BREAKING: Supreme Court Blocks Trump Mail-In Ballot Scheme

0:01Oh, clothes shopping really isn't my thing, but I still want to look sharp and feel confident. That's why I use Stitch Fix, the OG personal styling service. No more scrolling through websites or wasting my day at the store. My stylist sends pieces picked just for me straight to my door. Free shipping, free returns, no subscription required. Get started today at Stitch Fix dot com. That's Stitch Fix dot com. Spotify Ads Manager makes it easy to create your first audio ad in minutes for free. Sign up today, launch a campaign, and start reaching your audience. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast.

0:43Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices. Every plan to just$15 a month. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.

1:10Ben Meiselas:This is the big one we've been waiting for, folks. Breaking news. The United States Supreme Court has officially blocked Donald Trump's election ballot scheme, whereby Donald Trump imposed a new rule on the U.S. Postal Service, which would have changed the way that states were able to handle the mail ballots. The states were going to have to comply with some Trump Postal Service rule that had a barcode that had to match Trump's voter list. And if the states didn't match Trump's voter list, he would disqualify the state voters. This was part of Donald Trump's plan to interfere with the midterm elections.

1:53Ben Meiselas:As I reported earlier today, the Trump-appointed district court judge in Washington, D.C., Judge Nichols made that order at 12.30 a.m. this morning, blocking Donald Trump's rule with the Postal Service. And as I explained, I think that he was trying to send a signal to the United States Supreme Court that a Trump-appointed judge from Trump's first term, Judge Carl Nichols, agreed with an Obama-appointed judge in Massachusetts. Nichols is from DC. He's a district court judge there. And the Obama-appointed judge from Massachusetts is Judge Talwani. She also blocked the Postal Service rule. And so the fact that you had an Obama judge and a Trump judge both agreeing, I said, I think they're sending a signal.

2:43Ben Meiselas:Remember the video I did to the United States Supreme Court that they were blocking it together and so that the Supreme Court should do the same. By the way, the video I dropped about an hour ago also predicted this outcome. I just, I released the video ultimately before the ruling was made. So if you were watching that video and you were like, okay, I get it, the Supreme Court is warning about that they're going to try to enforce states' rights over Donald Trump trying to have his own rule with the Postal Service that infringes on the state, time, place, and manner rights under the United States Constitution.

3:21Ben Meiselas:I released that video, and then five minutes later, the Supreme Court made this ruling. Now, the Supreme Court's ruling was a seven to two decision. There were two dissents. You had Justice Thomas in the dissent, along with Justice Alito. In the majority, you had Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, Although Justice Kavanaugh said there may be a fair prospect that in the future, a rule that Trump wants to implement may be something that could happen. But we're too close to the 2026 midterm elections. So I'm going to side with the majority. But even if you put Kavanaugh in the group with Alito and Thomas, that would still make it a six to three decision.

4:11Ben Meiselas:with Justice Coney Barrett and Justice Roberts joining the three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown, Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor. So you would have them along with Justice Roberts, along with Amy Coney Barrett. So you would still ultimately be able to have a majority in the future if Trump tries to implement this rule in 2028. Let's take a look right now at this order so we can look at it for ourselves. In the Supreme Court of the United States, the application for stay presented to Justice Jackson and by her referred to the court is denied. The government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the district court's preliminary injunction.

5:03Ben Meiselas:Remember, there was the district court preliminary injunction in Massachusetts, Judge Telwani. And then earlier this morning, a district court injunction blocking the Trump Postal Service rule in D.C. That was the Trump appointed judge, Judge Carl Nichols. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this court do not favor a stay. Justice Kavanaugh said, in my view, based on the briefing the court has received at this interim stage, there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service statutory authority. But applying the rule of the 2026 election would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the election.

6:00Ben Meiselas:For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay, but only Justice Kavanaugh said that. So in terms of other Trump appointee judges, justices who agreed with the majority, you had Justice Gorsuch, you had Justice Coney Barrett, George W. Bush appointed the chief justice, Justice John Roberts, and they sided also with Kagan, with Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson. So even if Kavanaugh gets peeled off before 2028 and sides with Alito and Thomas, who knows if Alito is going to be there or not, you would still have a 6-3 decision. Even if you lost Kavanaugh, you would have a 5-4 decision.

6:44Ben Meiselas:So this is good news, not just for the midterms, but this is also good news for the 2028 election when Trump tries to pull this scheme as well. It's certainly disconcerting, though, that you have Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Thomas and Alito still saying that they would, you know, the Justice Kavanaugh says, I'm not going to do it now. Alito and Thomas would do this now. And for people who purported to care about states' rights, The idea that they would say the Postal Service can implement a rule at Donald Trump's demand that creates a Trump barcode that supersedes the state voter rolls such that if you are voting in a state and you don't match Trump's voter rolls, you get disqualified from voting.

7:34Ben Meiselas:And also, if you don't match identically the rules that Donald Trump makes for how a ballot needs to look like, and it's like a complicated puzzle to actually vote by mail, the Trump regime tries to make their portal as complicated as possible and make the procedures to vote by mail very difficult, that Donald Trump can disqualify not just your ballot, but if you're not on the list or you fill out the ballot incorrectly, it would give the Trump regime the power to disqualify batches of ballots, 5 ,000, 10 ,000 ballots. They'll just disqualify ballots. So the fact that you even have some justices who would go along with that is deeply disconcerting.

8:21Ben Meiselas:In any event, this is a big deal though, because it was still a seven to two decision. Even if you lose Kavanaugh. It's a six to three decision, but let's just take a look to see what the dissent had to say, just so we can try to, I don't want to say understand, but we should know what their words are to see what they're going to say in the future as their argument. So you had Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, by the way, Alito was appointed by George W. Bush. Justice Thomas was appointed by George H.W. Bush. That's how far back that goes. And here's what they say. The court incorrectly denies the government's application for a stay of a universal injunction that bars implementation of a final rule concerning election ballot mail.

9:08Ben Meiselas:Some of the plaintiffs lack standing while the remainder are pursuing a claim that this court has recently called a Hail Mary pass that rarely succeeds. The government has made the showing necessary for a stay. So I respectfully dissent. Some five months ago, Donald Trump issued an internal directive to his subordinates mandating, among other things, that the United States Postal Service initiate a proposed rulemaking regarding election ballot mail. Just days after the president's directive issued, numerous organizations and groups of states led by California sued in the District of Massachusetts.

9:44Ben Meiselas:The district court entered a series of injunctions blocking implementation of the directive. This court eventually stayed one of the injunctions because the district court likely lacked jurisdiction because the suit was premature. Remember that ruling from a few weeks back where the Supreme Court ruled that there was no standing or justiciability because the postal service rule had not been implemented yet. And thus there was no injury that the states and plaintiffs face. The rule had to be implemented for the lawsuit to proceed. So when the rule was implemented, then these states and these groups filed suit because then there was justiciability.

10:23Ben Meiselas:By the way, I believe there was justiciability anyway, right? I mean, as an example I've given, if you're someone who in the past threatens to shoot people in the face, then you shoot them in the face all the time. Then you threaten to shoot somebody else in the face and they sue you to block you from shooting them in the face, the court shouldn't say, let's wait until you get shot in the face. Then you have your injury. As I argued, and as the states argued, the states were injured by the very process of the postal service rulemaking, because no matter what the rule did, it would injure the state's control over elections because the constitution provides that states control the time, place, and manner of elections, not the feds.

11:04Ben Meiselas:So any rule would be violative and threatening a rulemaking process violated the state's rights under the Constitution because it created confusion and the states didn't know how they were supposed to respond. Anyway, the Supreme Court didn't buy that argument, the one that I just made. I think they were wrong, the right-wing Supreme Court that is. But they said, all right, wait till the rules passed. The rule passed. Then these injunctions were issued at the district court level. Then it went up to the Supreme Court because the Trump regime did an emergency petition. That's what they lost right here.

11:36Ben Meiselas:I just wanted to give you the procedural background. So then it says, within days of the final rules issuance, the district court then entered into this temporary restraining order that's in place. Then Alito and Thomas say, to obtain a stay, the applicants must make a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits and irreparable harm. In close cases, we also consider the balance of equities. This is what Alito and Thomas say, The government's likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal. To begin, the district court issued a nationwide injunction based on claims asserted by several plaintiff organizations that likely lack standing.

12:13Ben Meiselas:These organizations first claim a direct organizational injury because the rule supposedly thwarts their ability to educate members about voting. So one of the arguments by these two right-wing extremist justices is a standing. Nobody can sue. Nobody has the right. You don't have, you're not really injured. They then go on to say, as for the plaintiff states, their claims are unlikely to succeed. They claim the rule violates the election clause. Article one, section four, clause one of the constitution. This claim, however, collapses into an inquiry about whether the postal service has statutory authority to promulgate the rule.

12:51Ben Meiselas:Even assuming the rule here is a regulation of elections, Congress may create such rules under the election clause. and by statute, it may authorize the Postal Service to issue such rules. Because litigants cannot convert claims that a federal entity has acted in excess of its statutory authority into constitutional claims, the crux of this dispute is whether the Postal Service has statutory authority to issue the rule. You're like, Ben, that sounds like a lot of word salad. It is a lot of word salad because these two right-wing extremist justices are trying to grasp at straws of how something that's clearly a state's right under Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 can be converted into just everyday rulemaking by the Postal Service.

13:37Ben Meiselas:As though, yeah, of course the Postal Service can change the way states do elections and then start to disqualify voters from mailing in ballots. You see what they're trying to do here? It then goes on to say, as to assert a claim that an agency exceeded its statutory authority, the challenger needs a cause of action, which is typically provided by the Administrative Procedure Act. However, Congress broadly exempted the exercise of powers of the Postal Service from review under the APA. It also channeled many claims against the Postal Service to initial review before the Postal Regulatory Commission, followed by a review in the United States Courts of Appeals.

14:19Ben Meiselas:These provisions tightly constrain APA review of the Postal Service actions. Let me explain what they're trying to say here. Because what the Postal Service usually does is deal with mail, Congress has basically said, unless you're so far outside the bounds of what the Postal Service is going to be doing, the Postal Service isn't subject to the same Administrative Procedure Act claims because Congress never envisioned that the Postal service would be used as a tool of an authoritarian regime to attack people's ability to vote, especially when Republicans profess to care about states' rights and elections are a major one.

15:02Ben Meiselas:So people said, let the postal service be the postal service. So the Trump regime tried to exploit that and basically say, well, the postal service has immunity. So we say they have immunity now to infringe on state rights of elections. And so these two justices are saying, well, we've allowed the Postal Service to do what they want before, to which my point is, and the common sense point is, yeah, deliver mail, not interfere with elections. What are you talking about? Now, from the video I made this morning, what did the Trump appointed judge in the DC district court, Judge Nichols says, well, we can still overturn Postal Service action if it's clearly, remember the word, ultravires, O-L-T-R-A, separate word, V-I-R-E-S.

15:53Ben Meiselas:It's Latin, so italicized, ultravires, so outside the bounds of what the Postal Service is supposed to do. And the Trump-appointed Judge Nichols said, yeah, this is so outside the bounds. This isn't delivering mail. They're interfering with states running of elections. That's the issue. And so Judge Talwani, the Obama-appointed judge, said that. The Trump-appointed judge in the district court in D.C. said that. And while the Supreme Court majority didn't give their rationale, other than what Justice Kavanaugh said when he concurred and said, I might be okay with this later, the implied rationale is that voting is a state's rights issue.

16:32Ben Meiselas:Stay the hell out. Exactly what I posted before was what the Supreme Court, I thought, was warning against in the Missouri state case where the Supreme Court blocked two attempts by the Trump regime and the MAGAs in the state of Missouri to impose an unlawful map after the Missouri state Supreme Court said, get out. We're ruling that you have to go through a referendum. You can't just go around the legal process. So as you then kind of read more of this dissent over here, they go, since plaintiffs cannot proceed under the Administrative Procedures Act, they must instead invoke an equitable cause of action.

17:10Ben Meiselas:Because such claims rely on judicially implied causes of action and may be used to do end run around statutes created by Congress that restrict judicial review, the court cases have strictly limited non-statutory ultra-virase review to a narrow set of circumstances. Crucially, the relevant agency action must be entirely in excess of the agency's delegated powers and contrary to a specific prohibition in statute. Such a claim is thus essentially a Hail Mary pass that rarely succeeds. And then it says, ultra virus claims are confined to extreme agency error where this agency has stepped so plainly beyond the bounds of its statutory authority or acted so clearly in defiance of it as to warrant the immediate intervention of a court in equity.

18:03Ben Meiselas:The Hail Mary pass, Alito and Thomas argue, is unlikely to be successfully completed here. The Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail. It holds the general powers to adopt, amend, and repeal such rules and regulations, not inconsistent with this title, as may be necessary in the execution of its functions under this title. If the questions of the Postal Service's power were before us in something other than the context of an ultra-virus claim, the government's argument would present a difficult question. But here, the question is different. In order to assert an ultra-virus claim, the plaintiffs must show that the challenge regulation of envelopes here is entirely in excess of the power to govern, collecting, handling, transporting, and delivering, forwarding, and returning of mail.

19:03Ben Meiselas:The same is true of the requirement to pass along information about each recipient of ballot mail. At the very least, the Postal Service did not act contrary to a specific prohibition, is what they're saying. So do you see what they're arguing? They're basically making an immunity argument by trying to say, because Congress said that the Administrative Procedures Act doesn't generally apply, you have to show that the conduct is so outside the bounds of what the Post Service does. And because the Trump regime is trying to act like all we're doing is putting our own barcode on. All we're doing is changing the format of mail.

19:40Ben Meiselas:And the states are like, no, you are giving yourself authority to delete and destroy ballots and prevent people from voting. And that's a state's rights issue. This isn't what the Postal Service is supposed to do. So anyway, I'm arming you and I spent all that time on the dissent so you can see the bad faith argument. but how they tried to use certain immunities that were given to the Postal Service to try to bring in this massive, massive overhaul and this massive corrupt scheme to block state mail ballots. The good news is, in summary, the Supreme Court has blocked this scheme, at least on a six to three basis.

20:23Ben Meiselas:But for purposes of this ruling, if you include Kavanaugh with the majority, although he concurred on different grounds, a seven to two ruling blocking Trump scheme, the mail ballots proceed as they should. That's a good story. That's good news. And on the heels of the ruling affirming the Missouri state Supreme Court that blocked the Trump MAGA scheme there, these are multiple good rulings preserving what little is left of what exists in our country, which is this midterm election process. So now it's in your hands, voters. That's where it's at. Hope you appreciated this analysis longer than probably some, but I wanted to give you all the granular details.

21:07Ben Meiselas:Thanks for watching. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million. We appreciate you so much.

21:37you