Judge blocks key component of Trump's election integrity order: "Judicial coup"

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Thu, 24 Apr 2025 19:26 UTC

© Associatd Press

President Donald Trump and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has dealt a partial blow to President Donald Trump's push to secure America's elections, blocking his initiative to require proof of citizenship for voter registration. The ruling marks yet another roadblock from the judiciary thwarting the administration's America First agenda, which could raise further concerns among conservatives about the integrity of the electoral process.

Kollar-Kotelly also prohibited the Election Assistance Commission from withholding federal funds from states that fail to comply with the citizenship verification mandate.

"Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States - not the President - with the authority to regulate federal elections," the judge wrote in her 120-page opinion obtained by ABC News. "No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order."

Kollar-Kotelly declined to halt key components of President Trump's election security order, allowing tightened mail-in ballot deadlines and a directive for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cross-check immigration databases with state voter rolls, The Hill reports.

In March, Trump signed an executive order to enforce federal law and "to protect the integrity of our election process" — a move which sparked several lawsuits from organizations that were partly represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

States that fail to comply with parts of the Trump memo risk losing federal election funding, the order reads.

"The Attorney General shall take appropriate action against states that count ballots received after Election Day in Federal elections. Federal election funding will be conditioned on compliance," the executive order says.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller blasted the ruling, labeling it a "JUDICIAL COUP."

Earlier this month at a Wisconsin rally aimed at boosting voter turnout, Musk and DOGE volunteer Antonio Gracias disclosed that millions of noncitizens were granted Social Security numbers under former President Joe Biden's administration. They presented a chart illustrating a consistent annual rise, peaking at over 2 million in FY 2024, which concluded on September 30. In both FY23 and FY25 — the latter starting in October and running through September of this year — approximately 1 million noncitizens received Social Security numbers.

"None of this would have happened without President Trump," Gracias told Fox News. "President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases. He signed an executive order. It's never been done before, where agencies could talk to each other and databases could talk with each other."

"That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records. It really took a lot of courage," he added.

Comment: More from The Daily Signal:

Here are six things to know about Kollar-Kotelly.

1. Blocking DOGE's Work

In February, Kollar-Kotelly temporarily blocked DOGE from gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment records.

As part of investigating waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, DOGE sought access to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service that handles about 90% of all federal payments.

Several government employee unions sued claiming that DOGE head Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media platform X, should not have access to the information because he is not a full-time federal employee.

2. Her First Trump Election Integrity Case

In 2017, Trump established an Election Integrity Advisory Commission, which sought certain public state voter data.

Vice President Mike Pence was the chairman of the commission and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was the vice chairman. Trump appointed 15 other members.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued to get a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order enjoining the commission from collecting voter roll data.

The judge in July 2017 determined that the nonprofit had standing to sue over the commission's alleged failure to publish a privacy impact assessment.

However, Kollar-Kotelly denied EPIC's request for a temporary injunction. She determined that the Administrative Procedures Act only applies to federal agencies, not advisory committees. She ruled that if "powers of the commission expand beyond those of a purely advisory body — this determination may need to be revisited."

In her ruling, the judge faulted the commission for only releasing an agenda, and not releasing 381-pages of information in a binder for the commission members. However, all of the information was public and available online.

3. Five Years for Pro-Life Activist

Last year, Kollar-Kotelly sentenced a pro-life activist to 57 months in prison after she was convicted of violating the FACE Act for praying near a District of Columbia abortion clinic.

However, after taking office, Trump pardoned Lauren Handy, a 75-year-old Catholic woman.

"I would suggest that, in terms of your religion, that one of the tenets is that you should make the effort during this period of time, when it may be difficult in terms of for your husband, to make every effort to remain alive, to do the things that you need to do to survive, because that's part of the tenets of your religion," Kollar-Kotelly said during the sentencing.

The FACE Act stands for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers. However, the Biden administration's Justice Department heavily enforced against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

4. Transgender Military Service

In October 2017, the judge blocked Trump's directive to prevent transgender military service.

Trump directed the Department of Defense to prevent the Obama administration's June 2016 plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly in the military.

Federal judges in Maryland and Washington state made similar rulings.

5. Gitmo Detainee

In September 2009, Kollar-Kotelly ordered the release of Kuwaiti-national Fouad Mahmoud al-Rabiah, who was being detained at Guantanamo Bay.

This came after he was held in prison for seven years. The judge ruled that federal prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to keep al-Rabiah detained.

Al-Rabiah was a Kuwait Airways engineer. He was captured in Afghanistan and accused of assisting al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and with assisting the Taliban fighters in Tora Bora.

His lawyer argued he was captured based on mistaken identity and Kollar-Kotelly found that he had no ties to terrorism.

6. Sounding Off on Trump's Jan. 6 Pardons

Kollar-Kotelly was among the D.C. judges who presided over cases regarding defendants in the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

After Trump pardoned all of the defendants, Kollar-Kotelly let her disagreement be known in January.

"Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

She wrote "thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens" preserve the events.

Kollar-Kotelly is just another activist "judge" infesting the system: