Reuters reported that President Donald Trump disclosed over $1.4 billion in income from his family's cryptocurrency ventures. This massive accumulation of wealth by a figure at the apex of state power unfolds as his administration simultaneously pushes to restrict the voting rights of millions. The Supreme Court, however, delivered a series of rulings that limited his immediate reach, including a decision Monday siding with states accepting late-arriving mail ballots. These rulings followed back-to-back decisions last week that barred two sweeping executive orders aimed at changing national election rules.
Trump's efforts to tighten his grip on U.S. elections have included signing executive orders and advocating for restrictive legislation in Congress. His administration has also lost every federal lawsuit seeking detailed state voter data, which would include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller noted that it's been a “mixed bag for Republicans,” with the president “mostly empty-handed” in these specific legal battles.
The State's Hand in Voter Suppression
Despite these legal setbacks, Trump's agenda has seen successes through other state mechanisms. Republican-run states have redrawn congressional district lines, a process significantly aided by the Supreme Court's earlier decision to strike down a key section of the Voting Rights Act. The Department of Justice, under Trump's direction, has also launched investigations into voting and election operations, actions Democrats view as a potential prelude to federal intervention in the upcoming midterm elections.
The proposed SAVE Act, which Trump has been unable to push through the Senate, would eliminate nearly all absentee voting. It demands citizenship documents for voter registration and imposes nationwide photo identification requirements just before the midterm elections. Trump's frustration with the Senate's inability to pass this bill led him to refuse signing a bipartisan housing bill, revealing his priorities. He called the Senate logjam “crazy” on Monday, acknowledging the SAVE Act is “probably not going to happen.”
Trump's view that U.S. elections are “riddled with fraud” due to noncitizen voting has fueled a multiagency push to nationalize voter data. The Department of Homeland Security, with assistance from Elon Musk's DOGE effort, revamped the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. This program became a central pillar in efforts to cull potentially ineligible voters from state rolls. Last week, a federal judge blocked its use as a mass citizenship check. The administration had allowed local election administrators to search users by the thousands, employing a wider range of metrics than DHS-issued identification numbers. At least 67 million registrations, predominantly in Republican-controlled states, were analyzed, flagging tens of thousands as potential noncitizens or deceased individuals, though some were wrongly identified.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that Trump's changes aggregated Americans' sensitive personal data in a way that could lead to wrongful purges. She stated, “All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”
Trump's first executive order, mirroring the SAVE Act, sought to require citizenship documentation for voter registration. U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper temporarily blocked this order last year, making her decision permanent last week. Casper wrote that the Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.” A second order, issued in March, called for a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. It also threatened local election officials with prosecution and empowered the U.S. Postal Service to determine absentee ballot eligibility. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani made the same legal assessment as Casper last week, writing that the provisions “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.” The White House plans to appeal.
Capital's Political Maneuvers
Both major parties maintain national operations to monitor elections, complete with legal teams prepared to file challenges. Despite the Republican National Committee losing the mail ballot case, Chairman Joe Gruters affirmed Monday, “We are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day.”
Trump has also developed a roadmap for more aggressive actions. His U.S. attorney in Los Angeles announced in June that multiple election fraud investigations had been opened. A prosecutor was sent to the county's vote-tabulation center after California's June primary. Six months earlier, FBI agents executed a warrant, seizing ballots and other records from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County. University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller noted that local elections officials “already are having conversations about chain of custody disputes” for ballots. UCLA law professor Rick Hasen observed that “Republicans believe him when he says the election is rigged,” leading Democrats to similar conclusions about the system. This dynamic, Hasen concluded, successfully undermines voters' confidence in the election process.