The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intervene in the Trump administration’s eleventh-hour attempt to block California from counting more than 20,000 ballots, dealing a significant setback to federal efforts to influence the state’s election process just as voters headed to the polls.
The high court’s decision Monday came without explanation and without any dissenting votes, effectively ending — for now — the administration’s push to have California set aside ballots cast by voters the federal government claims may not be U.S. citizens.
The ruling capped a whirlwind week of legal maneuvering that legal experts and a federal judge have described as unlike anything seen before in American elections.
A Legal Fight Without Precedent
The dispute traces back to mid-October, when the Trump administration sent letters to California’s secretary of state and Los Angeles County election officials, demanding that roughly 20,000 ballots be set aside until voters’ citizenship status could be confirmed. State officials refused, prompting the administration to take the fight to federal court.
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, appointed by President Bill Clinton, delivered a pointed rebuke of the administration’s position last week, ruling that its actions were likely unconstitutional. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the executive branch,” Carter wrote.
The administration quickly appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel rejected its arguments for a second time in a matter of days. That led to Monday’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court — and Monday’s swift denial.
New Charges Announced as Voters Head to Polls
The Supreme Court’s decision came on the same day federal prosecutors unveiled new charges against 12 more noncitizens accused of registering to vote or casting ballots illegally in California, adding to 28 similar cases announced earlier.
Bill Essayli, the Trump administration’s top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, defended the crackdown at a news conference. “Voting is the essence of American citizenship,” he said. “Illegally attempting to infiltrate and influence our political determinations is not only wrong, it’s a crime.”
California officials have pushed back hard against the narrative that the arrests reveal a widespread conspiracy, noting that the total number of cases amounts to a tiny fraction of the state’s 23 million registered voters. “They said, ‘Aha! Look at this widespread voter fraud,’ and then they made 28 arrests,” state Attorney General Rob Bonta said last week. “I mean, talk about a fizzle.”
Among those charged Monday was Moria Dahan, an Israeli national living in West Hills, who appeared in federal court in ankle shackles and spoke through a Hebrew interpreter. She was released shortly after her hearing. Her attorney, Tiffany Feder, said Dahan never intended to defraud anyone or falsify documents, adding that she simply didn’t understand the form she was filling out.
Court Shields Election Workers From Threats
In a separate but related development, U.S. District Court Judge Trina L. Thompson, a Biden appointee, issued an order Friday barring the administration from threatening county election workers with criminal prosecution. The ruling came after a union representing election staff sued to stop federal prosecutors from pressuring local officials to withhold or separate ballots tied to the disputed list of 20,000 names.
Thompson wrote that the law “favors the protection of election staff, who are working diligently to ensure that all citizens can cast their votes.” Her order prohibits the federal government from using threats or grand jury subpoenas to coerce workers into complying with demands to segregate ballots.
Questions Mount Over Accuracy of Federal List
As the legal battle has unfolded, several California counties have conducted their own reviews of the federal government’s list and found what they describe as widespread errors. A separate analysis by the UCLA Voting Rights Project found that 42% of the 20,000 names on the list could not be matched to any record in California’s current voter file. That same analysis found that a significant number of the flagged voters appear to be U.S. citizens who were wrongly included.
The findings have fueled skepticism among state officials and voting rights advocates about the accuracy — and intent — behind the Trump administration’s push, even as federal prosecutors continue pursuing criminal cases against individual voters across the state.
Original source: CalMatters
