Washington: Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on the US Supreme Court, complaining that the justices he appointed in his first term had failed him, after the court rejected his attempt to curb mail-in voting at the upcoming midterm elections.
The conservative-majority bench on Monday (US time) struck down the Trump administration’s bid to require states to submit lists of voters’ names and addresses to the US Postal Service to receive mail-in ballots. Usually, the USPS – an independent agency of the federal government – plays no such role.
In a one-paragraph emergency ruling, the justices denied the administration’s request to stay a lower court’s decision, saying the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its legal challenge”. Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented.
It was the third time the Supreme Court torpedoed one of Trump’s signature policy commitments, after ruling his so-called reciprocal tariffs were illegal, and striking down an executive order to end birthright citizenship.
A furious Trump labelled it a “horrible, highly political, ruling” that would damage Republicans and reward the Democrats, whom he baselessly accuses of cheating using mail-in ballots.
“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!” he wrote on Tuesday (US time). “Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America.”
In a lengthy post on Truth Social that reflected on all three judgments against him, the president effectively accused the three conservative justices he appointed to the bench – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – of betraying him.
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he said on Truth Social.
“They are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal.
“It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.” Trump added that it was “not easy” for him to criticise the court so severely, but he felt he had to.
The president’s diatribe contradicted several of his own previous statements. For example, in February, he had lavished praise upon Kavanaugh after the justice dissented in Trump’s favour on the tariff decision.
In the past, he claimed that the court’s tariff ruling would not cost the US Treasury anything because the tariffs would be reapplied in a different, lawful way. Now, he says the court has cost the country “trillions”.
Monday’s decision means mail-in voting should proceed as normal ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. Time was a key factor in the court case and the decision, with some states already sending out ballots to voters.
Kavanaugh, who joined the majority decision to preserve mail-in voting, said in an additional statement that he believed there was a “fair prospect” the Trump administration could succeed on the merits.
“But applying the rule in the 2026 elections 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 elections,” he wrote. “For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay.”
It remains to be seen what, if anything, Trump can do before the election to curb mail-in voting. His attempts to get Congress to pass the SAVE Act have not succeeded to date, with several Republicans refusing to vote for it.
Meanwhile, some MAGA diehards, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, have been calling for the president to call a “national security emergency” ahead of the election that could not be challenged in court.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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