In a landmark pre-midterm ruling, a California-based federal judge has issued a formal injunction barring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and broader Trump administration from threatening state and local election administrators with criminal prosecution over their handling of submitted election ballots. Presiding Judge Trina Thompson’s order specifically prohibits federal authorities from demanding that election officials segregate, set aside, or refuse to process ballots the administration unilaterally claims may have been cast by non-citizen residents. The judicial intervention arrives just days before high-stakes midterm contests that would decide partisan control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress for the final two years of former President Donald Trump’s first term in office. Court filings show the DOJ first launched its targeted push earlier that month, sending official correspondence to California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Registrar, demanding they isolate the ballots of roughly 20,000 registered voters the administration asserted were “likely” non-citizens, with no accompanying corroborating public evidence. Approximately seven days after those initial letters were dispatched, armed Department of Homeland Security personnel hand-delivered follow-up notices to county election staff across California, threatening criminal charges if officials failed to sequester the targeted voter records. Parallel demands were also sent to Washington state’s top election official, ordering the state to halt processing of ballots flagged under the same unsubstantiated non-citizen voter claims. These actions prompted civil rights advocacy groups and labor unions representing frontline election workers to file a joint legal complaint, arguing the DOJ’s aggressive maneuvers amounted to unlawful interference with their statutory obligation to administer free, fair elections in compliance with established state and federal electoral rules. The groups emphasized they had no legal authority to comply with the federal demands under existing state election protocols. In her ruling, Judge Thompson explicitly rejected the administration’s justifications, noting that while federal defendants claimed their actions were intended to curb unlawful non-citizen voting, the policies would in practice cause widespread administrative chaos across election systems, disenfranchise large numbers of legally eligible registered voters, and “wreak havoc” on the integrity of the upcoming midterm vote. The judge’s order also halts a parallel ongoing DOJ criminal investigation into county election officials, which had been proceeding via federal grand jury subpoenas issued in the weeks leading up to polling day. The legal clash forms part of a years-long public campaign by Trump and his administration to advance unsubstantiated claims that voter fraud is rampant across the U.S. electoral system, despite a large body of independent academic and nonpartisan research confirming instances of intentional illegal voting are extraordinarily rare. In the lead-up to the November 3 midterms, Trump repeatedly cast public doubt on the security of U.S. electoral processes, making unproven allegations of widespread cheating in mail-in and postal voting, and even offering a $1 million public reward to any member of the public who could report a verified case of voter fraud that resulted in a formal criminal conviction. Independent fact-checking and analysis from BBC Verify later confirmed that the Heritage Foundation’s widely cited voter fraud database documented only 24 total criminal convictions for non-citizen voting across the entire 20-year period spanning 2005 to 2025. In a public social media post released on the Saturday following the ruling, Trump publicly criticized the judicial decision, writing, “Why would they reject fixing Election Fraud?” The president went on to denounce a string of recent court rulings that had blocked his administration’s election fraud-related policies, and vowed to continue pursuing legal and administrative actions to advance his stated goal of upholding “Election Integrity.”
Judge orders Trump administration to stop threatening US election officials
