Democratic state attorneys general on Friday will seek to block President Donald Trump's proposal for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. elections in a case that tests a constitutional bedrock - the separation of powers.
The top law enforcement officials from 19 states filed a federal lawsuit after the Republican president signed the executive order in March, arguing that its provisions would step on states' power to set their own election rules and that the executive branch had no such authority.
In a filing supporting that argument, a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state said Trump's directive would upend the system established by the Constitution's Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress control over how elections are run. They said the order seeks to "unilaterally coronate the President as the country's chief election policymaker and administrator."
If the court does not halt the order, they argued, "the snowball of executive overreach will grow swiftly and exponentially."
Trump's election directive was part of a flurry of executive orders he has issued in the opening months of his second term, many of which have drawn swift legal challenges . It follows years of him falsely claiming that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election was due to widespread fraud and an election year in which he and other Republicans promoted the notion that large numbers of noncitizens threatened the integrity of U.S. elections. In fact, voting by noncitizens is rare and, when caught, can lead to felony charges and deportation.