Judge blocks part of Trump’s proposed mail-in voting restrictions
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on June 22, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge Thursday morning blocked part of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting, marking the third time in less than a week that a federal judge has stymied the Trump administration’s attempt to increase federal oversight of elections.
Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued an injunction barring the Trump administration from creating a national list of approved voters eligible to receive mail-in ballots from the Postal Service, as well as new regulations intended to increase the Postal Service’s oversight of mail-in voting.
“[T]he Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone. … Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power,” Talwani wrote, in part.
Talwani said that the efforts included in Trump’s March 2025 executive order exceeded his authority as president and encroached on the right of states to oversee elections.
“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Talwani further wrote. “The President ‘plays no direct role in the process’ of appointing electors, ‘nor does he have authority to control the state officials who do.’”
Neither the White House nor the postmaster general have yet commented publicly on the ruling.
A federal judge on Wednesday permanently blocked an executive order provision that required proof of citizenship to register to vote and demanded mail-in ballots be received by Election Day. On Monday, another federal judge blocked a Trump administration voter-screening database, ruling that the government’s “haphazard” system unlawfully consolidated “the private information of millions of Americans” in an effort to purge non-citizens from voter rolls.
Prior to Thursday’s ruling, a different judge declined to issue an order blocking the mail-in voting policy because it had not yet been implemented. However, earlier this month, the Postal Service posted a proposed rule to enact part of the executive order, while Postmaster General David Steiner on Wednesday said that his agency would refuse to deliver ballots unless states turn over lists of voters.
Thursday’s ruling effectively stops that policy in its tracks, though the Trump administration is expected to appeal.
“[N]o law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS. The voting-related guidance currently issued by USPS is not binding on the States, merely recommended,” Talwani’s ruling Thursday said.
Former NIH Director Anthony Fauci testifies to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on July 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Republican senators vowed to vote next week on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer a barrage of questions at a hearing Wednesday about his role in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during the hearing before the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the committee chairman who has led investigations into Fauci, said after the hearing that he wanted courts to assess whether Fauci could plead the Fifth Amendment given he was pre-emptively pardoned by President Joe Biden out of fear of political prosecution.
Paul has long accused Fauci of deceiving Americans about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci said in his opening statement that he would refrain from answering questions under the advice of his attorneys. “It pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress,” he said.
Fauci said he testified before or briefed congressional committees over 200 times in his 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Given Sen. Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.
Paul focused his questioning on Fauci’s personal journal entries between December 2019 and December 2022, as well as the origins of COVID-19, but Fauci declined to answer the questions.
Over the weekend, Paul released a tranche of Fauci’s journal entries — a more than 1,100-page document — revealing his inner thoughts about the origins of COVID, a detailed log of events within the White House situation and press briefing rooms, and his myriad media appearances about the response to COVID-19 and other health outbreaks.
One of Fauci’s attorneys, David Schertler, who was sitting next to him, attempted to speak several times after Paul’s questioning was over, but the senator shut him down, saying the attorney wasn’t recognized.
“You were told not to sit at the table, you insist on sitting at the table, and we told you you would not be recognized,” Paul said to the attorney. “You are not invited here for testimony, sir. … Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, ’cause the judge would put you in jail. I can’t do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises.”
After about another minute, Paul called for security and Capitol Police had Schertler escorted from the room.
Republicans on the committee hammered Fauci over entries in his journal that they claim show he contradicted himself and sought personal fame.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sounding incredulous, said that Fauci lied to his own diary when Fauci wrote that he was never shown a March 2020 re-opening plan sent to governors by President Donald Trump.
“So I’m just simply asking you: Is that true? Did you literally lie to your own diary? Did you know of that letter sent out to governors about reopening county by county?” Johnson said.
Fauci again invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.
Other Republican senators, including James Lankford of Oklahoma, asked Fauci about the theory that the COVID-19 virus originated in a laboratory, but the doctor declined to answer questions.
In a December 2024 letter to the staff director for the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Schertler said Fauci has never characterized the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy theory but that the discussion around the lab-leak theory has been “rife” with conspiracy theories.
Democrats on the committee defended Fauci’s right to plead the Fifth and thanked him for his years of service. They used their time to condemn the hearing as a fishing expedition — and one that distracted the committee from more pressing public health concerns like the current U.S. measles outbreak and affordable health care.
“That’s what I wish we were trying to address in a bipartisan way,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said. “But instead we are here in an attempt to entrap you, because you had a distinguished career trying to put Americans’ public health first.”
Ranking member Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., decried the hearing as counterproductive, saying the attacks on Fauci would deter others from engaging in the work necessary to protect from public health crises.
“I think today’s hearing, unfortunately, does real damage,” Peters said. “It’s tempting to turn one person into the scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across both the Trump and the Biden administration were responsible for handling.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., referred to the pandemic as some of the “darkest days or times in our history” and said Republicans were attempting to “rebrand” Fauci as a “villain.”
“Dr. Fauci is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts — a campaign that has made Americans less safe,” Blumenthal said. “It is shameful that a dedicated public servant like Dr. Fauci has experienced persistent threats to his life since the pandemic because of the lies that are told about him.”
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
Vice President J.D. Vance takes a question from a reporter during a news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on June 18, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President JD Vance on Thursday directly contradicted what is in the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, touting it as a “win-win” and insisting Iran will only reap financial benefits if they “change their behavior.”
“They don’t get anything unless they change their behavior,” Vance said during a briefing at the White House Thursday morning.
That conflicts with what U.S. officials had said was in the MOU, which states that “immediately upon signing,” the Treasury Department will allow the export of Iranian crude through waivers — a financial windfall for Iran, which has faced sanctions for years. Vance digitally signed the MOU with Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf before President Donald Trump physically signed it Wednesday.
ABC News pushed Vance on the financial rewards that Iran is already receiving simply for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. As part of the agreement, the U.S. is removing its naval blockade of Iranian ports, and Iran will allow commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed after the war started, to be restored to pre-war levels. ABC News asked how Iran is allowed to sell their oil freely without making any new concrete nuclear commitments.
“They’ve made very concrete nuclear commitments. They have committed to the destruction of the highly enriched [uranium] stockpile that they have in their possession,” Vance said, adding that lifting the Strait of Hormuz blockade has promoted “the free flow of energy … across the world.”
However, Vance’s comments conflict with what the deal says. There is no firm commitment from Iran to get rid of their nuclear stockpile — just a commitment to negotiate “the disposition” of it over the next 60 days.
Also, allowing Iran to freely sell oil on the global market now is an economic windfall for Iran, which could generate more than $60 billion a year in revenue, experts told the Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, Vance defended the oil waivers by arguing the U.S. will gain insight into Iran’s economy.
“So by lifting the blockade, that’s the significant thing that has changed. And by lifting the sanctions, we’re actually going to be able to see a little bit where their financial system actually sends money and receives money. That’s a real benefit to the American people. And that’s really the only thing that has changed by the change in sanctions,” Vance said.
He also repeatedly stressed that U.S. taxpayer money will not flow directly to Iran — “not a single penny, by the way, from the United States of America under any circumstance.” But a final deal could still allow Iran to reap huge financial benefits, including the unfreezing of assets and a $300 billion reconstruction account for Iran — the details of which will be sorted in the 60-day period.
Pressed on whether Iran can be trusted to change its behavior, Vance asked “isn’t it worth trying?”
Democrats — and some Republicans — have expressed concerns about the MOU. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said Iran “took Trump to the cleaners” in negotiations over the MOU in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said of the MOU on Thursday: “Iran’s left stronger, we’re left weaker.”
“You know, I’ve seen skeptics of the deal. People say ‘the Iranians will never change their behavior.’ Well, maybe that’s true. And if so, they don’t get any of the benefits of the bargain. But isn’t it worth trying? Isn’t it worth seeing whether this incredibly weakened position that the president of the United States has put the Iranians under, whether that motivates them to change their behavior, not just vis a vis the West, but vis a vis the Middle East,” he said.
Iranian Supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Thursday that Iranian officials entered the agreement from a position of strength, portraying the U.S. president as having pushed aggressively for the deal out of desperation.
Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on March 04, 2026 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from arresting migrants at immigration courts, saying that officials violated the Administrative Procedures Act in enacting the policy.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California wrote in a blistering 71-page decision Tuesday that policies by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office of Immigration Review were “arbitrary and capricious” and violated the APA, and he issued nationwide injunction blocking the practice across the United States.
“Because the record before the Court demonstrates ICE and EOIR failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA,” he wrote in his decision.
The Justice Department attempted to curtail the request to only the Northern District of California instead of a nationwide block.
Scenes of migrants being arrested at immigration courts across the country, including notably in New York City, drew scrutiny from local lawmakers and advocacy organizations, who said migrants were often arrested after their deportation cases were dismissed.
Deportation hearings in immigration court are legal proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security in which an immigration judge determines whether a migrant should be removed from the United States. Often, an immigration judge will dismiss a case to allow the individual to pursue legal relief by seeking asylum, according to attorneys. Other times, DHS attorneys will request dismissals if the individuals are not a priority for removal.
In most cases, when a deportation case is dismissed, it is a positive outcome for a migrant. Immigration attorneys ABC News spoke with said the Trump administration has been using dismissals to detain people at immigration courts and place them into expedited removal without allowing them to fight their cases.
In previous years, ICE has prioritized conducting courthouse arrests of people who were considered risks to the public or were convicted or accused of certain crimes.
The Trump administration had argued that an executive order issued by President Donald Trump allowed for the agencies to enact the policy, but Judge Pitts disagreed.
“It is now clear that the lack of connection between ICE’s stated rationales for the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and the expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decision making but a complete lack of decision making. As the government recently revealed, contrary to its prior representations, ICE’s 2025 courthouse arrest policies do not cover immigration courthouses at all,” he wrote.
That is a reference to a case in New York, in which the DOJ notified a judge that it had been erroneously relying on an ICE memo to justify arrests at immigration courts, according to a court filing. In fact, the ICE memo does not apply to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near immigration courts, the DOJ told the judge in that case.
James Percival, the DHS general counsel, said Tuesday’s ruling is “anti-American.”
“When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen,” he said in a post on X. “A district judge ordering otherwise is naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.”
