Good morning, it's Tuesday, Sept. 15. The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration's bid to impose new USPS restrictions on mail-in ballots, ruling 7-2 just fifty days before the midterms.

Also in today's issue: EPA guts power plant rules, FEMA cuts ruled unlawful, Kennedy Center faces collapse, McConnell returns to Senate.

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If you vote by mail — and roughly one in three Americans did in 2024 — your ballot just survived a close call. The Supreme Court on Monday night blocked the Trump administration from enforcing new Postal Service restrictions on mail-in ballots, ruling 7-2 that the government was "unlikely to succeed on the merits." States begin mailing ballots this week. For tens of millions of voters across all fifty states, nothing changes. The rules you've used before still apply.

Here's what was at stake. A March executive order led USPS to draft a rule that would have forced states to submit voter lists to a new federal portal, use agency-approved envelopes with voter-specific barcodes, and given the Postal Service power to refuse delivery of noncompliant ballots. A federal agency that delivers your packages would have gained the authority to reject your vote.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the rule first, finding that USPS lacked authority from Congress to regulate election mail. The administration asked the Supreme Court for an emergency override. Seven justices said no.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted with the majority — but wrote separately to say there's "at least a fair prospect" the rule falls within USPS's legal authority. He blocked it only because election officials lacked time to set it up. That's not a rejection of the idea. That's a rain check. And we'll come back to that.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Alito arguing that courts and challengers ran out the clock on purpose. But the administration's own record undercut that claim. A USPS whistleblower alleged the agency defied court orders and rushed to build its ballot portal in weeks — not the typical nine to twelve months. And several Republican state election officials, including from vote-by-mail Utah, filed a brief warning that rushing these changes would "almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion." When officials from your own party are telling the Court this is a bad idea, the timing defense starts to crumble.

Here's the honest truth: the administration presented no evidence of mail-voting fraud to any court. None. The entire rule was built on a problem that hasn't been shown to exist at the scale that would justify rewriting how Americans vote.

Now look — the policy question of whether USPS should play a role in ballot security is a real one. Reasonable people can disagree about how to balance access and integrity in mail voting. But doing it by executive order, without Congress, rushed through courts with a portal built in weeks — that's not how you change the way people vote fifty days before an election. That's not a partisan point. It's a process point. And it's why the Court ruled the way it did.

Kavanaugh's concurrence is the sentence that matters most going forward. He didn't say the idea was wrong. He said the timing was wrong. That means a version of this rule — built with more lead time and a stronger legal foundation — could return after the midterms. The question isn't whether the administration will try again to regulate mail-in voting. It's whether they'll try with enough runway to survive the next court challenge. That vote to watch: October oral arguments on the underlying case, where the justices will decide whether USPS actually has the statutory power the administration claims.

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EPA guts power plant climate rules. Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday signed the final repeal of Biden-era standards that would have required existing coal plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032 or shut down. The agency went further, proposing to erase greenhouse gas findings for fossil fuel plants entirely — removing the legal basis for any future emissions limits under the Clean Air Act. Power plants are the largest industrial source of U.S. carbon emissions. No federal cap on those emissions now exists. The NRDC, a major environmental group, said it would file suit immediately. This follows the EPA's earlier repeal of vehicle emissions standards — a methodical rollback of federal climate policy.

FEMA cuts ruled unlawful. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration broke the law when the Department of Homeland Security directed FEMA to slash its workforce from roughly 23,000 to about 11,500 employees. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found the plan violated a post-Katrina law that bars DHS from significantly reducing FEMA's functions. She wrote that the 50% staffing target "appears as if pulled from thin air" and that FEMA's own supervisors had objected. Illston also faulted senior officials for using the Signal messaging app with auto-delete timers during the case — and ruled she would presume the lost messages were unfavorable to the government. The ruling came during peak Atlantic hurricane season. Both sides must report to the court by October 9.

Kennedy Center faces collapse. The center's board on Monday released draft resolutions warning the performing arts venue faces "certain financial collapse" and cannot meet payroll "within a matter of weeks." The filings state that President Trump — who serves as the center's chairman — has offered to raise the funds, but only if his name is placed on the building in exterior marble. The board proposed ten inscription options, including "Renovation and endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump." A CNN report noted that ticket sales and events cratered after Trump installed loyalists on the board — suggesting the financial decline the resolutions now cite was partly self-inflicted. The Washington National Opera has already left the venue. A court hearing is set for Tuesday.

McConnell returns to Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell, the 84-year-old Kentucky Republican and longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, cast his first vote Monday after a three-month absence following a fall at his home in June. He arrived in a wheelchair and voted to advance a judicial nomination, saying "lingering effects of childhood polio" had complicated his recovery. McConnell is retiring after this term. His return came as the Senate agreed to schedule a vote by October 2 on a House-passed measure directing the president to withdraw forces from Iran — a resolution McConnell has long opposed. In a 53-47 Senate where several Republicans have crossed party lines on Iran votes, his presence restores a reliably hawkish vote on national security.

The number of disaster-response positions the Trump administration targeted for elimination at FEMA, from a workforce of roughly 23,000. A federal judge called the staffing goal "pulled from thin air" and ruled the plan unlawful — during peak hurricane season.

P.S. Should USPS have any role in regulating mail ballots? Hit Reply — one word is enough.