President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he will sign an executive order aimed at getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines seems unlikely to amount to much. He doesn’t appear to have any such authority, and legal challenges would surely follow.
But it was instructive in one way: It made clear the president elected to lead the party of states’ rights has very little regard for states’ rights.
Indeed, he almost seems to disdain them.
It’s difficult to read his comments any other way, especially as he has spent much of his second term attempting to chip away at states’ rights — or at least, the ones he doesn’t like.
While selling his new pitch to get rid of 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 before in this context, but without casting them as subservient to him personally.
This is a rather novel take on the Constitution, to put it mildly.
As CNN’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 role, in that the Constitution says it can “make or alter such Regulations.” But there is no role for the president.
And Trump isn’t saying that Congress should outlaw mail-in voting or voting machines, mind you. Instead, he’s saying the states “must” get rid of them because he tells them to — apparently because he was elected president and because he has determined it’s “FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.”
This is merely the latest in a long line of drastic Trump claims to power.
He often claimed during his first term that the Constitution gave him absolute power. Even when out of office, he floated terminating portions of the Constitution, while repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. And earlier this year, he posted a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte suggesting his actions couldn’t be illegal as long as he was acting to “save” the country.
But just as striking as Trump’s claim to power on Monday was his explicit statement that states are merely his “agents.”
This is very difficult to square with decades of conservative orthodoxy, which holds that the federal government should be small and that states should lead the way.
When Trump was first elected in 2016, the Republican Party platform devoted an entire section to its apparent devotion to states’ rights. It said the federal government should not have any powers beyond those specifically enumerated in 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 said.
The platform also decried the “bullying of state and local governments,” apparently a reference to the Obama administration.
What were those state and local governments being bullied over? According to the platform, it was on “matters ranging from voter identification (ID) laws to immigration” and on “healthcare programs,” among other things.
Trump has now taken constitutionally dicey executive actions that sought to undercut states’ authority in all three of those areas:
On voter ID, he signed an executive order seeking to boost proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote. (A judge later blocked this.)
On immigration, he has sought to target state and local governments’ “sanctuary” policies. (A judge recently dismissed the administration’s lawsuit in Chicago over this.)
On health care, Trump’s new domestic agenda law creates, for the first time, federal “work requirements” for Medicaid that the states administering it must abide by.
But those aren’t the only areas in which he’s sought to impose the federal government on the states:
When he dispatched troops to Los Angeles in June amid protests over his immigration crackdown, he became the first president in 60 years to do so without the consent of the governor. (California has sued over this.)
This month, he became the first president to federalize the police in Washington, DC.
He issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to prevent states from enforcing their own climate laws.
He sought to end New York City’s congestion pricing by withholding funding. (A judge later blocked this.)
He has repeatedly sought to control how California uses its water.
And he has repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funding from states and cities if they don’t abide by more conservative social policies on issues such as transgender rights.
But few of these efforts loom as large as Trump’s growing attempts to exert himself over the American elections system.
Trump has not only sought to expand citizenship requirements and talked about nixing mail-in voting and voting machines; as CNN’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 — often in line with Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.
This has raised fears among Democrats and watchdogs about a concerted effort to reshape the elections system in a way that benefits Trump and his party.
It remains to be seen how much his new executive order might ultimately play into that, given it’s not clear how such a thing could pass legal muster.
But this is also an area that interests Trump greatly, owing to his years of voter fraud conspiracy theories. And it’s difficult to see him standing back, no matter what the Constitution says about his powers (or lack thereof).
And if nothing else, Trump has finally said how he really feels about the concept of states’ rights.
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