The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has told a federal court it is temporarily shelving a plan to collect personal data on millions of Americans who vote by mail, walking back an initiative tied to President Trump's executive order restricting mail ballot use.

The department disclosed the retreat in a court filing, signaling that legal pressure — at least temporarily — slowed a data-gathering effort that critics said amounted to federal surveillance of voting behavior. The filing did not foreclose the possibility of reviving the plan later.

Montana is a heavily mail-ballot state. Lewis and Clark County, like most Montana counties, conducts elections almost entirely by mail, and county election administrators here have been tracking federal moves on mail voting closely since Trump's executive order was issued earlier this year. A broad federal data sweep on mail voters would have touched a significant share of Montana's electorate.

Homeland Security's court filing does not resolve the underlying legal challenge, which remains active. Voting rights groups that brought the suit called the retreat a temporary win but said they intend to pursue the case to prevent the administration from resuming the data collection without court review.