U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani — an Obama appointee sitting in Boston federal court — issued a nine-page order on Wednesday lifting her own injunction against President Trump's executive order on mail-in voting. She wrote that she was "compelled" to do so.
An Obama judge, compelled to side with Trump. Twice in one week.
Two days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow the executive order to take effect while litigation continues. That Monday decision cleared the path, and Judge Talwani followed it — not because she wanted to, but because she had to. As the Daily Wire reported, Trump has now secured back-to-back legal victories in the fight over mail-in ballot rules ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The executive order, signed in March 2026, does something straightforward that Democrats have fought against for years: it verifies that the person casting a mail-in ballot is actually an American citizen. Under the order, DHS is directed to create "State Citizenship Lists" that identify U.S. citizens eligible to vote. The U.S. Postal Service is required to route mail-in ballots through a federal portal where election officials must submit voter names, addresses, and ballot-envelope barcodes. Ballots that don't comply get rejected and returned.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis called it "a major win for the security of American elections." She added: "These are commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders."
The Supreme Court, in its 6-3 ruling, left the door open for future challenges. "The Court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful," the majority wrote. "On that score, time will tell."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that "this is not a close call" and arguing that "the Government suffers no harm from an injunction limiting unlawful actions." It's worth noting what she's actually saying: that requiring citizenship verification for mail-in ballots constitutes an "unlawful action." Verifying that voters are citizens is, in her framework, the problem.
Democratic-led states are already filing a separate lawsuit to block the order. The pattern is familiar — lose at the Supreme Court, find a friendlier district court, try again. But the runway is getting shorter. The midterms are approaching, the executive order is now in effect, and the legal infrastructure to challenge it keeps losing.
The order doesn't ban mail-in voting. It doesn't restrict who can request a ballot. It requires that the person who mails a ballot is a verified U.S. citizen, and that USPS creates a chain of custody for the envelope. That's the policy Democrats are spending millions in legal fees to stop.
Back in 2020, the argument was that mail-in voting needed to be expanded because of COVID. In 2024, the argument was that any restriction on mail-in voting was voter suppression. Now in 2026, the argument is that verifying citizenship is unconstitutional. The goalposts haven't just moved — they've left the stadium.
An Obama-appointed judge just wrote nine pages explaining why she had no choice but to let Trump's order stand. The Supreme Court backed it 6-3. And Democrats are filing another lawsuit anyway.
When the backup plan to the backup plan is another lawsuit, the original plan probably wasn't about voting rights.
