The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it enforce an executive order that would restrict mail-in voting, after a federal appeals court kept the order blocked in nearly half the states just months before the November midterm elections.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that a Massachusetts federal judge acted too soon when she struck down key parts of the order, which blocked federal agencies from carrying it out in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Sauer said the order only directs agencies to study changes and has not yet produced a final rule, so no state has suffered harm. 

“The district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” he wrote. He asked the court to pause the injunction while the case moves through the appeals court, and to grant an immediate stay in the meantime.

President Donald Trump signed an order in March that directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed U.S. citizens in each state and send them to election officials, along with directing the U.S. Postal Service to draft rules on mail-in and absentee ballots. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued three days after Trump signed the order, arguing the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, power over elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in June that the administration lacked power to build its own citizen-voter database and that the Postal Service could not impose new rules on states’ mail ballots by itself. She also found the order’s enforcement language amounted to an improper threat against local election officials. 

In Monday’s filing, the administration leaned on a 2020 case, Trump v. New York, in which the justices threw out a challenge to a separate Trump order on census counts because it was too soon to know how agencies would carry it out. Sauer argued the same logic applies here. The order tells agencies to act only “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law.” That wording, he said, means the Postal Service and Homeland Security could still drop or narrow the changes once they finish reviewing public comments and checking what the law allows.

The filing follows a string of fights over how the 2026 midterms will run. Earlier this month, Trump gave a prime-time address reviving his claim that the 2020 election was rigged, this time pointing to China, without providing any new evidence.

The filing also follows a Supreme Court ruling in late June that let states keep counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day if postmarked on time. 

You can read the full filing below. 

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Colorado Governor Jared Polis has commuted the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County election clerk who was sentenced last year to serve nine years in state prison for carrying out one of the most serious election-related data breaches in U.S. history.

Peters was arrested in 2021, accused of abusing her position as clerk to break into Mesa County election facilities under false pretenses, steal election and voting machine data and share them with allies of President Donald Trump in a quixotic quest to prove he won the 2020 presidential election.

Peters has served less than a year and a half of a nine-year prison sentence handed down last year by a judge after she was convicted of using another Mesa County resident’s identity to enter county election facilities, where she stole voting data from the 2020 election and shared it with Trump allies online.

Peters hoped the data would show that Trump actually won the state in 2020. It did not. Election and cybersecurity experts have said Peters’ actions were a serious breach of election data, while Mesa County officials say it has cost them millions of dollars to deal with the legal fallout while Peters ran for higher office in 2022.

In handing down her nine-year prison sentence, Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters a “charlatan” and deserved a longer punishment because “I’m convinced you’d do it all over again.”

But for months, Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis has hinted at pardoning or commuting her sentence,  claiming that it was overly harsh for her crimes.

Trump has attempted to pressure state officials to pardon or commute Peters’ sentence. Because Peters was convicted of state crimes, she could be freed by a federal pardon alone, though Trump tried that as well.

In the past, Polis has claimed that he would only grant clemency to Peters if she showed remorse for her crimes. However, Peters’ own community and neighbors in Mesa County testified at her sentencing hearing last year that she has been largely unrepentant even after she was arrested and charged.

A review of dozens of Polis pardons and commutations as Colorado Governor by Denver news affiliate KUSA shows that Polis has never previously pardoned or commuted the sentence of a prisoner who did not openly express remorse for their crimes. Polis claimed in an interview with the outlet that Peters expressed regret.

Polis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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