This article was first published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This week, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s plans to impose new rules for mail-in voting for the midterm elections in November. 

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

For months, President Donald Trump has been coping with his myriad failures and plummeting approval ratings by trying to make it harder for people to vote his party out of power in the 2026 midterms. To that end, in March, he issued an executive order that would require the U.S. Postal Service to draft a rule that would upend vote-by-mail procedures in dozens of states, and effectively block the agency from processing ballots that do not comply with the rule’s exacting requirements. Trump did not attempt to hide his motives for doing so: Legal restrictions on mail-in voting, he told Republican lawmakers, would “guarantee the midterms” for a party that is otherwise in danger of losing them badly.