Supreme Court Lets Trump Mail-Voting Order Proceed, Columnist Says

KEMETIC MINDS — BREAKING NEWS
August 30, 2026

In a column published in the Daily Press on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, Erwin Chemerinsky wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting to go forward is “stunningly insensitive to the context,” arguing that Trump “is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so” (Chemerinsky, 2026). The column also appeared in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press under the headline “Erwin Chemerinsky: The Supreme Court needs to remind Trump he has no power over elections” (Chemerinsky, 2026).

Key Facts

• In one sense the justices “decided nothing,” the column states, “simply saying it was too soon for federal courts to get involved” (Chemerinsky, 2026).
• The Trump administration drafted Executive Order 14399, which orders the secretary of Homeland Security to create and send citizenship lists to each state, requires the U.S. attorney general “to prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of state and local officials or any others” who issue ballots to ineligible voters, and orders the U.S. Postal Service to pursue rulemaking to restrict delivery of absentee ballots (Chemerinsky, 2026).
• A federal district court issued a preliminary injunction against the executive order as “an unconstitutional effort by the president to control the states’ election processes,” and the federal court of appeals upheld the preliminary injunction (Chemerinsky, 2026).
• The House passed a version of the SAVE Act in February, but the bill died in the Senate; the act would require proof of citizenship at registration, photo identification at voting, a photocopy of ID for absentee mail-in ballots, state sharing of voter registration data with the federal government, and personal criminal liability for election officials (Chemerinsky, 2026).
• A 2017 Brennan Center for Justice study of 42 jurisdictions covering more than 23.5 million votes cast found only 30 instances of investigations into noncitizens voting, or 0.0001% of ballots cast (Chemerinsky, 2026).

Background: Two Executive Orders and the SAVE Act

Writing for the Daily Press under the headline “Court needs to remind Trump he has no power over elections,” Chemerinsky said the context for the ruling is Trump’s “repeated assertion that noncitizens are illegally voting in the United States,” a claim the column says contradicts studies concluding that instances of noncitizens voting are “extremely rare” (Chemerinsky, 2026; Daily Press, 2026).

According to the column, Trump in 2025 issued an executive order requiring states to verify a person’s citizenship in order for the individual to register to vote, and a federal district court “quickly enjoined” the order, explaining “that the president has no authority whatsoever over voter registration” (Chemerinsky, 2026). The column says Trump then turned to Congress and urged it to pass the SAVE Act, and that after the measure stalled in the Senate, his administration drafted Executive Order 14399 (Chemerinsky, 2026).

The Columnist’s Argument

Chemerinsky argued that the Supreme Court “could have and should have put an emphatic end to the president’s efforts to try to regulate voting operations that are legally the domain of state governments” (Chemerinsky, 2026). He said the court’s decision not to get involved failed to address a president attempting to exercise control over elections without authority (Chemerinsky, 2026).

What’s Still Unconfirmed

The sourcing is an opinion column rather than a court document, and it does not state the date, vote count, case name, or procedural posture of the Supreme Court ruling, nor does it explain how that ruling interacts with the lower court injunctions the column says were upheld; those details remain unconfirmed in the available sourcing.

References

1. Dailypress. (2026, August 30). Column: Court needs to remind Trump he has no power over elections. dailypress.com
2. Twincities. (2026, August 30). Erwin Chemerinsky: The Supreme Court needs to remind Trump he has no power over elections. twincities.com