Courts aren't buying Trump's voting lies. He's not giving up.

President Donald Trump’s assault on elections took another hit Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican bid to restrict mail voting. In a 5-4 decision, the justices upheld Mississippi’s grace period for ballots postmarked by Election Day — and the principle that the Constitution gives states authority over elections.

But Trump isn’t listening. He’s trying every angle to sidestep the courts and weaponize the federal government to interfere with the midterms.

Monday’s ruling is unlikely to change that. Trump blasted the opinion written by his appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, as a "tremendous loss" and then launched into a tirade about the SAVE America Act and why passing it was "more important than ever." The measure would restrict mail-in voting, create onerous documentation requirements for both voter registration and casting a ballot, and require states to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government.

The House passed the SAVE Act along party lines, but there aren’t enough votes to get it over the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.

"It’s quite simple. It’s a math problem," North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters last week referring to the Senate impasse. He added that even if the Senate were to pass it, state officials wouldn’t have enough time or money to implement the changes before November.

So the president has resorted to elevating the false claims on which the SAVE Act rests — that mail-in voting is rife with fraud and that noncitizen voting is rampant.

Although Trump himself votes by mail, he has been obsessed with ending the practice for everyone else since the 2020 presidential election — when he blamed the COVID-era surge in mail ballots for his defeat. Shortly after taking office last year, Trump issued an executive order banning states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day and requiring people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Voting rights groups challenged the order, and challenged a subsequent executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to compile state citizen lists (to determine voter eligibility) and ordering the U.S. Postal Service to follow those lists when delivering mail ballots.

The lawsuits have had some success. Last week, Judge Denise Casper permanently barred the president from implementing most of the first executive order. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan barred the Trump administration from using federal data to screen voter rolls. (She ruled that in its rush to create the database, the federal government developed a system that could incorrectly flag eligible voters as noncitizens and "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.") And Judge Indira Talwani struck down key parts of the March executive order related to mail ballots, writing that "the Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone."

They each debunked the administration’s legal theories and validated the principle that the Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections.

Rather than accepting these legal defeats, the administration is now getting more creative in its efforts to undermine the November elections. It’s increasingly turned its focus to the states to seek new avenues to challenge election results.

The Department of Justice has demanded all states give it access to sensitive voter data — birth dates, partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s licenses. It sued 31 states demanding the data. So far, 11 courts have rejected the lawsuits, the latest one coming on Monday. None have sided with the administration.

Meanwhile, DHS has threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal security grants from states that don’t send their voter lists to the federal government. In Michigan, the Republican Party is suing to get rid of protections for ballot counting in that state. In North Carolina, Republicans are advancing a bill that bans election officials from publicly encouraging anyone to vote, and party officials are pressuring county elections boards to restrict early voting on college campuses. And in Ohio, DOJ sent 100 FBI agents to raid the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, the leading voter registration group in the state, because it suspected voter registration fraud. It was classic intimidation and produced no charges.

Voting advocates worry that if these tactics allow the administration to generate more conspiracy theories about the safety and security of the voting system, those fears could become the foundation for Trump to declare a national emergency and attempt to federalize the midterm elections. After all, while advancing one of his unfounded theories in February, Trump called for Republicans to "take over the voting in at least 15 places."

In normal times, these threats would engender widespread outrage. But the sheer number of attacks on the election framework in this country have become a blurry backdrop to everything else going on. It’s time to sharpen our senses. Support and encourage the legal teams and democracy defenders fighting on the front lines. The assault on our right to vote is a battle we can’t lose.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.