In the weeks before the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court quietly but consequentially declined to let the Trump administration narrow the path by which millions of Americans cast their ballots. The administration had sought to use the U.S. Postal Service as an instrument of electoral restriction — a route that would have bypassed the legislature — but the Court refused to allow it to proceed. The decision preserves, for now, a form of democratic participation that has become woven into the fabric of American civic life, and raises enduring questions about who holds the authority to sha