The US Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail before November’s midterm elections, in a setback for the White House.

The justices upheld a federal judge’s order that temporarily blocked the US Postal Service (USPS) from moving forwards with new requirements for postal ballots.

Trump called the decision a blow to his political party. “Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

One legal group said in response that the decision would prevent the USPS from “sowing chaos in our elections”.

The ruling is unlikely to be the final word on the matter. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative, agreed with the ruling, but indicated he might later rule in Trump’s favour as litigation in the case continues.

Trump, who argued the rules would combat electoral fraud, signed an executive order in March that directed the USPS to deliver ballots only to voters on lists of citizens.

Legal challenges argued that the move violated states’ constitutional rights to run elections.

Election officials from 24 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia also warned that the proposed changes were not ready for implementation and could prevent ballots from reaching voters.

Meanwhile some Republican-led states, including Florida, Louisiana, and Montana, supported the president in court filings.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion that there was “at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority”. But he argued that “applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious”.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, also conservatives, dissented. They wrote that the challenge to Trump’s order was a “Hail Mary pass” that was unlikely to be successful ultimately.

In a Truth Social post, Trump criticised the top court’s Monday decision, as well as other key rulings against him such as striking down his executive order to limit birthright citizenship, and also a key element of his tariff policies.

“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!” he wrote, alleging some justices were “totally unable to show the courage necessary to save our America”.

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” the president wrote.

However, several states like Oregon, Washington, and Colorado rely heavily or entirely on mail ballots for their elections, requiring Republicans to use the system as well.

Seven Republican state election officials warned the justices that allowing significant changes to mail ballot rules so close to the midterm elections would “lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion”.

Local election officials told the BBC this week they were proceeding as normal but had begun drafting contingency plans in case the court upended existing mail ballot procedures.

The rule changes would have resulted in “thousands of people disenfranchised” in Cherokee County, Georgia, its election director Anne Dover told the BBC. The heavily Republican county voted 69% for Trump in the 2024 election, in which about 10,000 of its residents voted by mail, according to Dover.

Monday’s decision earned praise from legal groups who have challenged other aspects of the Trump agenda.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision prevents the US Postal Service from sowing chaos in our elections,” Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has sought to restrict voting by mail. While he himself has voted by post, he has long claimed this method allows non-citizens to cast ballots and is prone to fraud.

In March’s executive order, the president directed USPS to introduce unique barcodes on postal ballot envelopes.

State and local election officials would also be required to supply information to an online portal about voters who receive mail ballots.

Twenty-three states and Washington DC sued to stop Trump’s order.

The postal workers’ union also said clerks could not be trained in time for the election.

In court filings, the Trump administration maintained the new USPS rules were constitutional.

It said states “cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rule-making authority, conferred by Congress”.

Boston-based Judge Indira Talwani imposed an injunction on 4 September blocking Trump’s order. She ruled that implementing the measures close to November’s elections could disenfranchise voters.

Last week, a US appeals court refused to put Judge Talwani’s order on hold.

On Sunday, another federal judge, Judge Carl Nichols, ruled against Trump’s order.

Some states have already begun distributing mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections, which will decide which party controls Congress.

Some states that had not yet sent ballots had already printed their election materials, and changing their voting materials would have required starting the process anew.

“Hypothetically, if we did have to implement, it would have a huge impact, and it would be very costly. At this point, we already have our envelopes printed,” Josh Zygielbaum, the Adams County, Colorado clerk and recorder, told the BBC the day before the Supreme Court ruled.

Colorado conducts its elections by mail, and Zygielbaum had been creating contingency plans in the event its voting system had been disrupted.

The Supreme Court decision is not the first setback on postal ballots for Trump.

In June, the justices ruled that states may count ballots postmarked by election day, rejecting the Trump administration’s push to block votes being tallied when they are received after polls close.

Trump has previously made false claims that he lost the 2020 election owing to widespread electoral fraud.

Taken From BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yjpdy4gjlo

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : Military strikes, economic strangulation and an open-ended American deployment risk turning pressure on Tehran into collective punishment of ordinary Iranians—and dragging the entire Middle East deeper into war.
The United States and Israel appear to be constructing two arms of the same pressure campaign against Iran. Israel threatens overwhelming military destruction if Tehran again attacks it, while Washington is tightening Iran’s economic isolation and maintaining a formidable military presence across the Middle East.
One attacks the state’s physical capacity; the other squeezes its financial oxygen. Between them stand nearly 90 million Iranian citizens who will ultimately bear much of the cost.
Washington describes its strategy differently. The Trump administration argues that sanctions, blockade and selective military pressure are intended to force Tehran to change its behavior and return to negotiations. Yet the scale and duration of the campaign increasingly raise a disturbing question: at what point does pressure on a government become collective punishment of a population?
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has used unusually uncompromising language about America’s economic objective. Washington has launched an intensified campaign against Iran’s international financial and commercial lifelines, targeting shipping, aviation, technology, gold, digital assets and financial networks. Foreign companies and banks dealing with sanctioned Iranian entities face the enormous leverage of America’s dollar-based financial system.
The strategic objective is clear: deprive Tehran of revenue, foreign currency and international commercial access until economic pressure forces political concessions. But economies are not governments.
When oil revenue collapses, ordinary citizens lose purchasing power. When a currency depreciates, food, medicine and imported necessities become more expensive. When companies cannot trade, workers lose jobs. When banking channels close, families and legitimate businesses suffer alongside the institutions Washington actually intends to punish. Economic warfare may produce fewer dramatic television images than missiles, but its human consequences can penetrate every household.
That is why the language of economic strangulation is so troubling. Iran’s leadership may be the declared target, but Iranian families inevitably become part of the battlefield. A pensioner purchasing medicine, a mother buying groceries or a worker trying to support his family cannot isolate himself from inflation, shortages and economic contraction merely because sanctions were designed to influence his government. Meanwhile, military pressure is not disappearing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has extended major American deployments in the Middle East into 2027. Approximately 50,000 U.S. military personnel and 19 warships remain positioned across the region, supported by fighter aircraft, air-defense systems and other forces. The deployment unmistakably demonstrates that America is preparing for a prolonged confrontation. That creates an extraordinary contradiction.
President Donald Trump speaks about limiting military involvement and relying increasingly upon economic pressure, while the Pentagon maintains the infrastructure required for blockade enforcement, missile interception, protection of commercial shipping and renewed offensive operations. This is not disengagement. It is military readiness combined with economic warfare.
Israel adds another dimension. Israeli leaders have again threatened devastating attacks against Iranian military and other strategic infrastructure. After months of conflict, the danger is that the distinction between military pressure and destruction of the economic foundations sustaining civilian life becomes progressively blurred.
Recent American strikes demonstrate how quickly civilians can become victims even when governments insist that they are attacking military targets. Iranian authorities reported civilian deaths and injuries following the latest U.S. operations, including casualties associated with a reported strike near a wedding gathering. Washington says it does not intentionally target civilians and is investigating that incident. But for the dead and wounded, intention does not reverse the consequences.
The greater danger is what happens if economic strangulation and repeated military destruction continue simultaneously. Iran possesses one of the Middle East’s largest populations. It also occupies perhaps its most strategically consequential geography. The Strait of Hormuz sits beside its coastline, while American bases, Gulf oil installations, shipping routes and some of the world’s largest energy facilities lie within the broader theater.
Iran cannot match the United States conventionally. It cannot match Israel’s combination of advanced aircraft, intelligence capabilities and sophisticated missile defenses. But it can retaliate asymmetrically. That retaliation would not fall primarily upon the American homeland thousands of miles away. It would fall upon the Middle East.
This is the strategic nightmare now developing. If American and Israeli pressure devastates Iran, Tehran may respond by expanding attacks against military facilities, shipping and infrastructure throughout the Gulf. Iran could be destroyed while simultaneously inflicting enormous damage upon neighboring economies. Everybody loses.
The assumption that sufficient suffering will automatically produce a government favorable to Washington is equally dangerous. Iranian history should discourage such confidence. Foreign intervention helped overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. A quarter-century later, the Shah—Washington’s principal regional ally—was swept away by a revolution that produced a government dramatically more hostile to the United States.
Destroying today’s Iranian state would offer no guarantee that tomorrow’s Iran would be moderate. The opposite could occur.
If central authority fractures, organized government and conventional armed forces could give way to militias, underground networks and radical organizations. A centralized adversary can negotiate, sign agreements and enforce them. A fragmented landscape of armed groups may produce decades of asymmetric warfare. Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan should have taught the world that destroying institutions is much easier than constructing stable replacements. There is also a moral question America cannot escape.
For generations, the United States presented human rights, civilian protection and international law as essential elements of its global leadership. American influence came not only from aircraft carriers and dollars but from universities, technology, culture, diplomacy, alliances and the belief—sometimes justified, sometimes contested—that American power represented certain universal principles.
That soft power is an enormous strategic asset. Every civilian casualty, every image of devastated infrastructure and every Iranian family pushed toward desperation risks consuming another portion of it. The Muslim world therefore cannot remain a spectator.
Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan, Qatar, Oman, the UAE and other influential states should urgently seek an emergency session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The purpose should not be rhetorical condemnation. It should be the construction of a serious diplomatic initiative demanding both Israel and USA to stop this unfortunate war of choice otherwise face kinetic, economic, investment, trade and diplomatic offensive from all the Muslim states whether small or big.
The Middle East is approaching an escalation trap in which every strike supposedly justifies another strike, every sanction invites countermeasures and every temporary pause becomes an opportunity to replenish weapons and identify new targets. Sooner or later, somebody must interrupt that cycle.
If diplomacy fails and military destruction combined with economic suffocation, history may judge that Iran was not the only casualty. The victims could include regional stability, the global economy, America’s soft power and the possibility of a generation of peace in the Middle East.
The time to prevent that outcome is now—before pressure intended to change Iran ends up destroying far more than Iran.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The United States and Israel presented the war against Iran as an urgent campaign to prevent nuclear proliferation. Six months later, that justification has collided with an extraordinary move by the Pentagon: American officials are seriously discussing using nuclear weapons against Iranian targets.
Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed that nuclear use was discussed in strategy meetings, while Tucker Carlson, America’s most influential and resourceful journalist and podcaster having millions of followers across the globe has disclosed that nuclear options against Kharg Island and Pickaxe Mountain appeared in Pentagon slide presentations.
The contradiction at the center of the war is difficult to ignore. Washington and Israel argued that Iran could not be trusted with nuclear weapons because their possible use would be intolerable. If the same governments are now contemplating a nuclear attack to force Iran’s submission, they risk destroying the moral and strategic distinction on which their original case for war rested.
The United States and Israel began their campaign against Iran on February 28. Trump initially suggested it would take approximately four or five weeks. By August 28, however, it had reached the six-month mark, with no permanent settlement and no clear definition of victory.
Hostilities connected to Lebanon continued, negotiations stalled and Washington shifted the center of its strategy toward blockades, sanctions and threats against countries doing business with Tehran. Trump, who once forecast a quick conclusion, now says he has no timetable for ending the conflict.
The costs are substantial. The Pentagon has acknowledged more than 750 wounded American service members, while reporting cited by lawmakers puts the number of American deaths at 18. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate hearing that the war had cost approximately $37.5 billion by July, he demanded another 78 Billion as supplementary grant whereas the defence budget has been increased from $ 900 billion in 2025 to $1.5 Trillion in 2026. These figures do not include every indirect economic cost, replenishment expense or loss sustained by regional partners.
Yet the United States and Israel have also failed to achieve any of their declared objectives. Iran’s government remains in power. Tehran has not surrendered, accepted permanent disarmament or abandoned its regional influence. Preventing an opponent from achieving its central objectives can itself constitute strategic success. By that measure, Iran’s survival and continued resistance expose the limits of overwhelming military superiority.
The tactical-nuclear controversy did not arise in a vacuum. The Pentagon has acknowledged that it is reviewing American nuclear strategy and seeking a broader range of options for regional conflicts. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has spoken of providing more credible or “rational” nuclear choices. Admiral Richard Correll, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has discussed an escalation spectrum that includes the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange.
After conventional military operations failed to compel Tehran’s submission and depleted important American weapons stockpiles, the search for broader nuclear options strongly suggests that Iran is a principal—perhaps the immediate—scenario driving the discussion. The troubling implication is that nuclear weapons are being reconsidered because conventional force failed to accomplish Washington’s objectives.
Pickaxe Mountain must be understood in the context of Iran’s struggle to preserve its military and technological capabilities against vastly more powerful adversaries. The deeply buried complex near Natanz is commonly portrayed as evidence of sinister intentions, though no public evidence proves that Iran has stored a nuclear weapon there—or that it possesses a nuclear weapon at all.
Iran’s decision to place sensitive infrastructure underground is not, by itself, proof of a weapons program. After years of sabotage, assassinations and threatened or actual airstrikes, dispersing and hardening military and nuclear facilities is also an unsurprising survival strategy. Had Iran left every important asset exposed, American and Israeli air power could have destroyed much of its defensive capacity and potentially opened the way to regime change.
This discrepancy strikes at the foundation of the war’s stated rationale. The American intelligence had not established that Tehran possessed a nuclear weapon or had made a final decision to build one. Uranium enrichment, including Iran’s claimed right to peaceful enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is not identical to manufacturing a bomb.
The danger is that Washington may now be considering nuclear means to accomplish objectives that its conventional campaign failed to achieve. The term “tactical nuclear weapon” should not disguise that reality. “Tactical” describes an intended military role; it does not make the explosion humane, limited or reliably controllable. Such a weapon can still cause mass death, radiation exposure, environmental contamination and escalation beyond the region. Iran’s underground construction would then appear not as proof that war was necessary, but as evidence of why a weaker country believed concealment and hardening were essential to its survival.
The first wartime nuclear detonation since Nagasaki would transform international security. It could erode the already fragile norm against nuclear use and encourage other nuclear-armed states to describe their weapons as practical instruments of conventional warfare.
India and Pakistan have repeatedly confronted one another while possessing nuclear arsenals. North Korea has developed weapons capable of threatening South Korea, Japan and potentially the United States. Russia has issued nuclear threats during its confrontation with Ukraine and NATO. If Washington normalized limited nuclear employment against a nonnuclear adversary, every one of these governments would gain a precedent with which to justify its own conduct.
A nuclear strike might also produce precisely the proliferation pressure the war was supposed to prevent. Governments could conclude that only a deliverable nuclear arsenal protects them from coercion or regime change. The lesson would not be that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to possess; it would be that countries without them remain vulnerable to countries that have them.
Harvard professor Stephen Walt told Carlson that the postwar world could be “substantially more dangerous.” He pointed not only to great-power competition among the United States, China and Russia, but also to the deterioration of restraints governing force, assassination and escalation. Once powerful states treat exceptional measures as ordinary, weaker states inevitably adapt.
Ending the war would require acknowledging that military power cannot guarantee every political objective. That may be uncomfortable for a president whose public identity depends on winning. But accepting an imperfect settlement is less humiliating than turning a strategic disappointment into a nuclear catastrophe.
Regional governments also have agency. States hosting American forces would face retaliation and possible contamination if their territory supported a nuclear attack. They should demand binding assurances that their bases will not be used to initiate nuclear hostilities. Their interests are not identical to those of Israel, Iran or Washington.
The broader international community should insist on renewed negotiations, independent nuclear inspections, protection for civilian infrastructure and compliance with international law by every participant. Diplomatic pressure must apply consistently, whether the alleged violator is Iran, Israel or the United States.
A war launched in the name of preventing nuclear danger must not become the event that makes nuclear warfare normal again.