Tangle - SCOTUS blocks mail-in voting changes.

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

On Monday, the Supreme Court denieda request from the Trump administration to allow the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to carry out parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order placing new regulations on mail-in voting. The president had issued the order in March to address alleged voter fraud, and the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s block on parts of the executive order in August. The Court’s most recent decision prevents the order from taking effect before the November midterm elections.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!Is our food safe?If you’ve seen a rash of recent headlines about food recalls affecting an array of products, you’ve probably wondered what’s going on with America’s food suppliers. In his latest report, Associate Producer Aidan Gorman explores what’s behind the recalls, whether they’re happening more frequently, and what the cases reveal about food safety in the U.S. Check it out here.We’re bad at this.Last week we had a team retreat. Something I realized while there is that we can do a better job making sure people know where to find us. Our core product is a newsletter, but we also have a podcast, YouTube channel, and Instagram page that all do incredible work covering the news with ideological diversity and intellectual honesty. So, here’s a reminder to take two minutes to follow us on your platform of choice:InstagramPodcastYouTubeYou can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of the Court’s decision? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. It is Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. Happy Hump Day. You've made it. You're almost there. All downhill from here in a good way. The good downhill. Not the bad. I'm recording this new podcast today. from a brand spanking new, fully operational, new studio. Not a totally sound-treated studio yet that's coming, but I'm here. I'm in a new space, a Tangle HQ space that I built, that I own. That took seven years to come into fruition.

I'm not renting a little space. I refurbished a garage in my backyard into a new office space that's going to serve as the new Tangle HQ. and I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you. Literally, the only reason this is possible is because there are tens of thousands of people who subscribe to our newsletter and our podcast. There are members.

90% of our revenue comes from there. Yes, if you want to subscribe, readtangle.com forward slash membership makes this kind of stuff happen. But opening up the doors today and working out of this space just, yeah, it just kind of hit me. It was a nice moment to just take in the fact that I'm running a media company with 13 full-time employees in my own studio space that I own.

And that is not how this started. This started with me and a laptop working at 5 a.m. and on my lunch break and at night out of a really small closet in my apartment while I worked another full-time job. And I'm just really proud of where we've gotten to and really, really, really grateful for all of you, the listeners out there who help make this possible. So I just wanted to say thanks. With that mushy woo-woo intro out of the way,

we're covering a big story today. The Supreme Court's latest mail-in ballots ruling and the president's reaction. I also want to point you to our YouTube channel on Tangle News to check out our new food safety video, exploring how safe our food really is. Aidan Gorman, one of our editors on the YouTube channel, went shopping, did a phenomenal bit of reporting

on how the FDA is testing food, how we know it's safe, and why there seem to be so many recalls right now. Very much worth your time. And we also have a reader question today about why widely popular policies don't become law. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Audrey Moorhead. He's joined me on the show,

and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac. First up, we have today's quick hits. Number one, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Cash Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, taking questions from senators about his personal conduct, as well as the agency's hiring standards and investigations into journalists. Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before the House Financial Services Committee,

with Democratic lawmakers questioning his management of the bond market. Number two, the Kennedy Senate, for the Performing Arts Board voted to close the venue shortly after a federal judge ruled that it cannot add President Donald Trump's name to the building without congressional approval. President Trump claimed the center must be closed due to safety concerns. Number three, the FBI arrested a Pennsylvania man who was accused of pledging allegiance to ISIS and plotting to carry out a terrorist attack. Number four, Pennsylvania announced its fourth measles-related death in the past month.

Number five, Air Force Secretary. Troy Mink disclosed for the first time that the United States has weapons positioned in the Earth's orbit, describing them as, quote, on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action, end quote. The Supreme Court has rejected President Trump's restrictions on mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections. The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they've used for years. Nearly one third of the country votes by mail. The Trump administration restrictions require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied a request from the Trump administration to allow the U.S. Postal Service, or U.S.PS, to carry out parts of President Donald Trump's executive order placing new regulations on mail-in voting. The president had issued the order in March to address alleged voter fraud, and the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's block on parts of the executive order in August. The court's most recent decision prevents the order from taking effect before the November midterm elections. For more context, on March 31st, President Trump issued Executive Order 14399, directing the Department of Homeland Security to maintain lists of eligible voters in each state. Separately, the order requires USPS to

receive a list of eligible mail-in voters from each state before transmitting that state's mail-in ballots. In June, following a challenge from 23 states in Washington, D.C., District Court Judge Indira Talwani blocked part of the order's implementation in those jurisdictions. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which found the coalition of states challenged the order too soon and staged Talwani's injunction. However, the court did not opine on the legality of the executive order, nor did it rule on a second injunction barring USPS from taking steps to implement the executive order in place, allowing states to sue once the USPS began enacting. the order. States challenged the USPS's changes, and Tawwani issued a temporary restraining order

blocking the USPS's envelope design and voter data portal provisions. After the restraining order converted to a preliminary injunction, the administration appealed Tawani's decision to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the court issued an unsigned opinion, finding that the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge. In a one paragraph concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the rule would be arbitrary and capricious because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.

Justice's Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, referring to the state's challenge to the executive order as a Hail Mary pass and saying that some plaintiffs still lacked standing to sue. President Trump criticized the court for its decision, saying that the decision took too long to reach

and criticizing the justices he appointed during his first term specifically. Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court. They are merely a shell of their original selves. End quote. Next up, you'll hear from the left and right about the court's decision. Then, executive editor Isaac Saul will be back with his take.

We'll be right back after this quick break. First up, what the left is saying. The left supports the ruling, with many saying Trump's order exceeded his authority. Some argue the decision shows the court is willing to draw some lines. Others say the saga may have still damaged trust in elections. In the New Yorker, Ruth Marcus wrote, The assault on mail-in voting may be dead. The administration's claim that the Postal Service has authority

to regulate mail-in ballots is questionable at best. The Constitution entrust the conduct of elections to the states and Congress have it wishes. The executive branch has no assigned role. The asserted justification for the rule that it was necessary to prevent the federal mails from being used to perpetrate voter fraud was even flimsyer. Even if such fraud were rampant, it is difficult to see how the Postal Service rule would stop or expose it.

The president's bid to rewrite election rules was more audacious even than his ballroom project. Once again, we have learned that some Trump measures, eliminating birthright citizenship, imposing emergency tariffs, go too far for this court. The court's red lines would not be mine, but it has them nonetheless. Nothing will satisfy this president short of a total capitulation by the justices. Others of us will have to comfort ourselves with a more mixed record. In Vox, Ian Milheiser suggested the court finally had it with Trump's plan to steal the midterms. Trump didn't just lose. The court's brief order slips in a line indicating that Trump exceeded his authority

and cannot implement such an attack on voting by mail under any circumstances. Not one member of the court, including the dissenting justices, argued that Trump had the power to shut down voting by mail in the way he attempted to. Republican lawyers and policymakers will undoubtedly make more attempts to skew the midterms in the coming weeks. At the very least, the USPS decision shows that there are some limits to what this court will tolerate. The court's Republican majority is extraordinarily tolerant of Trump's antics. They gave him the right to commit crimes. They ruled that Trump may order the Justice Department to bring sham investigations and prosecutions against his perceived enemies.

But there is apparently still a line that most of the Republican justices will not allow Trump to cross. and shutting down voting by mail a couple of months before an election crosses that line. In New York Magazine, L.A. Honig said Trump's order would have caused an unholy self-perpetuating mess. The court has not ruled conclusively on the substantive legality of the executive order, but the majority held that the Trump administration is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge, meaning, essentially, this thing is quite likely unconstitutional. It remains unclear exactly how Trump's executive order would work on the government,

ground level were it ever to be implemented. But it's certain that it would have created mayhem around the 26 midterms. But remember, that's the playbook. As we learned from internal strategy memos and other evidence that has since come to light concerning the 2020 election, the plan was to create chaos and use the resulting uncertainty to throw the elections to state legislatures or the U.S. House of Representatives, which offered more Trump-friendly forums to determine the outcome. For now, the most pressing Trump-inflicted crisis around the 26 midterms has, been averted. Next up, what the right is saying. Many on the right expect Trump to continue pursuing mail-in-voting changes post-midterms. Some argued the ruling shows the court isn't to

represent for Trump. Others say the court ruled as prudently as it could. In hot air, Ed Morrissey wrote, The Chances for Winning these reforms remain alive. In the end, practical considerations overtook the merits of Donald Trump's reforms. The Supreme Court refused to lift a lower court's stay on new requirements from the U.S. Postal Service for mail and ballots ordered by the White House for the midterm cycle. The late Monday order effectively ends the effort to reform mail and balloting for this election cycle. However, at least three of the justices signaled that only the timing prevented it, two of whom objected even to that. The order refusing to lit the stay was unsigned, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated that the USPS and Trump administration have a case on the merits.

Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas published a dissent objecting to both the standing, of the plaintiffs and their legal arguments. If Congress can't or won't pass the Save America Act, there is still an opportunity to tighten up the controls on mail and balloting before the next presidential election. In USA Today, Deis Potis asked, still think the Supreme Court is rigged? The Supreme Court has ruled against yet another of the president's signature policy proposals, and yet Americans will likely still maintain a warped partisan view of the court. This decision gave us very little in the way of a majority opinion, just a brief unsigned order. and a one-page concurrence from Justice Brett Kavanaugh,

but we do know that four of the six conservative justices voted against the Trump administration. My question now is whether this will be remembered as another instance of the Supreme Court standing against the president's signature policies or simply brushed aside when critics want to call the court partisan. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans have an equally warped view of some of the court's rulings.

The American people's partisan view of the Supreme Court is warped by the fact that it is continuously asked to weigh in on policies that belong in Congress's hands, not the presidents. In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said Trump's mail-and-ballot order dies. Monday's order explained none of its reasoning, but Kavanaugh wrote a short concurring opinion explaining his view that the effort to implement the rule at the last minute, given the chaos that this will entail for states trying to comply with new USPS standards for ballot envelopes at the last minute. All told, given that the EO was originally designed to create new mailability

restrictions without statutory power to do so, and given that the final rule doesn't even try to pursue any such important goal, it seems the more prudent result for the court to avoid the emergency step of overturning Judge Tawani's injunction. With more time to get things right, the USPS may well be able to get its rule in place for 2028. But once again, the collision between a recklessly overreaching Trump order and a recklessly overreaching and politically calculating rogue district judge has driven the court into deep jurisprudential waters on the limits of the limits of its own legitimate authority that are poorly navigated on short notice. That's it for what the left and writer saying.

Now back to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. First, aside relief, in August, when the Supreme Court initially ruled that the states did not yet have standing to sue, I wrote that it was very unlikely that the Supreme Court let such a rule go into effect. I also acknowledge that, while maintaining optimism about what the court could do, we should be clear-eyed about what the president is doing.

Six years after he refused to accept defeat in the 2020 election, he's in the midst of a full court press to gain any advantage he can for Republicans in the upcoming midterms. He launched a gerrymandering war, tried to upend mail-in balloting, primary members of his party who didn't pledge support for a major election reform bill, and then promise $5,000 cash to voters if Republicans stay in power. Everything is getting thrown against the wall in the hopes something will stick. For now, this ruling means mail-in-voting won't be disrupted in a way that causes complete chaos in November. Again, my writing from a few weeks ago, quote,

The USPS is not designed to take on such work, especially not before the November elections. nearly one-third of all-American voters vote by mail, including President Trump, and the majority of them are Democratic voters. USPS would need to build a mechanism to manage all those voters, put teams in place to manage the data, and coordinate with states, and also ensure that states entered the required information for each eligible voter after USPS approves envelope designs to use in these elections. Then they need systems set up to scan, sort, and manage those ballots,

it's about 50 million of them, and then they'd have to tell voters how to receive a ballot, how to check if they're eligible, how to challenge their eligibility, and how to post-election audit would work. All of this would have to be coordinated nationally, so rules would need to apply equally to Oregon, where nearly every voter casts a ballot by mail,

and Arkansas were just 2% due. Also, early voting begins next month, and the USPS is currently managing a fiscal crisis, end quote. So that's why I thought it was insane, that the Trump administration was trying to push this rule through. In Monday's decision, Justice Kavanaugh left open the possibility that the court would consider such a rule outside electoral season, but he also concurred with the unsigned majority opinion

that the administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits. That's a big deal. It sends a strong signal that President Trump will have to find a different route to seriously reform mail-in voting, and that even outside election season, he would probably lose this case. Is it alarming that Justice Alito and Thomas were willing to allow the electoral chaos to ensue? Sure. Does that mean that a future attempt might succeed? Not really. The president is not taking the news well. It might feel like ancient history, but President Obama sparked a weeks-long news cycle by criticizing

the Supreme Court Citizen United v. FEC ruling in his state of the union address in 2010. He said that decision would open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. Justice Samuel Alito was seen on camera shaking his head and saying not true. Media outlets devoted days of coverage to the episode, with some slamming Obama for breaching decorum, sparking a debate about whether he'd crossed the line. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested after the fact

that maybe justices shouldn't even attend these events at all. Sixteen years later, this was President Trump's full response to the court's decision, which he posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning. Now, I'm just going to read verbatim what the president's Truth Social Post was. You might want to sit down because it's going to take a second. Republicans just got another bad decision

from the United States Supreme Court, the president said, 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. 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 Democrats on mail-in ballots a much easier thing to do, and now they have an open field to do so. 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. Their horrible decision on tariffs will be caused in the USA for many years to come, trillions and trillions of dollars. 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. 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. respect to citizenship in our country. The damage done to America is incalculable, and they know this, just as everyone else does. It is an irreparable and unrecoverable harm. 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. This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the radical left into making decisions that have set America back at least 100 years. 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. 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. 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 USA President Donald J. Trump. Now, of course, in today's distorted news cycle, this objectively more antagonistic diatribe will barely register. What's more, Trump has been dealt a hand most presidents would dream of. He's a Republican president with a six three majority of Republican appointed justices, which means several of those justices have jurisprudence, which are friendly to his goals. That three of them are justices the president picked himself

is a remarkable boon. That his party also controls both chambers of Congress confers a historic advantage Republicans haven't had since the Hoover administration, that the president so regularly operates without Congress and steps from legal to illegal territory so often that he's now become infuriated with the court is most remarkable of all.

Yet, still, President Trump is raging at his circumstances. As it continues to demonstrate, as many writers on the right observe, the court is a constitutionally faithful, independent branch. Not tangentially, the Trump administration is now zero and 24 in cases where it has tried to compel states to hand over voter files and information. I probably have more trust in the Supreme Court than any operating U.S. institution. That trust has wavered at times, but that's probably more about my own skeptical street than the court's actions. For all the hubbub about a corrupt captured court and all the obituaries pre-written for our country's rule of law,

this Supreme Court has now struck down Trump's mail-in-voting rules, birthright citizenship executive order, deployment of the National Guard in Chicago, attempt to bar counting ballots after election day, federal reserve governor firing, and most importantly, the tariff tool. Also, it is rejected a Missouri voting map that would have given Republicans an extra house seat,

left the E. Jean Carroll ruling in place, halted the use of the alienation. and Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans, compelled the administration to pay $2 billion owed for completing foreign aid work, and forced the Department of Justice to bring Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia home. It may seem like a low bar to clear

given our historic standards, but we still demonstrably have a fully functioning, independent judiciary and an executive branch that abides by its rulings. Amid the blaring headlines, we all endure daily. That's something worth pausing to appreciate.

We'll be right back. after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to hand it over to Russell Neistram to answer today's reader-listener question. Thank you, Isaac. Today's reader question comes from Zachary from Barden, Vermont, who asks. I often see statistics like 70% of Americans want universal health care and 85% of Americans want term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court. The claim is that the people are no longer being represented and are already. artificially divided. How true are these claims? Well, Zachary, despite the ever popular maxim, in politics, numbers can lie, and they do. To get to the bottom of this, let's peek under the hood of the

first example you gave. 70% of Americans went to universal health care. Real polls have found this, or are a result extremely close to this, to be true. In a vacuum, voters tend to strongly support Medicare for all, but that support starts to splinter once they're asked to consider raising taxes or removing private health insurance. In June, a U-Gov poll asked voters if they would, quote, support or oppose a national health plan in which all Americans get their health insurance from the federal government and private health insurance companies are eliminated, end quote. Phrased that way, only 52% approved. Separately, a Democratic political, research firm asked Americans for their opinions on a very specific description of Medicare for

all. Quote, would you support or oppose the U.S. creating a single federally administered health insurance program covering all Americans that would replace private health insurance, including employer-sponsored plans? All Americans would receive comprehensive insurance with no premiums, deductibles, or co-payments, and the program would be funded through significantly increased federal taxes, end quote. They found that just 40% said yes. Support for other policies, like term limits, isn't as variable between polls.

In this case, term limits consistently pull in the 80% range. Instituting them would come at no direct financial cost to the citizenry in specifying details like the number of years a lawmaker could serve had a negligible effect on support. So why doesn't this policy pass? Part of the answer is probably incentives. Barring a never-before-use process where the states can do so, establishing term limits would require a constitutional amendment,

a process that requires Congress to kick it off, and thus pursue a firm that would greatly limit its own members. With lawmakers serving much longer than they once did, members of Congress have a disincentive to vote away their ability to serve indefinitely. Topline polling can be misleading, but so can the assumption that the reason for gridlock is a deeply divided populace. In the end, two things can be true at once. Sometimes, so-called polling majorities masks small but significant disagreements. Other times, a consensus may be real, but our institutions fail to act on them.

Okay, with that, I'll be passing the mic back to Audrey to finish out the rest of the podcast. Thanks, Russell. Now are under the radar story. On Monday, a federal judge blocked a proposed Trump administration rule that would shorten the length of time that international students and non-citizen journalists could stay in the United States on visas. Under the policy, students, researchers, professors, and other academics would be allowed to remain in the country for four years, while foreign journalists would be permitted residents for 240 days. Judge F. Dennis Saylor the 4th found that the administration's rationale for the rule, alleged fraud by immigrants posing as students, was exceptionally weak and would not address purported instances of non-citizens

obtaining visas through fraud. The New York Times has the story, and you can find the link in the show notes. Lastly, we have our Have a Nice Day story. Tricoma is a bacterial eye infection that causes scarring on the inner eyelid. In areas with limited access to health care, repeated infections can lead to blindness, and trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide. But as of 2026, the World Health Organization certified the island nation of Timor-Leste as trachoma-free, making Timor-Leste the final Southeast Asian nation to eliminate the disease. Dr. Eliad Dosres Amaral, S.H, Minister of Health from the government of Timor-Leste, said, quote, this achievement was made possible by sustained national commitment

and the collective efforts of our health workers, communities, and partners to whom we extend our deepest gratitude, end quote. Good News Network has the story, and the link will be in the show notes. That's it for today's podcast. If you would like to support our work, head over to retangle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription, a podcast subscription, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We will be right back here tomorrow, but in the meantime, this has been editor, Audrey

Moorhead. On behalf of Isaac and everybody else, have a great day and peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Mall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Koback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.