US District Judge Carl Nichols blocked Donald Trump’s USPS mail ballot rules, marking the second federal freeze ahead of a Supreme Court decision.
Page B1From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 14 September 2026
Ruled likely unlawful, frozen twice, Trump's mail ballot order still awaits the Supreme Court's blessing
As it ran on the front
Here's how the days sit, in order, no editorial: A federal judge blocks the Postal Service from carrying out the president's mail ballot order. Days later, three judges on the First Circuit look at that block, leave it standing, and call the order "likely unlawful" — September 10th, that one, I have the date circled. Four days after that, a second federal judge, this one named Carl Nichols, sitting in a different courtroom, freezes the same order all over again — that's today, September 14th. And sitting above all three of those rulings, waiting, not moved yet either way, is the Supreme Court, which — as of this morning, near as the wire has it — is still deciding whether to lift a freeze. Which freeze, I'll get to. That's the order the days come in. I didn't put them in that order. I just copied it down.
There's a toll plaza on the turnpike by my house that's got three separate things that all have to agree before the gate goes up — the light over the lane, which is supposed to turn green, the gate arm itself, which is supposed to lift, and a guy in the booth, who's supposed to wave you through if the first two don't cooperate. Most days all three agree and you don't think about it. Some days the light turns green and the arm stays down anyway, and you sit there like the fourth thing nobody built into the system, waiting on the guy in the booth to notice you.…
…(cont) I bring that up because I keep trying to figure out how many separate things have to say yes here, and I keep coming up with three, same as the toll plaza. The judge blocks it. The appeals court leaves the block standing and calls it likely unlawful, in writing, those words, not mine. And a second judge, working off his own docket, freezes the same order again without — as far as the wire tells me — waiting to see what the first two decided. Three separate gates, and near as I can tell, none of them have lifted yet.
So here's my question, and I'm sorry, I know I circled back to it twice already: if there are three separate blocks on this order, and the Supreme Court's only agreed to look at one of them — "an emergency request to lift another judge's block," that's the wire's phrase, not mine, I read it twice to make sure I had it right — which block is that? Is it the one from before, the one the appeals court already looked at and called likely unlawful? Or is it today's, the one Judge Nichols just put up four hours before I sat down to write this?
I don't have the filing in front of me, and I'm not going to guess at what I can't see. But I know how my toll plaza works. The guy in the booth doesn't fix the arm. He waves you around it. And if the Supreme Court's request is about the first freeze — the one already called likely unlawful — then even a wave from the booth doesn't touch the second gate. It's still down. Judge Nichols put it there this morning.
Which one is the Court actually looking at — hold on, wait — the one from last week, or the one from today?
“Three separate courts already said this thing doesn't hold up, and instead of fixing it they're just running the clock until Election Day makes "still pending" work the same as "yes." That's the play — keep it in front of judges long enough and the calendar does the job the courts won't. The gate's down three times over and somebody still wants credit for the one light that might turn green.”
“Two federal judges hitting the brakes isn't a scandal, that's called checks and balances, everybody stays calm, the Supreme Court reviews it, the system's working exactly like it's — okay, three, it's three if you count the appeals court, but that's not the — look, the point is nobody's spooked by a calendar. Did I say spooked? Nobody said spooked.”
The receipts
A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on the Trump administration’s restrictions on mail-in voting, as the Supreme Court considers the case. Three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit concurred with U.S.
A federal court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration's request to reinstate an executive order that placed restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, arguing that the order is "likely unlawful." The US First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Donald Trump's mail-in voting executive order likely…
A second federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing President Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting, adding a new obstacle to the president’s plan as he awaits word from the Supreme Court. The high court was already considering an emergency request to lift another judge’s block — a decision could come any…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.