SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
voting rights
Pro-Voter Coalition Sues Over Trump Trying to 'Declare Election Rules by Executive Fiat'
"This executive order, based on nothing but years of disinformation, is blatantly unlawful and a naked attempt to suppress the votes of targeted communities," said LULAC's national president.
Mar 31, 2025
A pro-voter coalition on Monday sued to block U.S. President Donald Trump's recent executive order that critics warn would make it harder for tens of millions of eligible citizens to cast their ballots in state and federal elections.
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and State Democracy Defenders Fund (SDDF) sued the executive office of the president and members of Trump's administration in a Washington, D.C. federal court on behalf of three advocacy groups: the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative (SFI), and Arizona Students' Association (ASA).
"The president's executive order is an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans. It is simply not within the president's authority to set election rules by executive decree, especially when they would restrict access to voting in this way," said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at CLC.
"Donald Trump is attempting to wrongfully impede voting by millions of Americans with this latest unlawful executive order."
As the complaint puts it: "Under our Constitution, the president does not dictate election rules. States and Congress do... Through the order, the president attempts to exercise powers that the Constitution withholds from him and instead assigns to the states and to Congress. The order violates and subverts the separation of powers by lawlessly arrogating to the president authority to declare election rules by executive fiat."
Trump's order includes provisions enabling the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Department of Homeland Security to subpoena voting records for "list maintenance," restricting mail-in voting, and requiring the Election Assistance Commission to include documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voting form.
"Donald Trump is attempting to wrongfully impede voting by millions of Americans with this latest unlawful executive order. But it will not work. In America voters get to pick their president—presidents don't get to pick their voters, declared SDDF co-founder and executive chair Norm Eisen. "We are proud to stand up for the ability of every American voter to cast their ballots freely and fairly through this litigation."
Advocacy group leaders detailed how provisions in Trump's order would impact various communities if the directive isn't struck down.
"Military families, veterans, caregivers, and overseas voters deserve secure access to the very democracy we serve to protect—no matter where we're stationed or how we serve," said SFI executive director Sarah Streyder. "This new order would mean that the veteran who is a full-time caretaker at home, who has done everything right, may now be shut out of the ballot box due to outdated paperwork."
"This new order would mean that the military family stationed on the other side of the world from home, who crossed every t and dotted every i—their military ID will no longer suffice, and due to mail delays outside of their control, their ballot will never count," Streyder warned.
Roman Palomares, LULAC's national president, declared that "this executive order, based on nothing but years of disinformation, is blatantly unlawful and a naked attempt to suppress the votes of targeted communities—disproportionately impacting the Latino community."
"We are proud to join this coalition seeking to stop the effort to silence the voice and votes of the U.S. electorate—and particularly of voters of color," Palomares continued. "Our democracy depends on all voters feeling confident that they can vote freely and that their vote will be counted accurately."
Trump orders states to open voter files to Musk. Exec Order will cost 21 million their vote. ▶️ Get the full story: www.gregpalast.com/trump-execut...
[image or embed]
— Greg Palast (@gregpalast.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Kyle Nitschke, co-executive director of Arizona Students' Association, highlighted that some states have imposed voter suppression laws similar to Trump's executive order (EO).
"The Arizona Students' Association has seen firsthand what these egregious citizenship requirements really are, an attempt to suppress the vote. In Arizona we have a dual-track federal registration system, and the voters being affected by citizenship requirements are college students registering to vote for the first time, unsheltered voters, and Native voters, Nitschke said. "There are already extensive citizenship checks in place when registering to vote, Trump's EO is a clear attack on our voting rights. Our student members believe we should live in a country where it's accessible and convenient to be a part of democracy."
The Associated Pressnoted that "Monday's lawsuit against Trump's elections order could be just the first of many challenges. Other voting rights advocates have said they're considering legal action, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic attorney Marc Elias. Several Democratic state attorneys general have said they are looking closely at the order and suspect it is illegal."
Monday evening, the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Governors Association, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced that they also filed a suit against the order in the D.C. court. They are represented by Elias Law Group.
"This executive order is an unconstitutional power grab from Donald Trump that attacks vote by mail, gives DOGE sensitive personal information, and makes it harder for states to run their own free and fair elections," they said in a joint statement. "It will even make it harder for military members serving overseas and married women who have changed their name to have their votes count."
"Donald Trump and DOGE are doing this as an attempt to rationalize their repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories and set the groundwork to throw out legal votes and ignore election outcomes they do not like," they added. "It's anti-American and Democrats are using every tool at our disposal—including taking Trump to court—to stop this illegal overreach that undermines our democracy."
The pro-voter lawsuits are also among several legal challenges to Trump's long list of executive actions since January 20. As Common Dreamsreported earlier Monday, the National Treasury Employees Union filed a federal suit in the same D.C. court over Trump's recent order that aims to strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government workers.
It's not just the Trump administration that's working to make it more difficult for Americans to participate in democracy. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are also planning to hold a vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act this week.
"If the bill passes, more than 21 million Americans could be blocked from voting," the Brennan Center for Justice warned on social media Monday. "The SAVE Act would be the first voter suppression bill ever passed by Congress. Lawmakers should be protecting the freedom to vote—not restricting it. We urge Congress to reject the SAVE Act."
This article has been updated to include the Democratic lawsuit.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Executive Order on Voting Denounced as 'Authoritarian Power Grab'
Pro-democracy critics warn the presidential directive "represents a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote."
Mar 26, 2025
Voting rights groups and pro-democracy advocates responded with uproar after President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening issued what they warn amounts to a far-reaching "authoritarian power grab" in the form of an "unlawful" executive order that would restrict voter access nationwide and punish states that make it easier for citizens to have their political preferences registered at the ballot box.
The official executive order—under the Orwellian header "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections"—would do the very opposite, warn critics, by making it more difficult for tens of millions of eligible U.S. citizens to cast their ballots in state and national elections.
The order, said Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs with the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, "is a blatant effort to usurp state and congressional authority over our elections and stop millions of American citizens from voting."
"This is a blatant attack on democracy." —Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
"The order, which multiple legal experts say is likely illegal," Edkins continued, "threatens to punish states that do not comply and could potentially disenfranchise any American who doesn't have a passport. It even invites Elon Musk's DOGE to help enforce the measures. This isn't about securing our elections—it's voter suppression, plain and simple."
The ACLU said the presidential directive "represents a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote," in part by ordering—by fiat and without the consent of Congress—the Election Assistance Commission to alter the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote—something never needed in the nation's history.
Trump's order also attempts to force states to enact "documentary proof of citizenship requirements". It would force state election authorities, under threat of significant federal funds being withheld, to discard all absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
"This isn't about securing our elections—it's voter suppression, plain and simple." —Brett Edkins, Stand Up America
Lisa Gilbert, co-director of Public Citizen, echoed others' critiques, saying the president's assault on voting rights represents the opposite of election integrity.
"This is a blatant attack on democracy and an authoritarian power grab," warned Gilbert. The executive order, she said, "would compromise our election systems, suppress the votes of millions of Americans, especially voters of color, and pave the way for still more Trumpian false claims of election fraud."
"A president does not set election law and never will," said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the pro-democracy group Common Cause. "Trump's executive action is an attempt to take away our right to vote or make it so hard that we don't participate. The people reject these tactics. Common Cause and our members will fight voter suppression wherever it shows up, including in the White House, because voting is a right for the many, not a selected few. This executive order will not stand."
"A president does not set election law and never will." —Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause
Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, warned that the executive order, if enforced, would disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters across the country, the very opposite of what making elections "honest and worth of public trust," as the order states. Lakin said the order is the latest in a long line of Republican-led efforts to exploit the myth of pervasive fraud—a myth the GOP created and right-wing media continues to perpetuate—as a way to diminish voting rights and ballot access.
"This measure will no doubt disproportionately impact historically excluded communities, including voters of color, naturalized citizens, people with disabilities, and the elderly, by pushing unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote," Lakin said. "We deserve better than elected officials weaponizing xenophobia and the myth of voter fraud to jeopardize our rights. We will do everything in our power to stop this unconstitutional attack on the right to vote to ensure that every eligible American can participate in our democracy. We will see President Trump in court."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Is It Happening Here?
Two generations of family history has convinced me that a deeply divided Weimer-like democracy can be destroyed from the inside out, even one that has been expanding its franchise of freedom for more than two centuries.
Mar 08, 2025
My mother was interrogated by the Gestapo when she was nine years old. She thought the initials for the Nazi Labor Front (Deutesche Arbeitsfront) stood for German Monkey Front (Deutsche Affefront) and, because she was dyslexic, she sounded it out. Her mother Emmy was not allowed to be with Eva while she was questioned about who had told her to say what she had. Afterwards Emmy was told if the child was not out of the country in 24 hours the entire family would be arrested.
Eva was put on a train and spent the next three years in a boarding school on an Italian mountaintop until finally reuniting with her family in Holland in 1939. There the American Quakers helped get the family, including her father Fritz (who had survived detention and torture at Buchenwald concentration camp), onto the last ship to America before the Nazis invaded.
My mother was a difficult, emotionally fractured person throughout her life in part, I came to believe, because of her childhood trauma and family separation that she unconsciously blamed on herself. I thought of her during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term when his migrant family separation policy left children locked away from their parents, some separated for more than three years.
The threat in our country seems to be a uniquely American brand of celebrity fascism mixed with a tech-bro junta of uber-rich rocket-owning oligarchs.
I grew up a middle-class American but, given my parents’ backgrounds, believing that history can knock the struts out from under you at any time. While my mother had escaped the Nazis, my father, his sister, and mother had escaped a massacre in their village in Ukraine, 3 of 20 hiding in an attic while hundreds more were slain in the streets and in their homes. Ukraine still bleeds as Donald Trump cozies up to its latest invaders, attacks its leader, and demands its rare minerals.
My mother died in 1974, my father a few years later. In 2016, right after Trump was elected for the first time, my Aunt Renate, 89, was one of those people who actually made plans to move to Canada, to a small town in the province of Saskatchewan. She wasn’t ready to live with the fear she’d experienced as a child. Leukemia caught up with her before she could make the move. She died at 90.
Before the 2016 election I’d convinced Renate to write an article on her childhood memories of the election in which Adolf Hitler came to power, even after his attempt to stage a coup. It read in part:
In 1932, the German people went to the polls to choose between Hitler and President Paul von Hindenburg, the incumbent. My parents were afraid to vote in their small home community where the citizens all knew each other by name. They feared reprisal because they could easily have been identified as anti-Nazi voters. As a family, we drove to a distant, larger town where my mother and father voted.
My two sisters and I waited in the car. We did not speak. We were terrified without knowing why. An atmosphere of danger and secrecy held us in its grip as we watched the Nazi guards in their brown uniforms and swastika armbands march up and down in front of the voting booth. As Jews, this was the last time they voted—to make their voices heard as German citizens.
I vividly remember the first time I voted as an American citizen in 1948—Thomas Dewey versus Harry Truman…After I closed the black curtain of the booth and punched the buttons, I had to pull a lever to record my vote. I was awed by what this simple gesture implied: I was responsible to my country, to the world, for influencing the outcome of the election. In the privacy of the curtained space I burst into tears, grateful that I was permitted to record my opinion without fear of retribution and that my vote would be counted among millions to determine the political future which American citizens would accept.
Until 2020 that is, when many U.S. citizens were convinced not to accept the outcome of a free and fair election. Four years later a slim majority put Donald Trump back in power despite his attempted coup. Today the Quisling-like compliance of a Republican Congress unwilling to assert its constitutional role and the potential remolding of the FBI, CIA, and the military (starting with the unjustified firing of the Coast Guard commandant on Trump’s second day back in power and now a wider purge at the Pentagon) bodes poorly for the so-called “guardrails” of democracy.
In addition, the total amnesty of the rioters who took over the Capitol on January 6, 2021, demonstrating their willingness to use violence on his behalf, gives another clear indication of how things could rapidly devolve under Trump 2.0. Two generations of family history has convinced me that a deeply divided Weimer-like democracy can be destroyed from the inside out, even one that has been expanding its franchise of freedom for more than two centuries.
In 1968 I was in the streets of New York protesting a Madison Square Garden rally for former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who was running for president as an openly racist third-party candidate. It was a wild riot scene that as a 17-year-old had me enthralled. When I confronted my mother’s worried fury later that night, I spoke thoughtlessly. In the 1930s, I said, if young people had gone into the streets of Germany, maybe Hitler wouldn’t have come to power.
Seven years later, when my mother was in the hospital after surgery for lung cancer and knew she was dying, she reminded me of that night, and how I’d hurt her to the bone. “I was only nine. There was nothing I could do,” she said through her tears.
My mother was too young to resist fascism when it enveloped and ultimately destroyed her country and many others. The threat in our country seems to be a uniquely American brand of celebrity fascism mixed with a tech-bro junta of uber-rich rocket-owning oligarchs.
But America’s last best generation of antifascists—including my parents who both joined the U.S. Army in World War II—defeated a similar though more advanced threat on the beaches of Normandy and beyond. Even if my mom was too young at nine, I’m not too old, even in my 70s, to join with my fellow citizens in mobilizing to again stop the dark threat, if not once-and-for-all, at least this time in America.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular