Obama Judge Slaps Down SCOTUS’ Trump Decision

President Donald Trump’s attempt to curtail mail-in voting before the midterm elections in November has hit another obstacle.

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United States District Court Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama administration appointee to the District of Massachusetts in 2014, issued a Temporary Restraining Order on Thursday night preventing the government from implementing Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting for another two weeks.

Talwani’s decision included a “satisfying slap at the Court,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said in a Substack post explaining the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision, and the subsequent significance of Talwani’s new TRO.

On the same day SCOTUS overturned the injunction, the post office issued its ‘final rule’ on the way it would handle and administer mail-in ballots.

The Supreme Court, the judge argued, did not take that rule into account when making its decision.

It was not supposed to be happening, given the injunction was designed to halt all activity toward implementing the Executive Order, but since it had been done anyway, Talwani encouraged the plaintiffs to refile.

The ‘final rule’ changed the case, Talwani’s ruling argued. The Supreme Court justices had made their decision on a “purely procedural” basis, determining the district court lacked jurisdiction to review challenges to the Executive Order’s constitutionality when the implementation of it hadn’t been finalized.

Now that the states had that information, they could determine how they might be materially affected and how it might also run afoul of the Constitution.

In these new circumstances, the judge asserted their jurisdiction to stop the administration from moving forward with the plan for the next two weeks, and possibly for longer.

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In doing so, Vance argued, “this opinion is a signal to the Court that this case too is one where the government must be reined in, lest the Court lose all authority to act as a check and balance on an out of control executive.”

She cited Talwani’s opinion, which outlines the ramifications of the Final Rule for states trying to administer midterms in just over two months.

“Through the Final Rule, the USPS is refusing to send mail ballots to eligible voters unless States or local election officials submit their mail ballot envelopes and return envelopes and receive advance approval from the USPS without regard to impending deadlines for the November 3, 2026 election,” she said, going on to outline how that would impact states.

Vance concludes that “the bottom line here is so grotesque that it’s impossible to imagine any other Justice Department advocating for such a plan, and any court taking longer than a few moments to reject it, as Judge Talwani did.”

In her decision, Talwani noted the “significant risk of disenfranchisement” the ‘final rule’ carried with it.

Another party to the case, the League of Women Voters, “face irreparable harm for the same reasons—because they live in states that will be unable to comply with these new measures, and so, their ballots will not count,” the judge wrote, painting a bleak picture of the midterms should the final rule be implemented before then.

The Supreme Court is likely to make that decision in the coming weeks.

“We’ve now reached the point in this case where the lawfulness—or not—of what Trump wants to do to our elections takes center stage… the Court will have to decide whether the Constitution, which clearly leaves this bit of election administration up to the states, still matters,” Vance said.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Talwani was an “activist judge,” and said she was “attempting to stop President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections.

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“We will immediately appeal this unreasoned and unlawful order.”