Donald Trump’s unconstitutional bid to turn the United States Postal Service into a weapon of voter suppression could determine the outcome of the midterm elections and the future of American democracy.

The president’s bid is now on the Supreme Court’s notorious shadow docket for a final showdown in two consolidated cases (US Postal Service v. California and Trump v. League of Women Voters) that center on the final regulatory rule on mail-in voting that the Postal Service issued on August 21. The rule—adopted in compliance with an executive order Trump promulgated in March to root out what he claims is fraudulent voting by noncitizens—requires state election officials to upload lists of mail-in voters’ names and addresses to an untested and secretly constructed USPS online portal and to redesign ballot envelopes to include bar codes that can be checked against the voter lists. If a state does not obtain envelope design approval, or does not upload voter information, the USPS will not deliver ballots to voters.

For now, the rule has been blocked in both cases by preliminary injunctions issued by Boston-based Federal District Court Judge Indira Talwani. If the Supreme Court stays the injunctions and allows the new rule to be implemented, the impact will be devastating, especially for Democrats.

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans voted by mail in 2024, including an estimated 37% of Democratic voters, but only 24% of Republicans. Five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—hold elections almost entirely by mail. As the midterms approach, North Carolina has already begun mailing midterm ballots to some 260,000 voters. According to Democracy Docket, a host of others will follow suit in the coming weeks, including 5.1 million mailed ballots in Washington, 4 million in Colorado, and 3.2 million in Arizona. Next month in California, election officials are slated to mail over 23 million ballots.

Unlike the founders, Trump sees the Postal Service as a vehicle to negate democracy and maintain his personal grip on power.

Even if the Postal Service’s new rule were warranted to prevent fraud—and studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud in the US is extremely rare—the states do not have sufficient time to retool their ballot infrastructures to securely meet the rule’s demands and deadlines.

“With fewer than 60 days to go before the November election, there is not a shred of evidence that states could comply with it without disenfranchising voters who rely on mail ballots,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the American Civil Liberty Union’s Voting Rights Project, in a statement to the media. “Put plainly, this administration is racing to the Supreme Court to demand the right to enforce a rule that has no purpose other than to create chaos, undermine election integrity, and rob eligible voters of their essential right to make their voices heard in our democracy.”

This is not the first time Trump’s new postal system rule has reached the Supreme Court. On August 24, the six Republican sycophants on the high tribunal lifted earlier injunctions blocking the rule issued by Judge Talwani on procedural grounds, holding that the initial legal challenges to the rule were brought prematurely. Now that the rule has become final, that rationale no longer applies. This time, Chief Justice John Roberts and his GOP confederates will be forced to assess the rule’s legality.

As a matter of law, the issue is a true no-brainer. The Constitution’s “Elections Clause” (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1) gives states the authority to set the “times, places, and manner” of elections for House members and senators subject only to congressional oversight. Even under the strong version of the unitary executive theory that the Republican court majority........

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