The Supreme Court opened a path Monday for possible implementation of President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much can be put in place before the fast-approaching midterm elections.

The decision leaves room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump's order, and other similar cases have already been filed. The U.S. Postal Service laid out how it would implement the order last week, but time is running short to impose major changes. North Carolina is sending out ballots Sept. 4 overseas and to military voters, and other states will quickly follow suit in just a few weeks.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority didn't decide the legality of Trump's order, instead ruling that states who sued did not have the legal right to challenge it.

While the emergency order is not final, it does have the potential to create chaos around voting across the country, with Trump often questioning the integrity of elections and the nation's highest court again the possible arbiter of a political controversy.

“The Court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order.

The three liberal-leaning justices publicly dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that the rule “lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James foreshadowed more legal fights ahead, calling the decision a “painful setback” but vowing it would “not be the final word.”

The court's order opens a path for the administration to begin action to restrict mail voting, but it also could lead to further litigation that could freeze the federal government again.

“This is just the first inning of a very fast nine-inning game,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.

Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, who has claimed that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of the voting method.

Trump's executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. New requirements released Friday would forbid the Postal Service from sending mail ballots from any state that does not comply with Trump's order.

A Postal Service spokesperson did not immediately respond messages seeking comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Bitcoin and gold shot higher this week, with both getting a boost from some frantic action surrounding the bond market, and the cryptocurrency also benefiting from activity in Washington.

Bitcoin had dropped from a January high of around $95,000 to below $60,000 at the end of June. Investors shied away from speculative assets earlier in the year and crypto supporters were concerned about the lack of movement on proposed regulation of the industry. On Friday, bitcoin rose above $77,000.

Gold hit a high above $5,300 in January but dropped to around $4,000 in June as rising rates made interest-bearing investments more attractive. Gold rose to $4,661 on Friday.

The first jolt arrived Wednesday when the Treasury Department announced plans to significantly increase its buybacks of long-term Treasurys, or government debt. On the same day, President Donald Trump, who made about $1.2 billion last year from various crypto holdings, urged Congress to move quickly on crypto legislation.

There was an almost immediate reaction, which included a dollar sell-off and a jump in the value of gold and bitcoin as investors moved toward alternative assets.

How these two investments caught fire can be understood in the context of several developments this week. In a surprise announcement Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said that it would at least double the size of its planned purchases of longer-term government debt. The maneuver was intended to calm bond markets after a sustained sell-off, meaning investors were asking for higher yields to lend money to the U.S., which investors suddenly viewed as riskier.

That's because while the Treasury intervention worked, at least for a short period, it also raised questions about whether the government is trying to push borrowing costs lower despite inflationary pressures. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is attempting to lower long-term borrowing costs, a move that can put upward pressure on inflation at a time when inflation is already elevated. Bessent's maneuver could handcuff the Federal Reserve, which fights inflation by raising interest rates.

Then there's the national debt, which surpassed a record $40 trillion on the same day that the Treasury's actions unfolded. The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

There is already a lot of anxiety over inflation, particularly because of the conflict in Iran and soaring energy prices. If yields on U.S. bonds are not truly reflecting risk, you can often see that play out in the value of the U.S. currency, which took a significant downward swoop Wednesday. So where does the money that was invested in the dollar or Treasurys go? This week, it appears to have been funneled into what is known as the “debasement trade,” when investors flood into alternative assets such as gold, which rose more than 2% Wednesday. The debasement trade now includes bitcoin. Bitcoin jumped more than 20% this week.

Civil rights advocates on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a potential new test of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.

Posters featuring the Ten Commandments began going up almost a year ago in classrooms across Texas, which educates about 5.5 million students. An appeals court earlier this year cleared the way for Texas’ law and one in Louisiana, and similar laws have been passed in Arkansas and Alabama.

“This is an issue of nationwide importance because a number of states have been considering these laws in recent years,” said Heather Weaver, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Over two dozen Texas families represented by the ACLU and other groups petitioned the nation’s highest court to hear their challenge after the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April upheld the Texas law in a 9-8 ruling.

“We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment,” Weaver said.

The office for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately comment Monday.

In the families’ Supreme Court brief, their attorneys argue that the law violates basic First Amendment principles governing the separation of church and state.

“The question of whether a state may impose scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children — for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to (13) years — implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation’s highest ideals,” they wrote.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit reversed lower federal court rulings that had blocked some Texas school districts from putting up the posters.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which took effect last September. Because Texas’ law only requires districts to hang the Ten Commandments if they are donated, conservative groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at campuses across the state as the school year began last year.

“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the 5th Circuit’s ruling says.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

A federal judge refused on Friday to block the Trump administration from taking steps to build 62 miles of international border wall along part of a Native American tribe’s reservation without its consent.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., denied the Tohono O’odham Nation’s request for a court-ordered halt to border wall construction on its 2.8-million-acre reservation. Leon ruled the tribe hasn’t established that a border wall will change its reservation boundaries without congressional authority.

The judge also rejected the tribe’s claim that the planned border wall would illegally trespass on its reservation.

“And in any event, I find that the Government’s interests in securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, and ensuring public safety outweigh any surviving irreparable harms at this juncture,” Leon wrote.

The tribe released a statement late Friday strongly disagreeing with the decision.

“Too many critical issues were not adequately addressed, such as inevitable impacts construction will have on the Nation’s land and the permanent destruction of sacred sites,” Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose said. “The Nation will consider all possible options for moving forward, as this issue is simply too important to the O’odham.”

The O’odham reservation in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona abuts 62 miles of the Mexico border. The tribe has over 37,000 members, including thousands who live in Mexico.

Building the border wall would led to “significant devastation” on the reservation, including the destruction of mountain peaks that are sacred to the O’odham, tribe attorneys said.

“It would fray the ties between O’odham communities and families on opposite sides of the border, interfere significantly with O’odham religious rituals and practices, and destroy plant and animal resources sacred to the O’odham,” the lawyers wrote.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation reserving a 60-foot strip of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border for a buffer zone called the “Roosevelt Reservation,” which was formed a decade before the reservation’s establishment.

Tribe attorneys say it is “fanciful at best” to suggest that border wall construction can be confined to a 60-foot-wide corridor. During a July 22 hearing, Leon appeared to be skeptical that U.S. laws tip in favor of the tribe’s bid for a preliminary injunction, calling it an “extraordinary” request. Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, said he couldn’t find a previous court ruling under comparable circumstances.

Moderate Democrat David Crowley won the Wisconsin primary for governor, defeating a democratic socialist who fell short while trying to deliver another win for progressives in a battleground state.

Crowley, the Milwaukee county executive, is vying to become Wisconsin's first Black governor and pitched himself as the candidate best positioned to win in November against Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong, who was hoping to ride the wave of recent victories by progressive candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed in neighboring Michigan's U.S. Senate race last week.

El-Sayed's win was the movement's first major success in a purple state. It also fed fears in the party's leaders that such candidates, farther afield and often carrying political baggage of past stances such as defunding the police, would struggle to beat Republicans and imperil the party's hopes of recapturing control of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

Crowley didn't address supporters Tuesday night but was expected at a unity event later Wednesday.

"Now, David is focused on bringing people together, earning the support of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and anyone who believes Wisconsin is at its best when we work together and deliver results," Crowley's campaign manager Garren Randolph said in a statement.

Hong's loss in Wisconsin may have doused the momentum, but it's far from snuffing it out. A democratic socialist coming close to victory in a battleground state sends a clear message: There's unignorable angst among the party's voters.

"We have built something that will change politics forever," Hong told supporters as the outcome of the race hung in the balance late Tuesday. "The work we have done will be remembered forever. I know we don't have the final results right now, but what I do know is we are ready to keep fighting."

Her campaign manager Becky Cooper said after Hong conceded that she was "proud of the race we ran."

"Our team campaigned clean, our souls are intact and we really made meaningful change for the progressive movement," she said.

The Associated Press declared Crowley the winner once Hong's concession removed the possibility of a recount in the exceptionally close race.

Hong could have requested a recount since Crowley's margin of victory was less than 1 percentage point. But because it was wider than 0.25 points, Hong's campaign would have had to pay for it.

Sanders and other top progressives stayed out of the Wisconsin race

Progressives had wanted to notch a clear win, but national progressive leaders, most notably Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sat out the race and did not endorse.

The movement is not entirely aligned. Not all candidates are democratic socialists or have endorsements from Sanders, but they are often tilling similar voter anger with politics and the party: over military aid to Israel, the amount of money wielded in campaigns, the Trump administration's immigration raids and the high cost of daily life.

In New York City in the June primary elections, two democratic socialist candidates and a progressive came out on top, booting two Democratic incumbents from Congress in the process. All three were backed by the city's mayor, Zohran Mamdani, himself a democratic socialist who framed the upsets as a question of electing "better Democrats."

Democrats in Wisconsin are hoping to capitalize on low approval ratings for Trump in a state he won in 2016 and 2024 to retain control of the governor's office and flip both chambers of the Legislature to earn full control of Wisconsin state government for the first time since 2010.