Trump unleashes stern warning to Republicans after Supreme Court smackdown on mail-in ballots: ‘CHEATING!’

President Donald Trump slammed the Supreme Court for handing him a “tremendous loss” after five of the conservative-led court’s nine justices said federal law did not preempt Mississippi’s law allowing mail-in ballots received after Election Day to count if postmarked before Election Day. He told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that the decision “gives people more time to vote illegally” even though there is no evidence that postal balloting is a vector for election fraud of any kind. “I think, it was very detrimental to honest elections, but it is what it is,” he said. The president cited a 2005 report by the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform which warned that postal balloting could be a “source of potential voter fraud” while falsely alleging that the report had identified it as a definitive source of “cheating.” He also accused Democrats of being in favor of “cheating” and said the opposition cannot win without it “because their policy is so bad.” Earlier in the day, Trump lashed out on his social media platform not long after the stunning ruling rebuked one of his core battle cries, writing that the high court’s decision was yet another reason for Congress to ram through the voting restriction bill he has been obsessing over for months now. “In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he said. The unpopular legislation has been stalled in the Senate because it does not have enough support to overcome the upper chamber’s de facto 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation. It is opposed not just by all of the chamber’s Democrats, but by multiple Republicans who object to the bill’s near-ban on postal ballots. It would also make it near-impossible for Americans to register to vote without proof of citizenship even though most Americans don’t have a passport and many lack a paper birth certificate. Women who change their names upon marriage would also have difficulty voting under the law’s proposed restrictions. Trump has spent months browbeating Congress to restrict postal balloting (Getty) But Trump claimed there’s “no excuse for a politician, or otherwise” to oppose the anti-voting bill. “There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING,” he said. He then complained that while the House of Representatives has pass the partisan voting restrictions on three separate occasions, the Senate has failed to follow suit because it does not have enough support from the chamber’s GOP majority. Calling out the five GOP members who’ve opposed the bill — Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell — Trump warned that the “powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country” in the form of three Democratic House candidates in New York is “more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th” and said the entire Senate “must vote to SAVE OUR COUNTRY” by making it more difficult to vote. “There can be no more excuses! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he added. Trump lashed out on Truth Social after the Supreme Court's ruling (Truth Social) The 5-4 ruling, authored by Trump appointee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, upholds a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted, marking a loss for the Republican party, which brought the case ahead of the November midterms. Writing for herself, Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three Democratic appointees, Barrett said that Mississippi’s measure does not violate federal statutes that establish Election Day as the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” she said. The ruling stemmed from a challenge to a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots to be counted up to five business days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Like other states, Mississippi passed the law in 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic to give people more time to vote because in-person activities were restricted and mail services were overwhelmed. But since then, Trump and his iteration of the GOP have turned on the practice because it has permitted Democrats to win close elections by allowing votes cast by Democratic voters to be counted even when Republicans’ in-person votes gave a GOP candidate a lead early in the counting process Mail-in ballots tend to skew in favor of Democratic candidates because Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, according to data collected during the 2024 election. In response to this trend, Trump has repeatedly misrepresented mail-in ballot voting as a method for Democrats to “cheat,” despite there being no evidence of mass voter fraud by mail..