Trump Admin Lobs Wild New Threats at States Over Election Rules

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Do Trump’s Bidding on Elections or Else …

In a pre-election blitz, the Trump administration has issued sweeping new threats to red and blue states alike if they don’t fall in line with the president on how to run their own elections:

• Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon sent similar letters to all 50 states and D.C. threatening election officials with criminal prosecution if they don’t take certain steps to crack down on the myth of noncitizen voting. Dhillon gave states five days to respond with details on how they intend to comply.
• FEMA has told states that they will lose 20% of their antiterrorism grants unless they transition to paper ballots, verify citizenship of voters and make other changes to election procedures, the NYT reports. The forced changes are part of the laundry list of dubious election rules that President Trump has pushed through executive order, proposed legislation, and endless misleading rhetoric.

The one-two punch of threatening criminal prosecution and making unrelated federal funding contingent unless states comply with Trump’s wishes represent a new level of coercion just four months before Election Day.

Trump’s previous efforts along these lines have been thoroughly rejected by federal courts on the obvious grounds that the Constitution leaves the running of federal election in the hands of the states and gives the president no authority in the election realm.

Some of the demanded changes at this late date, like switching to paper ballots, are absurdly impractical. Nearly all of the demands emerge from Trump’s relentless efforts to discredit free and fair elections, which has given rise to extensive conspiracizing on the right.

The latest moves are yet another way that Trump has harnessed the powers of the federal government to buttress his political position and seek retribution for his 2020 defeat.

In related news: Detroit election officials are pushing back against the DOJ’s plan to send voting monitors to the city for Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary.

Quote of the Day

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution. I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts. This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”—Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R), Utah’s top election official, on Harmeet Dhillon’s letter

Judge Quashes 2020 GA Election Subpoena

U.S. District Judge William M. Ray II, notably a Trump appointee, quashed a wide-ranging federal grand jury subpoena into the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia as too much, too late.

The subpoena for personal information on every county employee who worked on the 2020 election was “staggering” in its breadth, Ray ruled.

It was part of President Trump’s never-ending quest for retribution for his loss, a point that Ray made explicitly: “Thus, perhaps it makes sense that the DOJ, now unquestionably under the current President’s control, is seeking to identify individuals who might possess information or opinions in support of his claim that the 2020 Election was not legitimate.”

In a spicy footnote, Ray directed his scorn toward the DOJ’s tactic of using out-of-state prosecutors in the case, rather than the local U.S. Attorney’s Office: “To be clear, no evidence has been presented to the Court that the actual Grand Jury in the Northern District of Georgia seeks this information, as opposed to the out-of-district prosecutors who the DOJ has appointed to lead this inquiry who have served this Subpoena in the name of the Grand Jury.”

In the end, Ray based his decision to quash the subpoena on the rather narrow but sturdy contention that “the statute of limitations for any possible crime arising from the 2020 Election has long expired” and therefore the subpoena “would not lead to information that could be used to charge anyone with anything, at least not any viable charge.”

Inside the Fight Over MN Subpoenas

Documents from the intense fight over federal grand jury subpoenas of Democratic elected officials in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge are slowly being unsealed after U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz of Minneapolis quashed the subpoenas last month, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

The Trump DOJ engineered and defended the retaliatory subpoenas on the grounds that state elected officials were illegally interfering in ICE enforcement operations, an argument Judge Schiltz rejected: “The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”

ICE Shoots and Kills Houston Immigrant

An ICE agent shot and killed an undocumented Mexican national who had reportedly been in the United States for nearly 35 years during an attempted traffic stop arrest in Houston on Tuesday morning.

ICE, which has been notoriously unreliable in providing accurate details of shooting incidents, issued a statement from its acting director with an interesting caveat that seems like a nod to its troubling track record (emphasis mine): “From information we are receiving, he rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

The shooting is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office.

In an unrelated case in Nebraska last week, a Venezulean man pleaded guilty to one count of forcibly resisting arrest causing bodily injury as part of a plea agreement after the case against him for attempted murder of a federal officer fell apart. While DHS and federal prosecutors originally claimed that he had “violently attacked an ICE agent,” including choking her and slamming her head into the ground, video evidence of his arrest later contradicted those claims, Nebraska Public Radio reported.

The allegations made in the initial complaint were “at worst a misrepresentation and at best complete negligence,” U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert Rossiter said during sentencing, adding that he found the law enforcement reports “embellished” and “troubling.”

The Latest on Iran …

• NYT: U.S. Strikes Iran and Reimposes Sanctions in Retaliation for Tanker Attack
• WSJ: Trump Says Ceasefire With Iran Is Over After Latest Attacks
• NPR: New lawsuit alleges U.S. shared asylum application details with Iran

Trump Shakes NATO With New Threats

President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Turkey and immediately resumed the bombast and threatening behavior that has weakened NATO to Vladimir Putin’s advantage:

• Trump reasserted his spurious claims to Greenland, saying “Greenland is very important for the U.S. but it’s not important for Denmark.” That prompted a strong reaction from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen: “We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory.”
• Trump improbably purported to halt U.S. trade with Spain.

What’s at Stake in Europe

One of the things I came away with from my trip last week to Denmark, where I got a good refresher on 20th century European history, was a new appreciation for how misguided America’s conceit about NATO is. The idea that Trump embodies isn’t new, but rather is the same self-serving notion that if we just leave NATO to its own devices we’ll get all of the benefits of the alliance without all of the cost.

That conceit is premised on the deeply flawed notion that NATO is a default arrangement, rather than the historical anomaly it is. Denmark, for instance, had a long history of maintaining neutrality, including during the First World War, until the cataclysm of the Second World War prompted it to become a founding member of NATO. For it’s part, Finland didn’t join NATO until 2023. There are innumerable other examples of how NATO represents a dramatic break from past statecraft on the continent.

The U.S. abandoning NATO now doesn’t mean Europe will revert to a 1914 mindset; too many economic, cultural, and political threads have been sewn together in the post-WWII period for it to revert to that arrangement. But it is a distinctly American myopia to think Europe will stand pat, won’t evolve on its own as it manages all of its own competing interests, makes it own internal compromises, and responds to the domestic political realities of each country.

The U.S. isn’t just abandoning NATO; it’s abandoning having a hand in managing those dynamics and minimizing their impacts on its own national interest — which is another, albeit more nuanced, way of saying Trump is putting his own interest above the nation’s.

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