CBS News on the denial

… <p><em>Washington &mdash; </em>The Supreme Court on Monday left intact a lower court decision that <span class="link"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-temporarily-blocks-new-postal-service-rules-for-mail-voting-trump/" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http="">blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing</a></span> new regulations for mail voting, rejecting the Trump administration's effort to move forward with the rules in the run-up to the November midterm elections.&nbsp;</p><p>The court's decision keeps implementation of the Postal Service's requirements, finalized by the agency late last month, on hold while a legal challenge moves forward. Mail ballots have already gone out to voters in some states, and election officials at the state and local levels had <span class="link"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mail-voting-rules-usps-election-officials-midterms/" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http="">warned it would be difficult</a></span>&nbsp;for them to make the changes to comply with the new policies in time for the upcoming elections.</p><p>The Trump administration, meanwhile, had <span class="link"><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-supreme-court-postal-service-mail-ballot-rules/" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http="">argued that the rules</a></span> are needed to address the risk of fraud in mail voting, which Solicitor General D. John Sauer said is a "particularly pernicious species of fraud" that dilutes lawful votes and undermines public confidence in the integrity of elections.&nbsp;</p><p>But the administration has not come out with evidence of widespread voter fraud, and President Trump himself has voted by mail in Florida elections this year.</p><p>In a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court said the government "is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court's preliminary injunction."</p><p>Two of the court's conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented from the court's ruling, arguing the states that sued over the Postal Service's new rules are unlikely to show the policy is unlawful.</p><p>A third conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the majority. He wrote that "there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority." But he found that applying the rule in the November midterms "would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections."</p> …