This may have been the quickest slap of this nature by the Supreme Court in history.
Extraordinary Rebuke
The court’s ruling came just hours after administration lawyers asked the justices to immediately order California to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots.
Please note Supreme Court Rejects Trump Administration Request to Intervene in California Ballot Case
The Supreme Court on Monday evening swiftly rejected a request by the Trump administration to require that California set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claims have been provided to noncitizens.
The order, which was unsigned and gave no reasoning, came the same day that the administration lawyers had asked the court to step in after a divided federal appeals court had rejected the administration’s arguments that California officials should impound the ballots for further scrutiny. No public dissents were noted.
The ruling appeared to be an extraordinary rebuke of the Trump administration, sending a message that the court was not interested in stepping in to assist President Trump’s efforts to interfere with how states are administering elections.
It was a highly unusual ruling because it came only hours after the administration filed its emergency request and without the court even calling for a response or briefing from the opposing parties. It is nearly unheard of for the court to rule on an application filed by the federal government without first asking for a response from the opposing parties.
Color Commentary
All Rise News adds important context in its report SCOTUS immediately rejects Trump DOJ’s California election case
Entered on the Court’s emergency docket without any explanation, the denial fell roughly six hours after the Trump Justice Department filed its emergency application. A federal judge dismissed the same lawsuit last week, characterizing the government’s request as “indicative of a broad, ongoing pattern of attempted election interference by federal officials.”
Throughout the day, the Trump regime’s shape-shifting claims of voter fraud in California took a bruising until they finally collapsed.
The Department of Homeland Security initially estimated that there were nearly 200,000 suspected noncitizens on the voter rolls before dramatically lowering that number to 20,000 “likely” noncitizens.
Even the reduced number was wildly inflated: Los Angeles County authorities sampled 200 of the names on the government’s list, finding that 39 percent of them were listed as having been born in the United States. More than 70 percent of the sampled names never voted in past elections.
Earlier on Monday, a Trump Justice Department lawyer acknowledged in court that it was “fair” to say that the government’s list has a “high error rate,” according to independent journalist Chris Geidner of Law Dork.
Weasel Words
Joyce Vance Comments on a Tweet by Adam Klasfeld.
Late this afternoon, the Supreme Court told Trump no. There is no opinion, so we don’t know what the Court’s reasoning was. We don’t know whether the decision was unanimous or split, and if it was split, who voted which way. But we do know that the Supreme Court declined to let Trump interfere in the election in California at this late date. It rejected DOJ’s request, which would have forced the state to deal with the junk list of voters the administration thinks might not be citizens.
“Count the number of weasel words packed into a single sentence in the Trump DOJ’s emergency request for SCOTUS to bless attempted election interference.” It was hardly the kind of definitive statement you would expect the Justice Department to make before trying to interfere with votes while an election is already underway. “Likely not.” “In the United States’ view.” “Appear to be registered.”
The Yiddish word “shanda” comes to mind. It means a shame, a disgrace, a scandal, and an embarrassment—all rolled into one. Scandalously bad behavior. Shanda aptly captures Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with the election, and I’m relieved that the Supreme Court didn’t let Trump get away with the stunt he tried to pull in California.
Swift Rebuke
Michael Sellers comments: Supreme Court Swiftly Rejects Trump’s Last-Minute Attempt to Intervene in California Election
In an extraordinary election-eve decision, the United States Supreme Court on Monday evening summarily rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to intervene in California’s election and require officials to set aside approximately 20,000 mail-in ballots.
The most remarkable aspect of the decision may have been the speed and manner in which the justices acted.
The administration filed its emergency application Monday, November 2, just one day before the midterm elections. Within hours, the Supreme Court rejected it.
The justices did not request a response from California. They did not order additional briefing. They issued no explanation. And not a single justice publicly dissented.
More than six million mail ballots had already been returned in California by Sunday. Voting had been underway for weeks, and election officials were preparing to process the remaining ballots in accordance with state law.
The administration’s proposed intervention would have required officials to identify and separate ballots associated with a disputed list of voters, potentially interrupting procedures already in progress. [And then Trump would have complained about the speed of California vote counting]
Instead, the Supreme Court disposed of the administration’s application almost as soon as it arrived.
The procedural circumstances are striking.
The federal government sought an extraordinary intervention in a state election, one day before Election Day. The Supreme Court rejected the request within hours, without asking the state to defend itself.
Any lawyer with an ounce of integrity would resign or refuse to argue this case and be fired.
But there is no one with an ounce of integrity in the DOJ. That is precisely why they were selected in the first place.
Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock
