Alito Hints Liberal Justices Slow-Walked Dissents To Stop Trump’s Elections Order For Midterms

Did the Supreme Court’s liberal justices slow-walk their dissents in litigation over President Trump’s mail-in voting order to run out the clock on its implementation for the 2026 midterms? That seems to be what Justice Samuel Alito subtly suggested in the court’s most recent ruling on the subject. On Monday night, the high court rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court blockade on a new U.S. Postal Service rule. As described by Fox News, the new rule required election officials to “submit ballot-envelope designs for approval and upload voter information and unique tracking barcodes to a new USPS portal.” The decision — which effectively bars the policy from taking effect for the fall elections — was presumably 7-2, with Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas saying they would have granted the government’s request for relief. Aside from Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who said the USPS rule seems lawful but denied the government’s request because it’s too close to the midterms for election officials to implement it — the majority offered little explanation for its decision. Alito, on the other hand, penned a lengthy dissent (joined by Thomas) outlining several issues with the court’s holding. It was in this opinion that the Bush 43 appointee seemingly telegraphed some potentially nefarious shenanigans by the court’s Democrat appointees in the case. The apparent hint came in the dissent’s concluding pages, in which Alito refuted the alleged concerns that the Democrat-led states challenging the Postal Service rule had regarding “the practical effects of implementing the rule close to the midterm elections.” While taking “that problem very seriously,” the justice highlighted two key points demonstrating why it isn’t enough to warrant rejecting the government’s request to implement the rule for the 2026 contests. On one hand, the senior justice noted how not even all the challenging states agree “about the nature of these effects.” “Twelve States supported the rule below and asserted that compliance at this time is practicable,” he wrote. The other and more significant point raised by Alito, however, is that the plaintiff states and federal courts — including SCOTUS — “bear a substantial share of the blame for the rule’s timing.” The justice chronicled the timeline of how the challenging states immediately sued the administration after Trump signed the contested order in late March, and how such litigation “cast a cloud over the Government’s ability to issue a final rule.” He further observed how Obama-appointed District Judge Indira Talwani strung this lawfare along by “enter[ing] several injunctions months later prohibiting the Government from undertaking that rulemaking.” The Supreme Court later determined in an Aug. 24 interim ruling (6-3) that Talwani lacked jurisdiction to issue those injunctions because there were no newly issued USPS rules at that time that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge. That decision came with two dissents — one by Justice Sonia Sotomayor (joined by Justice Elena Kagan) and another by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (which spanned a whopping 23 pages). In SCOTUS’s interim ruling on elections EO, Justice Jackson penned a solo dissent spanning 23 pages — longer than the court’s opinion and principal dissent combined. Pretty clear the majority was not amused with her arguments. pic.twitter.com/ppFYspGm1c— Shawn Fleetwood (@ShawnFleetwood) August 24, 2026 While addressing these events, Alito seemed to suggest that the dissenting liberal justices bear some — if not all — of the blame for the Supreme Court’s delay in adequately resolving the issue. He notably observed, “Not only was the Government subject to months of premature litigation and a series of injunctions that this Court later determined were likely issued without jurisdiction, the Government had to wait nearly another full month for this Court to issue its decision so holding.” “Indeed, this Court spent from late July to the end of August drafting nearly 40 pages of opinions, including two dissents, despite the Government’s public notice that it would not publish a final rule while subject to the injunctions … and its representation that it had a strong interest in issuing its rule in early-to mid-August to allow time to implement it,” Alito wrote (emphasis added). “The plaintiff States cannot claim the timing of the rule tilts the equities in their favor when they, and courts hearing their claims, are responsible for so much of the delay.” So, did the Democrat appointees slow-walk their dissents in the hopes of running out the clock and increasing the chances that their conservative colleagues would vote to block Trump’s USPS rule on the eve of the midterms? If they did, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve engaged in such antics. In her bestselling book Alito, Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway revealed how the Supreme Court’s liberal justices dragged their feet on finishing their dissent in the court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the made-up “right” to abortion. After the majority’s draft Dobbs opinion leaked, the conservative justices and their families came under a wave of threats from left-wing anarchists. In an apparent bid to tamp down these threats, the originalist justices pleaded with their liberal colleagues to quickly finish their dissent so the court could release the full Dobbs decision. The left-wing justices, however, did the exact opposite. Sources told Hemingway that Kagan screamed at Justice Stephen Breyer for his apparent willingness to oblige the conservatives’ request that the liberals quickly finish their dissent. The Federalist editor-in-chief also described how the liberal justices included a gratuitous footnote in their dissent to an unreleased case that further delayed the Dobbs decision by several more weeks. A Supreme Court decision is not considered final until it is handed down from the bench. That means that had one of the justices in the Dobbs majority changed his or her mind due to the threats against them — or worse, if Kavanaugh’s attempted killer had been successful — the case’s outcome would have changed. The Democrat appointees’ purported willingness to drag out their dissents for political purposes was also reported earlier this year in the court’s landmark Louisiana v. Callais decision on race-based redistricting. Following the release of Hemingway’s book, reports emerged that the liberal justices were delaying the release of their Callais dissent to seemingly hinder GOP-run states’ ability to redistrict ahead of the midterm election cycle. Alito appeared to confirm as much in an order released days after Callais’ eventual publication. Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood 2026 midtermsDonald TrumpElectionsElena Kaganemergency docketKetanji Brown Jacksonmail-in votingSamuel AlitoSCOTUSSonia SotomayorSupreme CourtU.S. Postal Service