Obama-appointed judge extends block on Trump order to restrict mail-in voting for upcoming midterms

Another day, another single district judge deciding how mail-in ballots get handled nationwide, and once again it's a judge appointed by the same president whose administration wrote the rulebook Trump was trying to update. Indira Talwani didn't just leave her temporary order in place. She converted it into a preliminary injunction, which is a fancier way of saying the Postal Service's plan is dead for the foreseeable future no matter what happens in court later.

The actual policy question here is pretty mundane: how the Postal Service handles mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms. That's the kind of operational detail that used to get settled by election officials and postal administrators, not litigated into oblivion by a federal judge in Massachusetts. But that's where we are. Every attempt to tighten up how mail voting works gets treated as an emergency threat to democracy, while the people actually running elections at the state and local level get steamrolled by a single robe in a single courtroom.

None of this is really about postal logistics. It's about who gets to control the rules of the next election, and increasingly the answer is "whichever judge you can find who already agrees with you." Talwani had already tipped her hand with the temporary order. Turning it into a preliminary injunction was never really in doubt.

We keep hearing that this is about protecting voters. Maybe. But there's a difference between protecting voters and just making sure the rules never change, no matter who's asking or why. This case is headed for appeal, and it should be. Nobody elected Indira Talwani to run the mail.