The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a loss on Monday in siding against his party on voting, refusing to overturn state laws that allow mail ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. But they might simultaneously have given Trump the tools to punch a hole in the right to vote by mail anyway.
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That’s because they also released their long-awaited decision in Trump v. Slaughter, overturning nearly a century of precedent to determine the president can fire members of independent agencies without cause.
According to White House correspondent Jacob Bogage, one of the many federal entities that could be impacted by Trump’s newfound powers to clean house would be one with critical implications for mail-in ballots — effectively giving him a bunch of the control he was hoping to get out of the ruling that didn’t go his way.
“This also has big potential mail-in voting consequences,” he wrote. “It could empower the president to fire members of the USPS board of governors, the group that selects the postmaster general and overseas the U.S. mail system.”
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This comes as the current postmaster general, David Steiner, is already going all-in on a controversial Trump executive order that would direct the Postal Service not to deliver mail ballots at all in states that don’t hand over sensitive information about voter practices to the federal government.
A federal judge in Boston has already moved to block the enforcement of that executive order, but litigation is certain to continue in the case.
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