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The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s injunction on President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create state-by-state lists of eligible voters who are citizens. The U.S. Postal Service would then use the lists provided by states to assess whether voters should be allowed to vote by mail. Justices ruled 6 to 3 that California and 22 other states lacked standing to sue over the issue. The ruling, however, did not address whether Trump had authority to impose the rules. A separate nationwide injunction against parts of the same order remains in place.

“This leads to a lot of uncertainty going into the midterms, because the Trump executive order would radically restrict vote by mail,” says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. If the ruling goes into effect, “it could disenfranchise millions of voters inNovember.”

“If voting proceeds based on these DHS lists,” adds Berman, “it’s going to be inaccurate, it’s going to be unconstitutional, and a lot of legitimate American voters are going to be wrongly labeled as noncitizens and unable to vote — either based on shoddy data or an intentional attempt by the Trump administration to prevent people from voting.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

Trump Votes by Mail in Florida Special Election, Despite Calling It “Cheating”

With the midterm elections less than 10 weeks away, the Supreme Court has lifted a lower court injunction on President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. Trump’s order directed the Department of Homeland Security to create state-by-state lists of eligible voters who are citizens. The U.S. Postal Service would then use the lists provided by states to assess if voters should be allowed to vote by mail. On Monday, justices ruled 6 to 3 that California and 22 other states lacked standing to sue over the issue. The ruling, however, did not address whether Trump had authority to impose the rules.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the majority opinion “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

In related news, on Tuesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts found the Trump administration violated a court injunction by finalizing new regulations with the U.S. Postal Service that would overhaul voting by mail nationwide if they’re enforced. While Trump has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting, he continues to vote by mail himself. Voting records in Florida show the president voted by mail in the recent Republican primary. He requested a ballot in late July. The ballot was returned on August 13th.

Well, we’re joined now by Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. His new piece is titled ”SCOTUS Hands Trump a Temporary Win in His Crusade to Restrict Mail Voting.” Berman is author of the book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It.

Welcome back to the program, Ari. If you could just respond to this news, the latest news?

ARI BERMAN: Hi, Nermeen. Thank you for having me back on the show.

So, what the Supreme Court did is it temporarily allowed Trump’s executive order severely restricting mail voting to go into effect. It said it was too early for states to challenge this. And this leads to a lot of uncertainty going into the midterms, because the Trump executive order would radically restrict vote by mail.

It would instruct the Department of Homeland Security to create lists of voters it deems citizens. These lists are likely to be highly inaccurate, based on the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has already made these egregious claims of voter fraud that have turned out not to be true. And then it says that the Postal Service can only deliver mail ballots based on these DHS lists, and, moreover, it will only deliver mail ballots in states that hand over their voter rolls, which include sensitive personal information, to the federal government.

This is essentially a form of extortion. The Department of Justice is 0 and 23 in federal court trying to force states to hand over their voter rolls, but the Postal Service is saying that “We’re not going to deliver your mail ballot, unless you hand over this information to........

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