In my 30 years as a lawyer, I have read countless government documents. Over the last decade, I have watched Trump and his lawyers spin lies and frivolous arguments.

Yet, nothing quite prepared me for this sentence from a rule released by the U.S. Postal Service on Friday night: "Although ballot mail does not present precisely the same operational issues as cremated remains or replica explosives, it is unquestionably sensitive mail that raises unique operational considerations."

A mail-in ballot does not pose a health risk. It will not cause panic if exposed to the public. It's a piece of paper marked with a pen that is only dangerous to authoritarians wishing to rule rather than govern with the consent of their citizens.

Ballots do not raise "unique operational considerations" unless you are aiming to limit voting and undermine democracy. Such Orwellian reasoning is dangerous to an already fragile republic battered by years of Trump's lies.

Yet, equating mail-in ballots to human remains and fake explosives is part of the rationale the U.S. Postal Service offered to justify Donald Trump's unconstitutional executive order. It is how they sought to get around the obvious fact that Congress has not given the USPS or the president authority to do what they're attempting here: render unmailable any ballots Trump disapproves of.

The USPS announced all of this in a rule it released late Friday night — presumably hoping few would notice what it was up to. The new rule was crafted to effectuate Trump's March executive order, which restricts mail voting and creates a new federal voter database.

Under this new rule, the USPS will only send mail ballots to voters included on a state list. If voters aren't on the lists, they will not receive a ballot.

Earlier this summer, a federal court blocked this executive order and halted the rulemaking. In June, the court granted the motion of 24 Democratic attorneys general to invalidate this entire scheme.

After the First Circuit upheld this victory, the Department of Justice sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court. Their argument was not that Trump's executive order was lawful, but rather that the states' lawsuit was premature...