Key takeaways:
- The Supreme Court blocked a Trump administration plan to impose new USPS requirements on mail-in ballots before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
- Todd Blanche said the administration would comply with the ruling but that investigations into illegal voting would continue.
- Trump criticized the court and his three appointees, while Blanche said the president had the right to voice frustration with the justices.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Trump administration will comply with a Supreme Court decision blocking new restrictions on mail-in voting, while defending President Donald Trump’s sharp criticism of the justices who rejected the plan.
“Of course we are going to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision,” Blanche told reporters Tuesday, a day after the court dismissed the administration’s effort to impose new U.S. Postal Service requirements ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The ruling left existing voting procedures in place and preserved a lower-court order blocking a USPS rule that would have required states to provide voter-specific data and use agency-approved envelopes with barcodes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the decision, saying state and local officials did not have enough time to implement the rule before the election. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Blanche said the ruling would not affect “ongoing criminal investigations into illegal voting” and said efforts to ensure “free and fair elections are not going to stop just in November or after or thereafter.”
Trump responded to the ruling on Truth Social, calling mail-in voting “a laughing stock” around the world and saying the court had issued one of the “most destructive, hurtful, and damaging” decisions in U.S. history. He has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting is prone to fraud, though The Guardian reported that he has used the method several times to cast ballots.
“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!” Trump wrote. “Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America.”
In another post cited by Al Jazeera, Trump wrote: “This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years.”
Trump also criticized the three justices he appointed during his first term — Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — saying they are not “the people I interviewed to serve” but “merely a shell of their original selves.” Those appointments helped create the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
Blanche defended the president’s remarks, saying Trump was entitled to express frustration with another branch of government.
“As far as President Trump’s truth about the justices, he is very frustrated,” Blanche said. “He has every right. And indeed he should communicate his concerns with the Supreme Court whenever he has them.”
At a White House press conference, Blanche added: “This isn’t the first time that he’s done it, and it won’t be the last … The idea that President Trump shouldn’t be allowed to communicate to the American people his frustration, I … I don’t share that.”
The decision marks a setback for Trump’s long-sought effort to curb mail-in voting before the midterms, but Blanche indicated the administration’s broader scrutiny of election practices would continue.
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