Supreme Court Rejects Trump Push to Set Aside Thousands of Calif. Ballots

Justices Kiss up to the Democrats👄😠 

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an emergency request from President Donald Trump's administration to set aside thousands of California mail-in ballots while officials determine whether the voters are U.S. citizens, leaving the disputed ballots in place ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections.

The justices declined to intervene in a case involving approximately 20,000 registered voters whom the Justice Department identified as potentially ineligible because of questions about their citizenship status, The Associated Press reported.

The court issued its decision without explaining its reasoning, as is customary in emergency appeals, and no justices publicly dissented.

The administration had sought to have California election officials separate the challenged ballots from others until the voters' eligibility could be verified.

Justice Department attorneys argued that the temporary measure would help ensure compliance with federal election laws while allowing ballots cast by eligible voters to be counted once their status was confirmed.

California officials opposed the request, arguing that the administration's list contained errors and that separating ballots so close to Election Day would create logistical difficulties.

The dispute is part of the Trump administration's broader effort to strengthen election integrity measures and identify noncitizens who may have registered or attempted to vote in federal elections.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and the administration has emphasized the importance of verifying citizenship to protect the integrity of election results.

At a court hearing, Justice Department Attorney Kenneth Kao acknowledged that the government's list could contain errors but said that was precisely why federal officials were seeking assistance from California election administrators.

"That's a fair statement," Kao said when asked whether the data had a high error rate.

"That's why we ask for the registrars' aid in verifying these are all valid voters," he added.

Bill Essayli, the federal prosecutor overseeing the Justice Department's Los Angeles office, expressed confidence in the administration's findings during a separate news conference.

"This isn't speculation. This isn't a theory," Essayli said, while acknowledging that some entries could contain errors.

California officials have maintained that the state's existing election procedures provide safeguards against ineligible voting.

The state automatically mails ballots to its approximately 23 million registered voters, and voting has been underway since early October.

Election officials said hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been processed and that identifying and separating the challenged ballots at this stage would be difficult.

A federal district court previously denied the Justice Department's request, and a divided federal appeals court upheld that decision.

In a dissent, one Trump-appointed appeals court judge argued that California's refusal to separate the challenged ballots encouraged the "violation of federal law."

The administration also encountered a separate ruling Monday in Washington, where Chief Judge James Boasberg determined that certain federal demands directed at California election officials likely exceeded the executive branch's constitutional authority.

"The Executive Branch has likely violated the Constitution's Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone," Boasberg wrote.

The Supreme Court's decision leaves the lower court's order in place as California prepares to complete voting Tuesday in elections that will help determine control of Congress for the remaining two years of Trump's second term.

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