President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he’ll signal an govt order aimed toward getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines appears unlikely to quantity to a lot. He doesn’t seem to have any such authority, and authorized challenges would absolutely observe.
But it was instructive in a method: It made clear the president elected to steer the social gathering of states’ rights has little or no regard for states’ rights.
Indeed, he nearly appears to disdain them.
It’s tough to learn his feedback some other means, particularly as he has spent a lot of his second time period trying to chip away at states’ rights — or at the least, those he doesn’t like.
While promoting his new pitch to eliminate mail-in voting and voting machines, Trump included this remarkable pair of sentences.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Trump has described the states as “agents” of the federal government earlier than on this context, however with out casting them as subservient to him personally.
This is a reasonably novel tackle the Constitution, to place it mildly.
As NCS’s Daniel Dale notes, the Constitution says the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections … shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Congress has a job, in that the Constitution says it may “make or alter such Regulations.” But there is no such thing as a position for the president.
And Trump isn’t saying that Congress ought to outlaw mail-in voting or voting machines, thoughts you. Instead, he’s saying the states “must” eliminate them as a result of he tells them to — apparently as a result of he was elected president and since he has decided it’s “FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.”
This is merely the most recent in an extended line of drastic Trump claims to energy.
He typically claimed throughout his first time period that the Constitution gave him absolute power. Even when out of workplace, he floated terminating portions of the Constitution, whereas repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. And earlier this 12 months, he posted a quote typically attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte suggesting his actions couldn’t be illegal so long as he was performing to “save” the nation.
But simply as hanging as Trump’s declare to energy on Monday was his specific statement that states are merely his “agents.”
This may be very tough to sq. with many years of conservative orthodoxy, which holds that the federal authorities needs to be small and that states ought to paved the way.
When Trump was first elected in 2016, the Republican Party platform devoted a whole part to its obvious devotion to states’ rights. It stated the federal authorities shouldn’t have any powers past these particularly enumerated within the Constitution.
“Every violation of state sovereignty by federal officials is not merely a transgression of one unit of government against another; it is an assault on the liberties of individual Americans,” the platform stated.
The platform additionally decried the “bullying of state and local governments,” apparently a reference to the Obama administration.
What had been these state and native governments being bullied over? According to the platform, it was on “matters ranging from voter identification (ID) laws to immigration” and on “healthcare programs,” amongst different issues.
Trump has now taken constitutionally dicey govt actions that sought to undercut states’ authority in all three of these areas:
But these aren’t the one areas through which he’s sought to impose the federal authorities on the states:
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When he dispatched troops to Los Angeles in June amid protests over his immigration crackdown, he turned the first president in 60 years to take action with out the consent of the governor. (California has sued over this.)
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This month, he turned the primary president to federalize the police in Washington, DC.
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He issued an govt order directing the Justice Department to prevent states from enforcing their own climate laws.
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He sought to finish New York City’s congestion pricing by withholding funding. (A choose later blocked this.)
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He has repeatedly sought to regulate how California uses its water.
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And he has repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funding from states and cities in the event that they don’t abide by extra conservative social insurance policies on points akin to transgender rights.
But few of those efforts loom as massive as Trump’s rising makes an attempt to exert himself over the American elections system.
Trump has not solely sought to develop citizenship necessities and talked about nixing mail-in voting and voting machines; as NCS’s Fredreka Schouten wrote earlier this month, his administration and its allies have taken a series of steps to apply pressure on the elections system — typically consistent with Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.
This has raised fears amongst Democrats and watchdogs a few concerted effort to reshape the elections system in a means that advantages Trump and his social gathering.
It stays to be seen how a lot his new govt order may in the end play into that, given it’s not clear how such a factor might cross authorized muster.
But that is additionally an space that pursuits Trump drastically, owing to his years of voter fraud conspiracy theories. And it’s tough to see him standing again, it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says about his powers (or lack thereof).
And if nothing else, Trump has lastly stated how he actually feels concerning the idea of states’ rights.