As soon as I read the first sentence of yesterday's Supreme Court opinion in the case challenging Donald Trump's anti-voting executive order, I knew it was bad news. It begins: "The President recently issued an Executive Order regarding election integrity."

Trump is not interested in election integrity any more than he is interested in the integrity of our economy, foreign relations or any other aspect of government. He cares only about power — gaining it, wielding it and maintaining it.

The executive order the Supreme Court was reviewing was one part threat and one part coercion. It was zero parts integrity.

It orders the federal government to compile a list of Trump-approved eligible voters to be sent to the states. Paired with that list is a directive to the Department of Justice to "prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials or any others" who send ballots to ineligible voters.

The Court found this provision too speculative to confer standing on the states challenging it. After all, the Court reasoned, states are free to ignore the lists sent by the Trump administration. And there is no way to know who, if anyone, will be criminally charged.

It is hard to know whether the conservative justices who supported this decision genuinely believe these are open questions or simply engaged in willful blindness to what is obvious to everyone else. Either way, the result is the same: this provision can remain in place, at least for now.

The second main part of this executive order involves the U.S. Postal Service. Under the order, the USPS is to conduct a rulemaking whereby it dictates to states how mail-in ballots are to be identified and tracked via a unique barcode. It also directs the USPS to refuse to carry or deliver mail-in ballots to anyone not on a preapproved list of voters submitted by the states to the USPS in advance of the election.

There is no constitutional or legal authority that permits the president to demand this or the USPS to implement it. Yet, right on cue, the USPS did as it was told. On Friday evening, it published the final rule meeting Trump's objectives.