CNN’s Elie Honig Says Supreme Court Just Handed Trump ‘Really Bad Indicator’ on Mail-In Ballot Order

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig warned on Tuesday that the Supreme Court has handed President Donald Trump a “really bad indicator” about the ultimate fate of his effort to overhaul mail-in voting, one that could doom the policy indefinitely.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the administration’s attempt to allow the Postal Service to enforce new mail-in ballot requirements ahead of the 2026 elections, leaving a lower-court injunction in place.

While the immediate ruling concerns November, Honig told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan on Tuesday that the language used by the court suggested a potentially deeper problem for Trump.

“The Trump administration got a really bad indicator last night,” Honig said.

The ruling was unsigned, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissenting. Honig noted that meant seven justices appeared to have sided against the administration. The majority concluded the government was unlikely to prevail on the merits of its case, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh separately pointed to the practical problems of imposing the changes so close to an election.

“State and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the election,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Honig said the first finding could prove more consequential for Trump’s longer-term ambitions: “This argument that the government is making, that the Trump administration is making, is unlikely to succeed, which is just another way of saying we think this executive order is probably unconstitutional.”

“You cannot take the ability to run elections away from the states and hand it over to the federal executive branch,” he added.

Trump signed the executive order in March amid his longstanding attacks on mail-in voting, and the effort even survived an earlier Supreme Court challenge only weeks ago, when the justices ruled 6-3 that blocking the policy was premature because the Postal Service had not yet finalized its rule.

That changed when the agency formally published its requirements, opening the door to another round of litigation.

Honig stressed that Monday’s decision does not permanently kill Trump’s order and litigation will continue ahead of the 2028 presidential election, but said the court’s assessment of the administration’s underlying legal case was not good.

“If that ends up being the ultimate ruling, then this executive order will fail for 2026, will fail for 2028, and any other time,” Honig said. “So it’s a bad indicator for the Trump administration.”

Watch above via CNN.

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