When Donald Trump signed an executive order in March asserting radical powers over federal elections, it was widely assumed that the president’s power grab would spark lawsuits he was likely to lose. Those assumptions, unsurprisingly, were correct. The New York Times reported:
A federal judge in Washington permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms, a change dictated in an executive order President Trump signed in March. The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission, an independent body, to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who was first appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, explained in her 81-page ruling that Trump was claiming a power to which he is not entitled.
“Congress has never assigned any responsibility for the content of the federal form to the president or to any other individual in the executive branch with the power to act unilaterally,” she wrote. “The power to alter the federal form is — and always has been — delegated solely to a bipartisan, independent commission.”
The Times’ report noted that the opinion “traced American history back to the country’s founding, repeatedly noting that besides the small role of the Elections Assistance Commission, which was created by Congress in 2002 to assist with elections, the Elections Clause of the Constitution grants authority over elections to the states.”
Kollar-Kotelly added, “The Court pauses to note a conspicuous absence from the legal and historical context thus far provided. The states have initial authority to regulate elections. Congress has supervisory authority over those regulations. The President does not feature at all.”
For those who might benefit from a recap, let’s review how we arrived at this point.
Last year, congressional Republicans tried to advance legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act), to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The bill did not, however, pass the Senate or become law.
This year, Trump apparently decided that he could just create the policy anyway through presidential fiat. It was an approach rooted in a fundamentally ridiculous governing vision: When Congress fails to pass a bill, presidents can simply implement the policy anyway, without legislative authorization.
What’s more, Trump’s executive order on this didn’t stop with new requirements that would force Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote. It also imposed a variety of other election “reforms” — touching on everything from mail-in ballot deadlines to election equipment — that NBC News reported “could risk disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans.” The president did all of this by exercising a legal authority he decided to bestow on himself. The judiciary has now reminded him, more than once, that this is not an option. If recent history is any guide, the administration will appeal the ruling, and House Republicans will consider impeaching the judge in this case. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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