Trump slams his Supreme Court appointees after they blocked his mail ballot rule

President Donald Trump attacked his three Supreme Court appointees on Tuesday after a majority of the court, apparently including all three of his nominees, voted to block a U.S. Postal Service mail ballot rule from taking effect before November's midterm 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 a Truth Social post Tuesday.

On Monday, the Supreme Court turned down the administration's emergency request to unblock the USPS rule, concluding that the government had not shown it was "unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge," according to CNBC. Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented, strongly suggesting a 7-2 decision — meaning Trump's three appointees, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, joined the majority alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberal justices.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurrence acknowledging "there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority," yet concluded that moving forward with it at this stage "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." The court's order is limited in scope, shielding only the November elections from the rule — leaving open the question of whether it could be enforced in future election cycles.

Trump praised Justices Alito and Thomas for their dissent, calling them "legends," while declaring that the ruling was "a big loss for Republicans, and America itself."

The USPS rule, which grew out of a March executive order Trump signed, would have compelled states to hand over voter lists and meet specific requirements for ballot envelope markings and bar codes, according to NPR. Trump has said the rule was intended to prevent illegal voting by non-citizens, though his administration provided courts with no evidence of mail-voting fraud.

The decision comes less than two months before Election Day, with Republicans defending slim majorities in both the House and Senate. Mail ballots were already being cast in a number of states — among them Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — by the time the court acted, according to NPR.

The case has a longer legal history: a federal judge in Boston, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, issued a temporary restraining order in late August blocking the USPS regulations, finding that challengers had a strong likelihood of prevailing and that compliance before November would be "practically impossible." A coalition of roughly two dozen Democratic-led states and organizations including the League of Women Voters sued to challenge the rule.

Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, issued a statement arguing that the agency's proper role is mail delivery, not setting election policy: "The Postal Service exists to deliver Americans' mail — not to rewrite election rules, demand voters' personal information, or decide which ballots make it through the system." New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose state was among the plaintiffs, said she was "truly relieved" by the ruling.