A federal judge last week blocked the Trump administration's revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, preventing its use as a mass citizenship check for voters. This ruling effectively thwarts a key effort to secure national elections against noncitizen participation.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that Trump’s changes aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data. She stated this could result in voters being wrongly purged from the rolls, adding that the federal government had “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”
The administration, according to its own news releases, had allowed local election administrators to search users by the thousands, using a wider range of metrics. The SAVE program, with help from Elon Musk’s DOGE effort, analyzed at least 67 million registrations, primarily in Republican-controlled states. Tens of thousands were flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died.
This judicial intervention follows back-to-back rulings last week that barred two sweeping executive orders from President Trump seeking to change national election rules. These orders aimed to tighten election processes.
The Supreme Court also sided with states that accept late-arriving mail ballots on Monday, further loosening election standards. This decision limits the president's reach over election procedures.
Trump’s proposed SAVE Act, which would eliminate nearly all absentee voting and require citizenship documents to register, remains stalled in the Senate. This legislation aimed to impose photo identification requirements nationwide right before the midterm elections.
Four of the Senate’s 53 Republicans—Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—have declared their opposition to the bill itself. President Trump acknowledged Monday that the SAVE Act is “probably not going to happen,” calling the Senate logjam “crazy.”
Elite Obstruction of Citizen Sovereignty
Trump’s first executive order, reflecting his emphasis on noncitizens, sought to require would-be voters to document their citizenship to be able to register. U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper put a temporary block on the order last year and made her decision permanent last week.
Judge Casper wrote that the Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” effectively disarming the executive branch on this critical issue. This ruling undermines federal efforts to ensure the integrity of the ballot.
Trump issued a second order in March, calling for a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. This order would have empowered the U.S. Postal Service to determine who gets an absentee ballot and threatened local elections officials with prosecution.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani made the same legal assessment as Casper last week, ruling that the provisions “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.” The White House has indicated it will appeal these decisions.
Democratic and some Republican secretaries of state previously balked at Department of Justice requests for detailed state voter data, including dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. The administration has lost every federal lawsuit seeking this data, highlighting institutional resistance.
The Fight for Election Integrity
President Trump has consistently stated that U.S. elections are “riddled with fraud,” driven in part by noncitizen voting. He has vowed to “save America from crooked elections,” as he stated on his social media account Monday.
His Department of Justice has opened multiple election fraud investigations, with a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles stating in June that he had opened such probes. This U.S. attorney also sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-tabulation center after California’s June primary.
Six months earlier, FBI agents executed a warrant and seized ballots and other records from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. These actions underscore ongoing concerns about electoral processes.
University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller noted that local elections officials “already are having conversations about chain of custody disputes” for ballots. This indicates a growing awareness of potential vulnerabilities.
UCLA law professor Rick Hasen observed that Republicans believe Trump when he says the election is rigged. Hasen concluded that Trump “seems to have succeeded spectacularly” in undermining voters’ confidence in the election process.
Separately, Reuters reported that Trump disclosed more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.