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.”
JUDICIAL COUP https://t.co/eKR2kHM8zs
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) April 24, 2025
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.
Loading…
