Voter Suppression, Executive Order Style

Voting rights advocates, the Democratic Party, and state attorneys general are fighting President Trump’s midterms-timed attacks on American voters.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/07/trump-voter-suppression-executive-order-14339-citizenship-post-office/



The Constitution’s wordsmiths have confounded courtrooms and law schools since the ink dried on the parchment. More than two centuries later, the grammatical nuances of commas in the Second Amendment generate bitter debate but not much more clarity on the right to bear arms. Then there are words like “domicile” that appear in Supreme Court rulings but not in the Constitution itself that are central to interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case.

One would think that where the Constitution is loud and clear, it would take an exceptional argument to persuade the courts that the founding document means something other than what it says—which brings us to Executive Order 14399, President Donald Trump’s 28th executive order of so far this year. The administration’s latest executive order on voting would deploy new voter eligibility tests and mail-in voting mechanisms in time to cripple state election administration—one thing in the American system of government that actually works well across 50 states—going into the November general election. Voter fraud in the United States has been and remains statistically insignificant.

Conjuring up hair-raising scenarios and repeating the lies about voter fraud supposedly committed by legions of noncitizens and other ineligible voters is a diversion from the more serious issues of mis/disinformation, cyberattacks, and political violence. But it’s a diversion that’s been central to Trump’s politics whenever the prospect of an electoral defeat confronts him. “This EO seems so weak and poorly drafted that I think the purpose is not to implement but to sow more chaos around elections,” Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the UCLA School of Law, told the Prospect in an email interview. “[It’s] the latest in a string of things meant to discourage voting, sow doubt in the integrity of the election process, and cause Trump’s supporters to question the legitimacy of Democratic victories.”

The president’s executive order has already sparked five lawsuits. The NAACP, Common Cause, Black Voters Matter, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed their suit this past weekend. Two separate groups of voting rights advocates, one led by the League of Women Voters, the other led by the League of United Latin American Citizens, Democratic Party organizations, House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and 23 state attorneys general have all lined up to attempt to beat down this latest example of executive branch overreach.

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