A ballot drop box sits outside the library at Virginia Avenue Park in Santa Monica, California on July 14, 2026. (Photo by Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)National Democrats are suing President Donald Trump, accusing his administration of intimidating election officials and asking a federal court to block him from interfering in the midterm elections.
The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in Washington, D.C., comes as the Trump administration mounts a highly public offensive against voter fraud in California just two weeks before Election Day and as federal agents face allegations they are questioning people at their homes about their voter status.
The Department of Justice has sued state and local officials, demanding they not count the ballots of roughly 20,000 California voters that the DOJ alleges are noncitizens and suggesting they will face prosecution if they do. The Trump administration is currently scrutinizing an additional 17,000 California voters, according to a court filing.
Jeffries, Schumer sign on
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who’s in line to become speaker if his party retakes the House, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with other Democratic groups and a California voter, allege in their lawsuit that the Trump administration has engaged in a pattern of intimidation intended to frighten officials into complying with unlawful demands to thwart voting.
The executive branch has no authority to assert authority over states’ maintenance of their own voter rolls and determinations of who is qualified to vote, they say. The U.S. Constitution assigns states the responsibility of administering elections.
“Thwarted in Congress and the courts, the administration has now simply disregarded the tools Congress provided it and fashioned its own cudgels instead,” lawyers for the Democrats write in their legal complaint.
The lawsuit names Trump, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the leaders of both agencies as defendants.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department said in a statement that it enforces federal election law and that election integrity is a top priority. Every action the DOJ has taken related to this year’s elections, the statement said, “is grounded in law and being litigated in open court.”
Homeland Security called the lawsuit a “political stunt.”
Dozens of states unsuccessfully sued by DOJ
Noncitizen voting is a rare phenomenon, studies have consistently found. The Justice Department this week charged 38 noncitizens in California with election crimes, an infinitesimal percentage of registered voters.
Even if all 20,000 individuals on the DOJ list are noncitizens, it would represent only about 0.08% of the nearly 23.2 million registered voters in California.
For more than a year, the Trump administration has attempted to influence how states run elections. The Justice Department sued dozens of states — all unsuccessfully — to force them to hand over sensitive data on voters. Homeland Security refashioned a powerful computer program called SAVE into a tool that can verify citizenship, though critics say it falsely flags U.S. citizens.
Trump pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would have required voters nationwide to prove their citizenship. The legislation passed the House but encountered bipartisan opposition in the Senate, where a handful of Republicans and Democrats prevented it from advancing.
Trump also attempted to use the U.S. Postal Service to impose national restrictions on voting by mail. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Postal Service rules from taking effect ahead of the midterms.
The broad effort has played out as Trump’s political fortunes appear to be dimming. Just 36% of likely voters approve of Trump’s performance, according to a New York Times-Siena University poll released Wednesday. If Democrats retake the House or Senate, they will likely initiate a myriad of investigations into Trump and his administration that could consume the final two years of his term.
New blitz in California
Against that backdrop, the Trump administration has in recent days launched a new voter fraud blitz targeting California, a blue state that mails ballots to all voters.
Last week the Justice Department provided state and local officials with 20,000 names that it said Homeland Security had identified as likely noncitizens. After giving state officials just 48 hours to act on the list, the DOJ sued.
On Monday, DOJ attorneys asked for a temporary restraining order that would immediately force California to comply with their demands that these individuals not be provided mail ballots and that their ballots not count unless they offer proof of citizenship. It also suggested in a court filing that Homeland Security could accuse more California voters of being noncitizens.
Nicolas Bartell, associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a sub-agency of Homeland Security, said in a declaration filed in court on Tuesday that USCIS “has identified a separate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens after an initial review of voter rolls.”
But Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan is casting doubt on the reliability of Homeland Security’s review — and arguing complying with the DOJ’s demands would severely disrupt the election locally.
Logan’s office analyzed a sample of 200 names of the 20,000 provided by the Justice Department. In a court filing, lawyers for Logan wrote that his office found that 25.8% of the sample recorded a U.S. birthplace, a guarantee of citizenship except in extremely limited circumstances. About 71% had never voted.
Monica Flores, the assistant registrar-recorder for the Candidate and Voter Services Bureau, wrote in a court declaration that if forced to comply with the Justice Department’s demands, “it would be virtually impossible to timely certify the election results in compliance with state law.”
‘Fearmongering and intimidation’
California state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat, at a news conference on Tuesday called the Trump administration’s efforts an attempt to silence voters. She urged voters not to be afraid.
“This is a federal administration that operates through fearmongering and intimidation,” Gonzalez said.
San Francisco, Santa Clara and several advocacy groups sued Homeland Security in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that DHS has authorized broad election-related field operations. Armed agents have been sent to homes to interrogate residents about their voter eligibility, the lawsuit says.
The California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation joined the local governments in suing.
A Homeland Security Investigations internal memo dated Aug. 31 describes a “surge initiative” beginning Sept. 1 that includes conducting field interviews. The memo, which was filed in court, identifies California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin as targets of the surge during September. Additional locations are redacted in the document.
“DHS’ stated intention of questioning Americans at their homes weeks before an election is voter intimidation, and protections against this form of harassment extend beyond the polling place,” Hayden Johnson, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a legal advocacy group representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed.
Justice Department lawyers have responded in court filings that the plaintiffs haven’t identified a single affected voter. The allegations of intimidation also lack specifics, the DOJ says.
The federal government has statutory authority to investigate potential voting by noncitizens,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a filing. “Enjoining the government from even investigating such criminal violations would damage the public interest, not serve it.”
A hearing on a preliminary injunction in the case was held Monday. No decision was immediately issued.
