The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has delivered a huge victory to President Donald Trump in his battle for election integrity.
It has allowed, for now, a plan to move forward that will mean the United State Postal Service will not handle mail-in or absentee ballots from people unless they are in a state with federally approved citizenship lists.
The action on Friday lifted a lower court’s block on the plan.
Trump’s order, “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” instructs federal agencies to develop state-specific lists of voters who are confirmed U.S. citizens, and it includes instructions for the USPS not to handle mail-in or absentee ballots from individuals unless they are on those lists.
Multiple Democrat-run states have refused the participate in the program, an obstruction that also was highlighted just a day earlier when Trump revealed that China had interfered in the 2020 presidential election by diving into millions of personal voter registration files.
He warned that hundreds of thousands of foreigners actually were registered to vote, but said the number actually was much higher because Democrat-run states were refusing to cooperate.
Meanwhile, Trump has been calling for Congress to adopt the SAVE America Act that would demand proof of citizenship for voter registration, and photo ID for voting.
USPS responded to Trump’s instructions with a plan demanding states to provide certain levels of security before it would handle the mail ballots, including providing lists of eligible mail-in voters and adopting specific USPS ballot formats and tracking requirements.
The panel said USPS is likely to win on appeal for two independent reasons: (1) the challenge is likely premature because it targets a proposed (not final) rule, and (2) even if adopted, the rule likely would not violate USPS’s 2021 settlement agreement with the NAACP.
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) July 17, 2026
A report at the Gateway Pundit said the result of the ruling is that the USPS policy remains “in place while legal challenges continue.”
“The ruling clears the way for the USPS to move forward with rules that force states to submit their voter rolls for citizenship checks if they expect the Postal Service to deliver mail-in and absentee ballots for the November midterms,” the report said.
Trump’s order tells “the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and the USPS to work together to verify citizenship and prevent ineligible voters from receiving and casting mail ballots in federal elections,” the report said.
Postmaster General David Steiner weeks ago told Congress the USPS will not deliver mail-in and absentee ballots in any state that refuses to comply with the president’s orders, and leftists apparently seeking to continue to have less-secure elections in America sued.
It was a judge hand-selected by Barack Obama, Indira Talwani, who blocked key parts of the president’s order, issuing an injunction, which the appeals court ordered stayed.
The ruling said the leftists filing the lawsuit had not yet demonstrated there would be immediate harm, a requirement for a stay.
According to SCOTUS Wire: “The panel said USPS is likely to win on appeal for two independent reasons: (1) the challenge is likely premature because it targets a proposed (not final) rule, and (2) even if adopted, the rule likely would not violate USPS’s 2021 settlement agreement with the NAACP.
