Jim Rickards’
September 17, 2026
Midterm Lawfare
Donald Trump and the Republican Party have suffered a run of adverse court decisions that have complicated their efforts to keep control of the House of Representatives on November 3. With control potentially coming down to only a handful of seats, these decisions could matter enormously.
The first court decision involves a fight over which electoral district map to use in Missouri in the upcoming elections. We wrote about this in depth last week.
The fight was over an older map that favors Republicans 6–2 in the election of Missouri’s eight members of the House. A newer map was designed to give Republicans an advantage in seven of the state’s eight congressional districts.
The difference of one seat may not seem like a lot in a body of 435 voting members, but it’s a big deal in an election where control may come down to one or two seats. Democratic-aligned groups challenged the new map, while Missouri’s Republican legislature supported it.
After a complicated series of state and federal court rulings, the fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court blocked use of the new map for the November election, leaving the older 2022 map in place for now.
Score one potentially important seat for the Democrats.
The other decision was of even greater significance in terms of Republican efforts to tighten controls on mail-in ballots.
Most mail-in voting in most places is entirely legitimate. But in close contests, such as the one coming for control of the House, a relatively small number of votes in targeted swing districts can move a few seats in favor of one party or the other. That’s why ballot security matters.
Trump and other Republicans have long argued that inaccurate voter rolls, ballot harvesting and other weaknesses in mail voting create opportunities for fraud. Those claims remain highly contested, and documented cases of mail-ballot fraud are rare. Still, Republicans argue that even isolated irregularities deserve particular scrutiny when control of Congress may come down to a handful of close races.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) issued a rule requiring states using the Postal Service for federal mail ballots to submit lists of individuals receiving those ballots. The system would use unique barcodes on outbound and return ballot envelopes that could be traced electronically in both directions. That way, a digital “paper trail” would be established.
The USPS would then match ballot mailings against the lists supplied by the states. The Postal Service said it would not determine voter eligibility or alter state voter rolls. The tracking technology itself is straightforward and similar to systems already used to track ordinary mail and package deliveries.
A group of Democratic-led states and voting-rights organizations sued to block the rule, arguing that it exceeded federal authority and risked disrupting legitimate voting only weeks before Election Day.
This was another case that moved through the federal courts and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. On September 14, the Supreme Court declined to let the administration enforce the USPS rule for the November election. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.
That means the USPS plan will not take effect for this election.
Trump and his allies may still have other tactics in store to tighten oversight of mail voting. That remains to be seen. For now, the new USPS ballot-tracking requirements will not be in effect on November 3.
Republicans are also preparing a large election-integrity legal operation, with lawyers and poll watchers expected to fan out across key states on Election Day and bring legal challenges in real time if they believe election laws are being violated.
Another possible development is the indictment of former U.S. government or state officials in connection with alleged election-related misconduct. Whether any such indictments will actually be handed up remains to be seen.
Trump still has more than two years in office, whether Republicans win in November or not. Any criminal cases involving past election conduct would undoubtedly become part of the political backdrop to this year’s voting.
With control of the House potentially coming down to only a handful of seats, every one of these fights matters.
All the best,
Jim Rickards
Editor, Strategic Intelligence