The MeidasTouch Podcast - Trump Faces Late-Night Court Setback on Mail-In Voting

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on a major late-night court ruling from Trump-appointed federal Judge Carl Nichols blocking the Trump administration's mail-in ballot scheme. Meiselas breaks down the 12:30 a.m. order, what Judge Nichols ruled, and how the decision intersects with a separate ruling from Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts dealing another setback to Trump's election plans. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A Trump-appointed judge issued an order at 12.30 a.m., absolutely crushing Donald Trump's election scheme with the United States Postal Service. A federal judge by the name of Judge Carl Nichols, who Trump appointed during his first term, made a ruling at 1230 a.m. Monday morning, this morning. and he blocked the Trump regime's mail-in ballot plan saying that the U.S. Postal Service lacked the authority to issue it. I want to explain to you why this was such a big deal and why I believe Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump-appointed judge, made this order so late at night or early in the morning hours, it was to send a message because here's the status,

of Donald Trump's attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service create a rule that would put a new barcode on all ballots in the various states that would match with Donald Trump's perception of who are eligible voters. And if you didn't match the Trump list of eligible voters, your mail-in ballot can get destroyed by the U.S. Postal Service, and they could basically destroy entire batches of 5,000 or 10,000 ballots at Donald Trump's discretion. How horrible is that? Now, you may recall that there was lots of litigation trying to block this. The Supreme Court previously held that some of that litigation was premature because the U.S.

Postal Service hadn't officially passed the rule, but the Supreme Court said, well, when the rule actually becomes official, that's when the injury occurs. then you can file lawsuits to the various state attorney generals. That's what happened. Then in a federal court in Massachusetts, a federal judge appointed by former president Barack Obama, a judge named Judge Talwani, she ruled against the Trump regime and blocked the rule,

but the Trump regime was saying, she's an Obama appointee, she's a left-wing activist, Antifa, she's the word. and the Trump regime was, in their typical whiny Trump fashion, attacking the judge, and then they sought an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to try to block what Judge Talwani did by blocking the U.S. Postal Service rule to try to allow the rule to still be in place. And the Trump regime's like, she's an Obama appointee. So the Supreme Court is sitting on a ruling right now as it relates.

to Judge Talwani blocking the U.S. Postal Service rule. But then, and this is why I think this is a big deal, because you have this federal judge appointed by Trump during his first term, Judge Nichols issued the order that's basically an identical order to the Obama appointed federal judge. And the reason that I believe Judge Nichols issued it right now is because what happened at the end of week, something else important regarding elections, right? You had Justice Kavanaugh at the end of last week

for the second time agreeing with the Missouri State Supreme Court that ruled that the MAGA-Trump gerrymandered maps in Missouri were unlawful and that you could only change the maps by a referendum, and the Trump MAGA crew tried to basically say, well, we already had the primaries. We got to use the unlawful map and you had Justice Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court twice. He only had a one sentence ruling, so you didn't get to actually see his reasoning, but he seemed to basically be saying even a Trump appointed Supreme Court Justice, Justice Kavanaugh seemed to be saying elections are states' rights issues. You can't trump it, pun intended or no pun intended, with your own perception of elections. it's what the states run the time, place, and manner of elections.

And so Justice Kavanaugh rejected the MAGA attempt to do the unlawful map. So I believe this Trump-appointed district judge saw, okay, this Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice made a state's rights-related decision as relates to this Missouri gerrymandering. So now, on the United States postal issue, it's a state's rights issue. And before the Supreme Court ruled, then the Supreme Court may rule. rule as early as this morning. I think they'll probably rule today or tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. As the Trump regime is doing this emergency appeal

to the Supreme Court to try to overturn Judge Tawani, the Obama appointed judge who blocked the US Postal Service rule, this Trump appointed judge, Justice Carl Nichols, is like, I'm basically agreeing with that same reasoning. So you can't blame it on an Obama judge. I'm a Trump appointed judge, and I think that this U.S. Postal Service rule is unlawful or improper. So I'm going to grant the injunction and block the postal service from doing this rule on the same grounds as Judge Talwani did. So let me read for you what it was that Judge Carl Nichols ultimately ruled, and I think this is a big ruling right over here.

Let me read it for you. He says, less than three weeks ago, the United States. The United States Postal Service adopted a final rule requiring that all absentee and mail-in ballots in federal elections, including for the elections occurring in less than 60 days, be transmitted only in envelopes, satisfying new design requirements, and be transmitted only to voters who are verified by the Postal Service to have been enrolled in a newly created, quote, federal ballot mail portal. As the government concedes the Postal Service could issue and enforce the rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so. But here, no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the rule. Plaintiffs have therefore demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on their claims that the issuance of the rule was ultra-virus, meaning out of bounds.

and the record otherwise weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief. Accordingly, and for the reasons discussed in more detail below, plaintiff's renewed motion for preliminary injunction against the rule is granted. And just to remind you, Justice Carl Nichols is a federal judge in Washington, D.C.,'s federal court. So you have Judge Talwani in the Massachusetts federal court, and you have Justice, you have Judge Nichols in the D.C. federal court. So Judge Nichols, D.C., Judge Telwani in Massachusetts. The order goes on to talk about the background of the rule and what was being done here

and what the Postal Service was providing. First, the rule establishes a new envelope design requirements for federal ballot mail. Outbound federal ballot mail is mail enclosing a federal ballot that is transmitted by an authorized ballot mail or second, the rule creates a new federal ballot mail portal through which state and local election officials must ensure that the individual voters who wish to receive federal ballots via mail have been enrolled with the Postal Service. So in other words, Donald Trump would basically use the Postal Service to have a Trump voter list. And if you do not meet the Trump voter list, you aren't on the portal.

So you get removed from the state list. Remember when Donald Trump was demanding that the states give him their lists? It was part of this plan. Do you see why he was doing it now? Because he wanted to look at the lists and then take out people from the lists but have some of the lists preserved. So then the postal service can deny the people that Trump wanted to kick off the list. That's what Trump was trying to do. Third, the rule requires the postal service to verify that each piece of outbound

federal ballot mail both satisfies the rule's envelope design requirements and is being sent to a voter enrolled on the mail-in or absentee participant list. The rule contemplates that this verification will be achieved in part by scanning the IMB on the outside of an outbound envelope and confirming that it corresponds to an IMB in the portal. So what Trump wants to also do, he's going to have his own list with his own barcode, and if you don't make his list, you get rejected. Even if you make his list, if he says you don't package it the right way when you gave it to the postal service, even if you're on the list, he can kick you out. And it'll just be at his discretion.

So remember the whole thing with like hanging chads, right, with George W. Bush, it was like, was it a hanging chat or was it not? Trump basically is going to say, I'm going to now evaluate the way you literally mail your ballots. and I'm going to decide if it's a valid ballot if you had to follow all my, you know, bizarre rules. So anyway, that's the procedure. Then Judge Nichols goes on to say, is there standing, right? There has to be standing. And Judge Nichols says, plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits.

At least some plaintiffs likely have Article III standing to sue. And it goes on to say to establish Article III standing, a plaintiff must show. he suffered an injury, that the injury was likely caused by the defendant, that the injury would be redressed by judicial relief. Then it goes on to talk about the different types of plaintiffs. Plaintiffs assert they have standing under at least five independent doctrines, political candidates, then it goes on intervener state defendant, state attorney generals, other voters, and it goes on to list the election officials, different categories of people and the court says they have

standing. Then the court says, this is Judge Nichols, the Trump appointed judge. Turning to the merits, plaintiffs raise various claims against the final rule, but the court need only reach one of them. The issuance of the final rule was ultra-virase. Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the claim. And it goes on to say, the key portions of the rule exceed any conception of the outer bounds of these authorities. Take sections 705.24.4 and 705.24. For example, together, those provisions establish a federal enrollment and record keeping system, the federal ballot mail portal, mandate that state election officials input voter and ballot identification information into the system, require the creation and dissemination of state-specific mail-in and

absentee participant list and make the distribution of outbound federal ballot mail contingent on compliance with this entire regulatory regime. Nothing in the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes the Postal Service to impose new election procedures on state election officials to create a data collection system for mail-in and absentee voters or to refuse the transmission of lawful mail because it fails to meet these data collection requirements. To be sure, the Act gives the Postal Service all other powers incidental necessary or appropriate to the carrying out of its functions, but the defendants have not shown how the creation of state-specific mail-in-and-a-absentee participant list or the refusal to mail envelopes

not registered on those lists are necessary or incidental to the specific powers delineated in the Act, all of which relate to the processing and delivery of mail. So just to break it down in a very basic term, Congress gave the Postal Service certain powers, and if it was within those powers from a prior law that Congress passed, that existed for some time, then the Postal Service can do that. UltraVirus, outside the authority,

the Postal Service has never been given the authority by Congress, to do these things. And ultimately, Donald Trump, if you want to do these things, have Congress pass a law. But clearly Congress doesn't want to pass this law. You control all branches of government unless and until Congress passes a law, you using the Postal Service to put bar codes and to have all these different procedures, which you claim, hey, it's just a way we're going to try to organize things. The court's saying BS.

You're not doing this in order to organize the mail. You're doing this to try to supersede, to try to preempt state election procedures, and that's not allowed. Now, a broader question could even be, does Congress ever have authority under the Constitution to even enact this? You would have a separation of powers fight at that point if Congress passed the law, because let's say Congress passed the law that enabled all of this to happen, the states would still make the argument. You're still infringing on states' rights. Time, place, manner of elections is still a state's rights function.

So you can't usurp. You can't take that authority, Congress, even if you pass the law. But you see what Judge Nichols is saying, we don't even have to get there. We don't have to even get into those issues. All we have to look at is what law is the U.S. Postal Service claiming this authority, Let's look at that law. That law doesn't say you get to do all of this and interfere with state elections. In the future, if there was a law that says you interfere with state elections, that could still be challenged on the basis of separation of powers.

But we're not even there yet. We just know that there is no law that enables this ultra virus outside the bounds. So where does this basically take us at this point? It takes us to the point where this U.S. Postal Service rule, is blocked in a D.C. federal court. It's blocked in a Massachusetts federal court. A Trump appointed judge and Obama appointed judge both agree the postal service rule to try to tamper with and manipulate the postal service and the election ballots is invalid. Now I think this gives cover to the Supreme Court to basically say, look, a liberal and a right-wing judge both agreed with

this. And what I suspect that what we'll see happen now, and I think we'll see it today or we'll see it tomorrow. And that's why Justice, that's why Judge Nichols wanted this order. And I think we'll see from the Supreme Court justices a one sentence, maybe a paragraph, just denying Trump's emergency appeal to enact the Postal Service rule. So big deal and a big deal that it was done at 1230 a.m. Let me know what you think about all. of this, appreciate you for getting in the weeds with me on the law. Thanks for watching. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Hey, if you want the full story, how democracy got here, and how we take it back, pre-order

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