Federal judge blocks Trump voter crackdown as midterms arrive

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out a plan it says is meant to prevent noncitizen voting, but which critics warn could strip eligible voters of their ballots and infringe on state authority over elections.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security not to send states lists of registered voters the administration believes may not be citizens. Her ruling also bars the agencies from asking state election officials to separate out those voters' ballots or refuse to count them until citizenship is proven.

The decision is the latest in a string of legal defeats for President Donald Trump's efforts to assert federal control over election administration as the November 3 midterms arrived. Trump's fellow Republicans are fighting to hold their majorities in both houses of Congress.

The administration did claim a win on Monday in a separate case. A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government may threaten state and local election officials with prosecution if they refuse to comply with demands related to voting by alleged noncitizens. Chutkan is not bound by that ruling.

Voting by noncitizens is illegal, and all available evidence indicates it is exceedingly rare. Trump, who falsely maintains that fraud caused his 2020 presidential election loss, has long accused the states, which are responsible for administering elections, of facilitating noncitizen voting.

Over the past month, the administration intensified a pressure campaign against election officials, sending letters to officials in California and Washington state demanding they not count ballots from people appearing on lists of voters the administration said may not be citizens.

Voting rights and privacy advocates responded by asking Chutkan to temporarily stop the administration from transmitting such lists and making such demands. The plaintiffs alleged the government was violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which restricts the federal government's ability to disclose sensitive private information.

In a court filing on Saturday, the Justice Department argued that its letters to California and Washington were part of an effort to enforce the federal law banning noncitizen voting, and did not constitute a distinct policy that a federal court could review.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected the department's request to order California to temporarily set aside mailed ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it said were likely not citizens. An appeals court on Friday rejected the department's bid for an emergency order pending appeal.

Chutkan, a Washington, DC-based appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, said the administration's data may not be reliable, creating a risk that lawfully registered voters would be disenfranchised. Also on Friday, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply with the administration's demands over alleged noncitizen voting.