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US President Donald Trump has lashed out at the Supreme Court after it rejected his request to lift an order halting his planned limits to mail-in voting.
“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote in a lengthy post on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, calling it a “horrible, highly political” ruling.
“Certain Justices are petrified of these crazed and depraved Democrats, and are totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America,” he added.
Trump had sought to limit mail-in voting ahead of November’s key midterm elections, which will determine the makeup of Congress for his final two years in office, arguing without evidence that the system is susceptible to fraud.
In March, he issued an executive order directing the United States Postal Service to develop new rules that would prevent it from delivering mail-in or absentee ballots to voters unless they were on state-specific lists. The order prompted 23 states to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to block the move, which they called “as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court on Monday denied Trump’s request to lift an order halting his plan. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said there was “at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority” but that “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Civil rights groups such as the NAACP have welcomed the decision.
“Big win for voters ahead of the midterm elections,” the organisation wrote in a post on X. “Our country works best when every eligible voter can make their voice heard”.
Despite his opposition, Trump himself used a mail-in ballot to vote in an election in Florida earlier this year.
Explaining his decision to reporters at the time, he said: “Because of the fact I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida.”
“I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn’t be there, because I had a lot of different things,” he added.