The Supreme Court had a chance on Monday to let the Postal Service tighten up how mail-in ballots get handled before the November election.

It said no.

I'll do something most news outlets wouldn't dream of doing. I'll be as fair and precise as I know how to be.

The Court did not strike this rule down permanently. It turned away the administration's emergency request to enforce the rule in time for the 2026 midterms, which are now just seven weeks away.

The lower court had already put a nationwide preliminary injunction in place. By denying that emergency application, the Court left the injunction sitting exactly where it was.

The order was unsigned and carried no vote count. Two justices dissented publicly — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — heroes of the Supreme Court.

The narrative is that this is a major loss for Trump and his administration.

I think it's a loss for the American people — particularly those who love our constitutional republic. .

Look at what the rule actually did, and then tell me which part of sounds unreasonable to you.

Both the outgoing and the return envelope would carry the official election mail logo. Envelopes would have to be compatible with the Postal Service's own automated equipment. Nobody is losing any sleep over either one of these.

But here is the part the left hates.

Each ballot would get a unique Intelligent Mail barcode tied to each individual voter, printed on both the outgoing and return envelopes.

State and local election offices would then also be required to upload each voter's name, address, and corresponding barcode to a new Postal Service portal. Postal employees could check outgoing ballot mailings against that portal before accepting them.

And a mailing that didn't comply could be returned to the election officials to fix.

The Postal Service was never going to be deciding who is eligible to vote. It was not going to be verifying anyone's citizenship. The states decide all of that and simply hand that information over to the USPS.

That was the operation.

That is the system that Democrats have told us is a form of voter suppression.

The abuse that happens within our elections gets much of its power through anonymity. Ballots collected in bulk, hauled somewhere, dropped off by somebody who had no business holding them in the first place. In some states, millions of ballots are indiscriminately mailed to a database of voters that hasn’t been cleaned since the 1900s. Sounds perfectly reasonable, right? …

I have never made an absolute claim that any election was stolen, and I'm not claiming it now.

What I have said, and what I will continue to say, is that we know this happens. We know that some degree of fraud happens. After all, we have actual people who have been charged and convicted.

The question is, and has always been, how big is the problem? Is there a larger coordinated effort by nefarious actors to try to undermine and steal elections?

I think we should all safely assume that people are trying to do this. Why wouldn’t they?

The question is, have the numbers been large enough to tip the balance in any election?

The folks most insistent that you shouldn't even ask any of these questions are the same ones fighting tooth and nail against these sensible rules.

Justice Kavanaugh shared some of his thoughts separately, and he gave a synopsis of what he believes the majority's thinking was in this case.

He said there is at least a fair prospect that this USPS rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority. In other words, he says it's quite reasonable to conclude that the government may be right on the merits of this case.

Other justices may not agree with him on that point. But perhaps the biggest sticking point is simply where we are on the timeline in comparison with the 2026 midterms.

The final rule was published on August 26th. The Court didn't rule on the emergency request until September 14th. Election Day is November 3rd, less than two months away.

So it appears the majority of justices simply concluded there was not enough time to implement this rule for the 2026 midterms.

So the next obvious question is, who is responsible for running out the clock on this rule? After all, Trump began the process of changing this rule on March 31st.

Justice Samuel Alito addressed this directly in his dissent. He noted that the Court spent from late July until the end of August drafting nearly 40 pages of opinions, and that the American people waited nearly another full month for the Court's decision on this issue.

He also pointed out that 12 states supported the new USPS rule and told the Court that complying with it for the 2026 midterms was entirely practical.

In other words, 12 states said they had the time to implement the rule. Yet time was the determining factor in the ruling.

So is Alito right? Was this a self-fulfilling prophecy created by the Court, motivated politically perhaps?

I'm not going to make a definitive statement on that, but I do believe it is completely possible.

It shouldn't matter what a justice's personal political preferences are. What should matter is their judicial philosophy.

Congress writes the law. The executive branch enforces it. The courts interpret it. It's been said that the Supreme Court is the voice of the Constitution and the statutes on the books.

If the justices are speaking for those things objectively, their personal opinions on any of these issues should not matter at all.

A justice doing that job right hands down rulings he doesn't like from time to time. Brett Kavanaugh said exactly that in his own confirmation: if he never reaches a decision he personally disagrees with, he isn't doing his job.

But activist judges see no such friction. They hear the case, they know the outcome they want, and they build the argument backward until it gets them to their desired conclusion.

We didn't lose this one on the merits, my friends. Kavanaugh all but said the merits were there.

We lost this case, just as we've lost many others, on a technicality. This one was lost on the available time frame to implement these rule changes seven weeks prior to an election.

The rules for November are now officially set. Like it or not, these are the cards we have been dealt.

I say this as a person who doesn't see eye to eye with Republican politicians on a lot of things. But the next best step we as American voters can take is to vote Republican in November.

And do it convincingly.

Let's go win this thing.

Conservative, not bitter.
Todd

The Federalist — Shawn Fleetwood on Alito's suggestion that the dissents were slow-walked on purpose. This is the piece I read from.

Supreme Court — The order itself, with Kavanaugh's concurrence and the Alito dissent printed in full. Read the dissent.

SCOTUSblog — What the denial does and does not do, laid out without the political framing.

NPR — The straight news account, including Kavanaugh's "arbitrary and capricious" language.

Federal Register — The Postal Service's final rule, published August 26th. Every requirement I walked through is in here.

Federal Register — The March 31st executive order the rule came out of, if you want to see where this started.

UPI — The war powers vote in the House, 220 to 204, with the seven Republican yes votes.

Axios — The other one from Tuesday: Al Green's impeachment articles tabled, 232 to 147, with Democratic help.

Seven weeks out, and the rules for November are settled whether we like them or not.

On Tuesday, the House passed a war powers resolution aimed at Iran, 220 to 204. Seven Republicans voted with the Democrats to get it there.

It's Seth Moulton's resolution, and it's the third one this year. The first two drew four Republicans apiece.

Thomas Massie has voted yes on all three.

Anytime this happens, you undoubtedly see headlines stating that Republicans are stabbing Trump in the back yet again.

While I largely agree with those sentiments, let's slow this down a little bit.

Congress has the power to declare war in Article I of the Constitution, and it isn't ambiguous.

The President is the Commander-in-Chief. That's Article II, and it isn't ambiguous either.

Those two things create friction, and the Founders knew it when they wrote them down. That friction is not a drafting error. It's the design.

So where does a short military action sit between them? That's the real question, and it has been a real question ever since the Korean conflict.

I'm not telling you Moulton's resolution is a good piece of legislation. I think Trump should continue managing this conflict with Iran as the Commander-in-Chief without additional legislative interruption.

But I also believe that sometimes there are legitimate political differences of opinion.

And a member of Congress voting to assert congressional authority is a legitimate act in theory, though in practice it may not be the right decision.

There's a lot going on here. And of course, as always, politics plays a central role.

But on this issue, you may come to either conclusion and not be attacking the Constitution.

Our system allows this whether we like it or not.

And while I think this is a mistake, I think the greater mistake would be to give political power to the very people who admit they want to completely abandon the Constitution altogether. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of them. Some of them are loud and proud.

I have concluded that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are two of the most incredible documents ever written by human beings.

And I can say that even when the politics of the day don't go my way. I wish more people shared my deep respect for our founding documents.

Today's clip isn't about the Supreme Court. It's about the people I mentioned at the end of the war powers piece, the ones who say out loud that the Constitution is in their way.

Democratic Socialists aren't hiding it anymore. They want the document gone and something new put in its place. Watch it, then send it to somebody who still thinks that's a fringe idea.

Tomorrow is Constitution Day, my friends, and we thought it seemed like the right time to mark the end of this special offer for new members of The Inner Circle Plus.

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