As a potential Democratic wave looms, Trump’s DOJ angles for last-minute power over midterms

American democracy faces one of its biggest stress tests of the modern era, as President Donald Trump’s sprawling campaign for power over elections encounters a firewall of judges, state election workers and voting rights leaders heading into Election Day. A cascade of courtroom losses over the weekend dealt a major blow to the Trump administration’s last-minute efforts ahead of Tuesday to assert authority over voting and hold the prospect of prosecutions over the heads of state election officials. But another round of last-minute court hearings was set for Monday — and the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to require California to set aside the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens. Democrats, voting rights groups and even some former Trump administration officials have said they are braced for a range of possible disruptions and interference, especially as the president stares down the prospect of a blue wave that could wash away Republican control of Congress. Elections forecasters have said Democrats are on track to win control of the U.S. House and possibly the Senate, amid voter unhappiness with rising consumer costs. “I fully expect my former boss, Donald Trump, to try to steal this election,” Miles Taylor, a deputy Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during the first Trump administration who became an outspoken Trump critic, told reporters last week. Trump and his supporters have said the federal government’s actions are necessary to protect against noncitizen voting, which they warn cancels out the votes of Americans. While researchers have consistently found that noncitizen voting is rare and doesn’t impact the outcome of elections, Homeland Security has arrested dozens of noncitizens on allegations of election crimes in recent weeks, part of a concerted effort by the Trump administration to ramp up enforcement ahead of the election. The last-minute push, Trump allies note, comes after the Senate didn’t advance Trump’s signature election legislation, the SAVE America Act, which would have imposed stringent requirements on voters to show proof of citizenship. The legislation passed the House but faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate. “They voted against proof of citizenship so they can cheat,” Trump said during a rally in Salina, Kansas, on Sunday. In the past four days, a federal judge ordered the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens in California shared with an immigrant rights group, which said Saturday it found major problems with its veracity. Another judge blocked the Justice Department from threatening election workers with prosecution. In Alaska, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that preemptively sought to question the certification of the results of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. An appeals court also upheld limits on preelection field operations by Homeland Security. On Monday, judges were expected to weigh requests to restrict federal law enforcement agents from serving as election monitors and additional limits on armed federal personnel at polling locations. Federal law broadly prohibits armed federal troops or agents at election sites. Planning for ‘every single scenario’ As the court losses pile up, Democrats, civic leaders and election experts have watched with a wary eye toward how Trump will respond. Election preparations by critics of the Trump administration have been underway for months. Congressional Democrats have mapped out dozens of scenarios, including the possibility that Trump will falsely point to a foreign threat against U.S. elections as an excuse to disrupt voting or seize voting machines. They have also assembled a field army of volunteers to assist voters and monitor polling locations for signs of federal interference. Teams of lawyers have drafted a range of possible lawsuits that can be quickly filed if problems arise. Virginia Kase Solomón…

Originally published by News From The States.
Read the original article