Trump calls Supreme Court mail ballot ruling 'big loss for Republicans'

President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted the Supreme Court for blocking a new controversial U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots from being used for the upcoming midterm elections after critics warned it would make voting difficult for many people.

"Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court, one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting 'disaster,'" Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

"It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left 'Dumocrats,' on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do," Trump said, a day after the Supreme Court decision.

Trump's fellow Republicans are trying to retain their slim majorities in both chambers of Congress in November's elections.

Trump also harshly criticized his three Supreme Court appointees for apparently joining with all three liberal justices, plus Chief Justice John Roberts, on Monday in leaving in place a Boston federal district court judge's injunction preventing the Postal Service rule from being applied to ballots mailed in for November's elections.

"These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings," Trump wrote in his post.

One of Trump's appointees who agreed to block the rule for now, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote in a concurrence Monday that there is "a fair prospect" the Postal Service rule might ultimately be found to be legal.

But Kavanaugh added that "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."

Trump's other two appointees are Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

In February, when Gorsuch and Barrett had joined their fellow conservative Roberts and the three liberal justices in a majority ruling against Trump's wide-ranging tariffs on imports, the president called their votes "an embarrassment to their families, to one another."

In June, Barrett joined with other justices to block Trump's executive order that aimed to undo automatic birthright citizenship for children born to many immigrants. Kavanaugh separately agreed the order was unlawful, but because it conflicted with a federal law, not on the constitutional grounds cited by the majority.

In his post Tuesday, Trump noted both the tariff and birthright citizenship ruling.

"Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America," the president wrote. "Their horrible decision on Tariffs will be costing the U.S.A., for many years to come, Trillions and Trillions of Dollars."

"Likewise, the Supreme Court's Decision on Birthright Citizenship is a complete and total disaster for America, and has already led to massive corruption with respect to 'citizenship' in our Country," Trump said.

Monday's majority decision by the Supreme Court was unsigned, and only Kavanaugh wrote a separate, brief concurrence. The majority in its decision said the Trump administration "is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the" preliminary injunction

The fact that only two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented implies a 7-2 vote to block the Postal Service rule.

Trump praised Alito and Thomas for their dissent, calling them "legends."

The Postal Service rule, which was issued in late August, implemented an executive order on mail-in ballots issued by Trump in March.

The rule set new standards for ballot envelopes and required states to enter information about voters and ballot envelopes into a Postal Service portal.