Democrats sue Trump over executive order on elections

Nearly every arm of the Democratic Party united in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday night, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president seeking to require documentary proof of citizenship and other voting reforms is unconstitutional.

The 70-page lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Washington, DC, accuses the president of vastly overstepping his authority to “upturn the electoral playing field in his favor and against his political rivals.” It lists President Donald Trump and multiple members of his administration as defendants.

“Although the order extensively reflects the president’s personal grievances, conspiratorial beliefs and election denialism, nowhere does it (nor could it) identify any legal authority he possesses to impose such sweeping changes upon how Americans vote,” the lawsuit says. “The reason why is clear: The president possesses no such authority.”

The lawsuit repeatedly argues that the Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections, noting that the Elections Clause of the Constitution “is at the core of this action.” That clause says that states set the “times, places and manner” of elections, leaving them to decide the rules, oversee voting and try to prevent fraud. Congress may also pass federal voting laws.

As Democrats debate how best to challenge the Trump administration’s rapid expansion of executive power, the lawsuit represents one of the first moments where seemingly every arm of the party is pushing back with one voice.

Such unity is further evidence that Democrats still view the issue of democracy as core to their political brand, as well as a key issue that can help them claw back support with voters as they aim to build a new coalition ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In February, Democrats sued the Trump administration over attempts to control the Federal Election Commission. Weeks earlier, the Democratic National Committee joined a lawsuit over new voting laws in Georgia.

The executive order signed by Trump last week calls for a documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voters to register for federal elections. It also aims to set a national deadline for mail ballots by threatening to withhold federal funding from any state that accepts ballots postmarked before Election Day but arriving in the days after. At least 17 states have a provision that permits some late-arriving ballots to be counted.

And the order sought to give federal agencies, including the Elon Musk-led team known as the Department of Government Efficiency, access to state voter rolls to check “for consistency with federal requirements.”

Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement that “the Trump administration is standing up for free, fair and honest elections.”

“The Democrats continue to show their disdain for the Constitution and it continues to show in their insane objections to the president’s common-sense executive actions to require proof of US citizenship in an effort to protect the integrity of American elections,” Fields said.

The executive order directs the Elections Assistance Commission, a federal agency that Congress created in 2002 to help election officials with their work, to enforce the proof-of-citizenship requirement.

But the lawsuit says this is also unlawful, as Congress “intended for the agency to be an ‘independent entity.’”

“President Trump’s order shreds this congressional design,” the lawsuit states.

The executive order, as it stands now, could widely disenfranchise voters. About 21.3 million people do not have proof of citizenship readily available, according to a 2023 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights and democracy group, and the University of Maryland. And tens of thousands of ballots put in the mail before Election Day still arrive late. In Washington state, which votes nearly universally by mail, more than 250,000 ballots postmarked on time arrived after Election Day in the 2024 presidential election, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.

Regarding the ballot deadline provision in the order, the lawsuit argues that Congress has “repeatedly demonstrated its understanding that ballot receipt deadlines are a question of state, not federal, law.” It also cites Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, as having agreed that allowing absentee ballots sent by Election Day and received later “is a longstanding ‘policy choice’ reserved to the states.”

The lawsuit also cites the possibility of mass disenfranchisement.

“None of the relevant conditions advances the general welfare,” the lawsuit states. “Each condition will foreseeably disenfranchise eligible electors, which is incompatible with representative democracy.”

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Democratic National Committee along with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

In a lengthy memo announcing the lawsuit, the committees, Schumer and Jeffries released a joint statement.

“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. “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.”