President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport, in Morristown, N.J., Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026, en route to return to Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
The Trump administration violated a preliminary injunction that bars the government from acting on President Donald Trump’s dislike of mail-in voting, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Tuesday.
The upshot, however, is minimal and unclear as the judge admittedly “imposes no remedy other than identifying the violation.”
The ruling comes amid a string of chaotic court and government actions — and after the League of Women Voters implored the same federal judge to slow things down in the case and to reject the executive branch’s “demand” for an immediate resolution.
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The group’s latest filing in the fast-moving litigation conceded time was important — but argued such a need for speed was due to the government pushing “for a major ruling on less than a day’s notice.”
The facts of the underlying dispute are clear enough: The Trump administration has long wanted to effectuate an executive order issued by the 45th and 47th president that directs the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to exert significant control over several areas of mail-in voting — and which would likely punish noncompliant states.
The League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups have, so far at least, successfully sued to stop that federal takeover.
Key to the litigation is U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, who oversees two separate lawsuits related to the USPS effort to perform rulemaking based on Trump’s order.
Over the weekend, the government noticed Talwani that such rulemaking has, in fact, occurred and is slated to go into effect this week.
The voting rights group, however, quickly protested that issuing a rule violates the injunction that bars the government from enforcing Trump’s order.
The government, however, was not acting alone.
On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the injunction issued by Talwani in one of the cases — one brought by several states challenging Trump’s order.
This shadow docket ruling was not a merits decision and conceded that it “does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful.”
In essence, the nation’s high court gave the government a chance to try to implement the executive order while appeals play out.
Meanwhile, Talwani already seemed inclined to agree with the League of Women Voters in their own, factually related — but distinct — case.
“Defendants did not file an appeal and did not seek, let alone obtain, a stay of the preliminary injunction,” the judge chided on Sunday, adding that the Trump administration’s actions had ignored “the confusion that the publication will engender.”
Late Monday night, armed with the conservative majority opinion, the Trump administration filed an emergency motion to reconsider the injunction — and alternately fashioned the request as a stay pending appeal. The government also filed a motion in opposition to the plaintiff’s efforts to enforce the injunction.
In its emergency request, the government demanded a ruling on its motion to reconsider from Talwani by 5:30 p.m.
“Absent relief by that time, the Solicitor General of the United States has authorized the filing of a motion for a stay pending appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit,” the filing reads.
On Tuesday morning, the League of Women Voters issued a notice of its own — telling the court that it would file its opposition to the government’s emergency motion by 2:30 p.m.
At around 2:29 p.m., the voting rights group framed the latest action in the dispute as a government attempt to bully the court, but a bullying effort without much in the way of legal support.
“[T]he USPS Defendants rushed to this Court and demanded that it reconsider or stay its injunction in this case by 5:30 p.m. today, threatening an immediate trip to the First Circuit if this Court did not comply,” the opposition to the emergency motion reads. “Lost in that haste are the rules of federal procedure that govern—and foreclose—the relief they seek on the timetable they demand.”
To hear the League of Women Voters tell it, the government is jumping the gun — and then asking the court to compound a mistake.
“[T]his Court lacks jurisdiction to grant the USPS Defendants’ stay pending appeal because there is no appeal currently pending,” the opposition motion goes on. “USPS Defendants never appealed.”
But the government’s motion to reconsider, in and of itself, is a valid request, according to the league. The group says there is simply no rush just because the USPS says there is.
“Because the Court need not be held hostage to a demand for a major ruling on less than a day’s notice, it should consider this motion in conjunction with Plaintiffs’ forthcoming supplemental complaint and motion for a temporary restraining order,” the opposition motion continues.
Talwani ruled quickly anyway.
Less than an hour after the League of Women Voters filed, the court gave the government its demanded ruling.
In her opinion, the judge said the government’s arguments “ignore the court’s explicit directive not to ‘initiat[e] or complet[e]’ rulemaking.”
“Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court’s order,” the five-page memorandum and order reads.
From the order at length:
To the contrary, Defendants feigned complete compliance with the California v. Trump injunction in their July 27, 2026 request to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay in that case. There, Defendants lamented the passing of “every day that the agencies are unable to take steps to carry out the Executive Order as to the November 2026 election.”
“The Supreme Court accepted the government’s feigned compliance,” Talwani observed in a footnote.
While Talwani conceded there was little for her to do at this point since the rule was issued in violation of the injunction, she gave the League of Women Voters an indication of likely next steps in the case.
“Defendants’ violation of the court’s order may ultimately inure to Plaintiffs’ benefit, where, now that a Final Rule has issued despite the pendency of the injunction, Plaintiffs could choose to file an amended complaint reasserting their current … claims, but noting that the issuance of a Final Rule is no longer hypothetical,” the order reads.
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