Postal Service restarted work on its ballot portal while a court injunction was in force, whistleblower disclosure says
The U.S. Postal Service restarted work on its "Federal Ballot Mail Portal" on July 29, 2026, while a federal court order barring implementation of President Donald Trump's executive order limiting mail voting was still in force, according to a whistleblower disclosure and accompanying letter released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The Supreme Court did not strike that injunction down until August 24.
What happened
The letter from Blumenthal and the accompanying summary of the whistleblower's statements say the Postal Service began work on the portal on June 15, stopped on June 25 after District Judge Indira Talwani's initial order, and restarted on July 29 — the day the administration appealed that order to the Supreme Court. Blumenthal's August 31 letter to Postmaster General David Steiner concludes that "USPS should have ceased all work on the Portal on June 25, 2026, with the earliest conceivable date to resume being August 26, 2026," and asks USPS to state the dates on which it or its contractors worked on the portal. The anonymous federal employee behind the disclosure is represented by Whistleblower Aid, whose summary says the hurried construction meant the portal did not undergo full testing and warns that "[p]otentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all." The court record is mixed: Talwani found the Postal Service violated her order by continuing to work on the final rule but imposed no sanctions, and on August 31 she refused to lift her 14-day restraining order in a ruling that also said the Postal Service could continue work on the portal so long as it was not forcing states to use it. The Postal Service, responding to Blumenthal's letter, pledged to work with Congress and the courts and noted that the judge had explicitly allowed it to keep developing the tool for states that want to use it voluntarily. The White House said the software buildout is "neither complex nor unique" for the Postal Service.
Why it matters
Resuming construction of the apparatus of an enjoined policy while the injunction is in force would make a court order a delay rather than a constraint, which is the specific harm the court-defiance indicator tracks. The site should be plain about what the record does and does not establish: the portal allegation comes from an anonymous whistleblower and is not an adjudicated finding, while the one adjudicated point runs alongside it — Judge Talwani found the Postal Service violated her order by continuing work on the final rule and imposed no sanctions, and she has since allowed portal development to continue for states that use it voluntarily.