A judge expands a block on U.S. Postal Service work on Trump's mail-in voting order

Jim Slowikowski oversees the unloading of pallets filled with mail-in ballots at a U.S. Postal Service processing and distribution center in 2020 in Portland, Ore. Nathan Howard/Getty Images hide caption

A federal judge in Boston has expanded a court-ordered block on a key part of President Trump's executive order to limit voting by mail in this fall's midterm election.

The order released by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Tuesday comes as the wait continues for the Supreme Court to weigh in on an earlier ruling by Talwani.

The judge's latest ruling bans the U.S. Postal Service from trying to finish carrying out Trump's directives in every state. In June, the judge put out a ruling that blocks USPS efforts in only the 23 mainly Democratic-led states, plus Washington, D.C., that sued over the order.

Talwani found that the voting rights groups that made the request to effectively expand her June ruling are likely to prove in their lawsuit that Trump's order oversteps a president's authority under the Constitution. Talwani, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, also found that the order is causing confusion among voters.

Under Trump's order, USPS is supposed to compile lists of eligible voters from states and deliver absentee ballots only to people on those lists.

The president has defended this order as a way to stop illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, a problem that many studies have concluded is extremely uncommon.