuit. “States have the constitutional authority to administer elections, not the President or the Postal Service.”

➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Trump’s Second Executive Order on Elections

State of the States

In California, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases regarding Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of more than half a million ballots cast in 2025. Bianco seized the ballots in March after a group claimed it had conducted an “audit” and found discrepancies.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta promptly sued Bianco over the seizure, arguing that the sheriff was acting outside of his authority and that his purported “investigation” would sow distrust in elections. The state Supreme Court ordered Bianco in April to halt his investigation.

According to reports, the Supreme Court seemed skeptical of Bianco’s arguments that he had the legal authority to seize the ballots.

In Michigan, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Washtenaw County. The administration filed the lawsuit in April over county policies that limit the extent to which local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

“[N]either the federal government nor the President may conscript local officials to enforce their will,” the judge wrote.

In a separate case, state officials are continuing to push back on the administration’s attempts to condition public safety grants on state cooperation with immigration enforcement.

In New Jersey, state officials asked a federal judge to dismiss the Trump administration’s lawsuit against a state law that limits when federal agents are allowed to hide their identities while on duty.

Attached to the officials’ court filing was more than a dozen firsthand accounts of masked federal agents’ conduct in their state. A school superintendent described an incident in which ICE vehicles sped toward an apartment complex where elementary school students were waiting for a bus, sending the children running. “The students reported that they recognized the agents were ICE. The agents were all wearing masks, hoods up, and wearing vests,” the superintendent wrote.

In Texas, an ICE agent facing state charges in Minnesota was released from county jail, after Gov. Greg Abbott left an extradition request unanswered.

The agent, Christian Castro, was detained in Texas in May after a Minnesota judge issued a nationwide warrant for his arrest. The judge issued the warrant shortly after the top prosecutor for the Minneapolis area filed charges against Castro, alleging that he shot into a house during immigration enforcement operations, hitting a man in the leg, and later lied about the incident.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Abbott and the sheriff of Cameron County last week, asking a judge to order the Texas governor to comply with the extradition request and block the sheriff from releasing Castro from jail. This week, a federal judge rejected their lawsuit, ruling that there was no strict time limit within which Abbott needed to act on Walz’s request.