Who Controls Your Ballot? The USPS Power Grab Heading Into 2026

Grant: Welcome to Power Check. I'm Grant. Maya: And I'm Maya. Speaker 3: And do we have something for you today. Grant: So here's the setup. Trump signed an executive order on March 31st directing USPS to build approved voter lists and to refuse ballot delivery to anyone not on them. Speaker 3: And get this, one day after a federal judge declined to block it, USPS published a formal proposed rule on June 2nd to implement exactly that. Grant: The timing there was not subtle. Speaker 3: Not even a little bit. So today we're walking through all of it. of it. Grant: We start with the executive order itself, three separate lists, DHS, states, and USPS each handed authorities they've never claimed before, and the Brennan Center points out the order never once cites where the president gets the power to direct any of it. Speaker 3: And get this, the constitutional side? Article 1 gives election authority to states and Congress. No presidential role. Courts already use that logic to permanently block parts of Trump's 2020. 25 elections order. Grant: Right, right. So there's live precedent here. Speaker 3: Five lawsuits are already filed, but Judge Carl Nichols declined to block the order on May 28th, ruling harm wasn't concrete yet since USPS hadn't implemented anything. Grant: And the NAACP filed an emergency motion on June 3rd arguing that USPS proposed rule violates a 2021 court-enforced settlement requiring ballot delivery to all. to all voters through 2028. Speaker 3: Plot twist. Grant: Yeah, exactly. We also get into why USPS is a uniquely tricky target here. The 1970 Postal Reorganization Act limits how much the president can actually command it. Speaker 3: And we close with our check or no check verdicts. I'll say up front, Grant and I do not land in the same place on this one. Grant: Dad, we rarely do. Speaker 3: All right, let's get into it. Cold open is first. Okay, so picture this. Your mail carrier shows up, ballot in hand, and just doesn't deliver it, not because it's lost, because your name isn't on a federal approved list. That's not hypothetical. That is what a Trump executive order signed March 31st is designed to do. Grant: And it gets weirder. According to Votebeat, this EO gives USPS sweeping new authority to regulate mail ballots, and on June 2nd USPS published a formal proposed rule to actually carry it out. This isn't abstract anymore, it's active rulemaking, right now, in an election year. Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay. The Postal Service is now deciding who gets a ballot, a function, Votebeat notes, it has never performed before. Grant: Right; and here's the structural issue that jumps out at me: USPS has always been the delivery guy; states decide voter eligibility, that's how it's worked since forever: this order flips that. Speaker 3: The rule, per CNBC's reporting, would require states to submit lists of everyone they're sending a ballot to: names, addresses, bar codes tied to each envelope. If your name's not on the list, USPS can refuse delivery. Grant: And a 2021 settlement already required USPS to prioritize timely ballot delivery through 2028. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is now in court arguing the proposed rule blows right past that commitment. Speaker 3: So USPS is potentially violating its own court settlement to implement an order that 23 state attorneys general are calling unconstitutional. Grant: The math on this gets complicated fast. A coalition of 22 attorneys general plus Pennsylvania's governor filed suit back in April, Speaker 3: Wow. Grant: Brookings published analysis calling it executive overreach that courts will likely overturn. Speaker 3: And a federal judge, Judge Carl Nichols, had a chance to block it last month. NPR reported he declined, saying the challenge was premature because the rule wasn't yet implemented. Grant: Which is exactly when USPS dropped the proposed rule one day later. Speaker 3: Wait, the judge says it's too early to act and then the rule lands the next day? Grant: You either see it coming or you don't. Speaker 3: So here's where I keep landing. A mail carrier is not a voter eligibility officer, but as of right now, the order says they kind of are. The bigger question is, does the president actually have the authority to assign them that job? Grant: So let's actually read this thing like a contract. Three lists? That's how the order is built. Speaker 3: Three separate lists. Yeah, walk me through it. Grant: DHS and Social Security compile a citizenship list for every state that gets sent to state election officials. Then states are supposed to give USPS a list of every voter they plan to send a ballot to at least 60 days before the election. Votebeat has been covering this in detail. Speaker 3: And USPS builds list number three from that. Grant: Right-the mail in and absentee participation list-and here's where it gets concrete. According to the Brennan Center's analysis, the order directs USPS to refuse delivery of any ballot from anyone who isn't on that list. Speaker 4: Wow. Speaker 3: That's USPS sorting ballots by eligibility. That is not a thing they've ever done. Grant: Never. The Brennan Center points out USPS has zero authority over ballot design, zero authority over voter eligibility. Their job has always been deliver the mail. Speaker 3: Which they're also not great at, but sure. Grant: Hey, I'm just reading the contract here. There's also a piece on envelope design: "The order tells USPS to set rules for how states must design mail ballot envelopes." The Brennan Center flags this specifically: USPS has never claimed that authority before. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Speaker 5: Okay, so get this—the stated reason for all of this is "non-citizen voting." Grant: Right, and Brookings actually dug into the numbers. Mail vote fraud across four general elections came out to zero point zero zero zero four three per cent., about four cases per ten million mail votes. Four per ten million. Speaker 5: The math doesn't work, Grant: and I think everyone reading this order knows it. So you've got a system being rebuilt to solve a problem that the data says barely exists. Speaker 5: And here's the thing I keep coming back to when I read this text: Grant: there's no clause in the order explaining where the President gets the authority to direct USPS to do any of this. So here's the gap the order has to cross. The Elections Clause (Article One, Section Four) says times, places and manner of federal elections shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; and then Congress can override by law. Mm-hmm. Speaker 3: That's it: Grant: That's it: states, Congress, no President anywhere in the text. Speaker 3: Right; and that's not like a grey area or a loose reading; the Brennan Center put it plainly: "The President's role in the Grant: And that scheme is signing or vetoing legislation. That's the whole job. Maya: Which means this order is trying to walk through a door that the Constitution never built. Grant: And the courts have literally said that out loud. In April 2025, when a judge blocked parts of the first election EO, she wrote, according to Votebeat, that executive regulatory authority over federal elections does not appear to have crossed the framers' minds. Maya: Wow! That's not hedging. That's about as direct as a federal court gets. Grant: Right? That's a judge saying, we check the historical record. Record, you're not in it. Maya: Now, I'll push back slightly on the clean framing here. The president does have real authority over executive branch agencies. You could argue he's coordinating federal resources towards election integrity. Grant: Okay, okay, but here's where that argument breaks down. USPS, Article I gives Congress authority directly. It's not just an executive agency the president can redirect. Congress built it, Congress controls its mandate. Maya: So he's trying to commandeer an agency he doesn't fully control on a subject the Constitution assigns to someone else entirely. Grant: Double problem. And we have a direct precedent now: the EAC, the Election Assistance Commission, Congress created it as an independent, bipartisan body. The president tried to order it around in the 2025 EO, court blocked it in April 2025, and then, according to the Campaign Legal Center, permanently struck it down in October 2025. Maya: That's not a preliminary ruling, that's a final judgment. Grant: Right. Maya: The court said permanently. Happily no authority here. Grant: And the Library of Congress' analysis of these cases put it in Youngstown terms: "The President's power is at its lowest ebb when he acts against congressional intent; that's the framework courts are using. Maya: So the "constitutional case" against this order isn't a theory; it already won once on the same legal logic. The question now is whether courts apply that precedent fast enough to matter before November. Grant: Which brings us straight to the litigation, because five lawsuits are already in play. And the judicial posture right now is complicated. Maya: So five separate lawsuits challenging the order, and then Judge Nichols says, not yet. Grant: Not yet. Which, okay, sounds like a White House win, but it really isn't. Maya: Right. Votebeat reported this May 28th, Nichols found USPS hadn't actually done anything yet to implement the order. No concrete harm, no injunction. Classic ripeness problem. Grant: The procedural posture is basically, come back when someone gets hurt. TERSE Maya: Which is the real problem when the harm is a ballot that never shows up before an election: you can't unring that bell. Grant: And Nichols himself acknowledged that. He wrote, "The court recognizes that USPS may issue a final rule that directly affects plaintiffs, and said they can renew their motion when that happens. Maya: So the doors open—wide open. This isn't a ruling on constitutionality at all—NPR was clear on that; it was only whether to block the order immediately. Grant: And then this is where it gets good. USPS drops the proposed rule the very next day. Speaker 3: One day. Grant: So the it's too early ruling is already technically stale. Speaker 3: Exactly. And now there's a separate case in Boston with Judge Talwani, and the states there have stronger standing arguments because the order directly binds them. Grant: Okay, but here's the wrinkle that isn't getting enough attention. The NAACP just filed an emergency motion June third, and they're not arguing the Elections Clause. Speaker 3: Right. This is a different thread entirely. Grant: They're pointing to a 2021 settlement where USPS committed to deliver all election mail without exception through 2028. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the proposed rule just blows past that commitment entirely. Speaker 3: So you've got two parallel fights. One is constitutional: Congress and states control elections, period. The other is contractual: USPS literally signed an agreement saying it wouldn't. You wouldn't do this. Grant: And the comment period on the proposed rule closes July second, the twenty twenty-six general election is November. Speaker 3: The math is tight. You know I track timing on deals the same way; if implementation outruns the legal challenge, you're managing a fait accompli. Grant: Which is exactly the pressure the challengers are under, and it opens a whole other question about whether USPS even has the authority to do any of this independently, or whether it's structurally insulated from presidential direction. All together. Speaker 3: That's the next piece of this puzzle. Maya: So here's the thing about USPS that most people miss. The executive order is aimed at an agency the president doesn't actually command. Grant: Right, and this is where it gets genuinely weird. USPS was deliberately pulled out of presidential control by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Nixon signed it. The whole point was keeping mail out of partisan hands. Maya: Exactly. Before 1970, the Postmaster General sat in the cabinet. Presidential patronage job; after the act the Postmaster General is appointed by the Board of Governors, not the President. Grant: So the President can't just call the Postmaster and say, 'Do this'? Maya: No, and the EBSCO Research summary on this is pretty clear: the act created a double layer; no more than five of the nine governors can be from one party; it's deliberately bipartisan insulation. Grant: So you have a Congress-chartered agency with a built-in partisan firewall, and the order is trying to direct it to make voter eligibility calls. Maya: Here's where it gets worse. According to USPS's own proposed rule language, the Postal Service would not be verifying whether individuals should or should not be included on those voter lists. Grant: Wow. Maya: They said it themselves. They have no expertise here. They're a delivery service. Grant: So we're giving the eligibility gatekeeping to the agency that also loses my packages. Maya: Yeah, the math doesn't work, and I think they know it. It's like trying to run a trade through a clearinghouse that isn't required to follow your orders. From my old Wall Street days, that's not a delay, that's a structural block. Grant: And this is the thing: the NAACP's emergency motion we talked about in the last segment goes after the contractual angle. But this is a separate problem entirely. Even if the contract argument loses, the independence question is still live. Maya: Two different walls to climb. One says you don't have constitutional authority. The other says even if you did, you can't direct this particular agency this way. Grant: So courts could rule on the Elections Clause fight and still have a whole separate USPS authority question sitting underneath it. Maya: Right; the President may have real executive power over many agencies, but USPS was specifically designed to resist that. Congress put that wall there on purpose. Grant: Nixon, of all people, gave us the structural argument against this. Fifty-six years later.--Anyway, the practical problem doesn't wait for courts to sort it out. Midterms are five months away. Some states start mailing ballots sixty days out. And the comment period on this rule closes July second. Maya: So the question isn't just whether the oversight machinery is there, it's whether it moves fast enough to matter before November, and that's exactly the corner we've painted ourselves into. Grant: Which is where we land next. Check or not check? So here's the verdict question, check or no check? Are the oversight mechanisms actually working? Maya: I'll say working, but dangerously slow. Courts are engaging, Twenty-three attorneys general are suing, the USPS rulemaking process itself creates a legal record challengers can use. That's the system responding. Grant: Okay, I hear you. My answer is no check, and here's the problem with working but slow. The Twenty Twenty-five elections, EO, ran through an entire election cycle before it was permanently blocked; then, the very day final judgment came down, this NEW order dropped. Maya: THE DAY OF. Grant: The day of. So the question stops being, "Will courts eventually rule correctly?" and becomes, "Is a slow moving response to a fast moving strategy functionally the same as no response?" I think it is. Maya: That tracks. And there's something else sitting underneath this. Ricky Hatch- A batch of the Weber County, Utah election clerk has pointed out that planning for a November election starts almost a year in advance. Mid-cycle rule changes don't just cause legal problems, they cause operational chaos. Grant: Which is the part that concerns me most. You don't have to win in court to win the strategy. You just have to inject enough uncertainty that county clerks can't commit to a mail ballot program. Confusion suppresses participation on its own. Maya: So even a stayed order, even a not yet ruling, does real work. Grant: Right. And the thing to watch, the real constitutional showdown, is when USPS finalizes that rule. Comment period closes July second. Some states mail ballots sixty days before November; that window is very tight. Maya: That's when the injunctions get relitigated. That's when Nichols has to decide on the merits, not just whether harm is concrete Grant: Right. Maya: yet. Grant: And at that point. You've got the Elections Clause argument, the USPS independence argument, and the NAACP's twenty twenty-one settlement claim all converging at once. Speaker 3: Three separate legal walls hitting the same door at the same time. Grant: The math of that at least I like for the challengers. Speaker 3: Check or no check, Grant. Grant: No check yet. Check possible, but November has a deadline the courts don't. Okay, so here's the one sentence version of what we cover today: The President issued an order telling an independent agency to gatekeep your ballot, and the courts are still catching up. Speaker 3: And that one day gap, Grant, between the judge's ruling and the USPS rule dropping, Grant: Yep. Speaker 3: that's the part that stuck with me. Grant: You either see it coming or you don't. And the check or no check verdict from both of us was not a clean answer. Speaker 3: Not even close. Look, oversight is moving, but November is not waiting around. Grant: Right. The real showdown comes when that rule is finalized and multiple legal challenges converge at once. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Grant: We'll be watching. Speaker 3: If this episode helped you actually understand what's at stake here, share it with one person who'd care. That genuinely matters more than any algorithm. Grant: Follow us wherever you listen. Drop a review if you want to help others find the show. Speaker 3: Thanks for being here. I'm Maya. Grant: And I'm Grant. We'll see you next week on Power Check.