Judge clears the way for Postal Service work on Trump's mail-in voting order for now

A U.S. Postal Service worker loads mail-in ballots onto a truck in 2022 in Miami. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

A federal judge in Boston has handed the Trump administration another temporary win in the legal fight over the president's executive order to restrict mail-in voting for the midterm election.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Wednesday canceled a nationwide ruling she had issued that blocked the U.S. Postal Service from working on Trump's directives.

The decision sets the stage for another possible consideration of the executive order by the Supreme Court. So far, the high court has ruled on a procedural issue, but not weighed in on whether Trump's order is legal.

In that earlier procedural ruling , the Supreme Court halted a similar June ruling from Talwani that applied only to the 23 mainly Democratic-led states, plus Washington, D.C., that sued over the order. The high court concluded Talwani weighed in too early, before USPS issued a finalized plan for carrying out Trump's directives.

In Wednesday's order, the judge cited that reasoning by the Supreme Court for granting the administration's request to cancel her nationwide ruling, which was also issued before USPS' Aug. 21 release of a final rule for federal ballot mail .

That rule's most controversial provision lays out a plan for delivering mail-in ballots only to people on lists of absentee voters that states would have to turn over to the mailing agency, as called for by Trump's order.

Trump, who himself has voted by mail in Florida, has said he signed this executive order in March to stop illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, a problem that many studies and audits find is extremely rare.