House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday called President Trump’s recent executive order restricting mail-in voting “unlawful and unconstitutional,” promising that Democrats would beat it in court, as they have previously.
The New York Democrat said the president is engineering a preemptive scheme to rig the midterms and lay the groundwork for another round of stolen election claims.
“That executive order, which is designed to try to suppress the electorate, alter the landscape in order to artificially keep control of the House and the Senate, will be rejected,” Mr. Jeffries, New York Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve already filed litigation, and we expect that it will be declared so in short order by the courts.”
Mr. Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of eligible voters and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to those on the approved lists. States that refuse to comply risk losing federal funding.
Democrats say the order is less about election integrity than about political survival.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Mr. Trump’s order is intended to help Republicans in the November elections as the president’s poll numbers fall amid the war in Iran and as Americans struggle with higher prices.
Mr. Jeffries struck the same chord Sunday, pointing to a string of recent Democratic election victories in Texas, Louisiana and Florida as evidence that the political environment is moving against Republicans — including in red states — and suggesting the president knows it.
Mr. Trump has warned Republicans they will lose the November midterm elections if they don’t crack down on mail-in voting.
Democrats say the framing reveals the partisan calculus behind the order: if Democrats win big in November anyway, the groundwork for contesting the results will already have been laid.
Mr. Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Party’s congressional campaign arms signed onto a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Washington challenging the order.
More than 20 blue-state attorneys general filed a separate suit Friday.
Republicans rushed to the president’s defense.
Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters called the order a step toward restoring voter confidence, and the Republican Study Committee said the president was “taking action to secure our elections.”
“At the end of the day, Democrats are trying to cheat,” Mr. Gruters told Newsmax.
The crackdown on mail ballots has ruffled some Republicans who hail from states where absentee voting is widespread and popular.
The states suing argue that the Constitution’s Elections Clause gives states — not the president — the power to set the “times, places and manner” of federal elections, and that Congress also holds authority over election regulations while the president holds none.
