California
Federal judge orders Trump administration to halt investigation of noncitizen voting in 9 states
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states into whether noncitizens are registered to vote.
U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it’s leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on Election Day, Nov. 3.
She put her ruling, which was made Wednesday, on hold until Friday to give the administration a chance to appeal.
The ruling applies to investigations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
It comes as the Trump administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in the months leading into the midterm elections. The administration has signaled that it’s a major problem, when in fact it’s quite rare, as even its own investigations have shown.
The lawsuit was filed by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, along with the Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County.
In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued an email statement Thursday saying it’s focused on “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens,” while adding, “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”
According to legal filings in the case, investigators were told to target naturalized citizens to see whether they had voted before they became U.S. citizens. The lists of voters to check came from sources that included state and local governments and publicly available information. Martinez-Olguin called them “voluminous and unreliable.”
“Even under the best conditions, there is a high likelihood of error in review because there is no federal database containing citizenship status of U.S. residents,” Martinez-Olguin wrote in her ruling. “The time limitations implemented during the Surge further exacerbate the risk of error.”
The Department of Justice has been demanding detailed and unredacted voter roll data from the states and has sued the 30 states that have refused to turn it over, losing each of those cases so far. The judge noted that for states that refused to share their records, the administration was trying to obtain them through “unreliable commercial versions of voter roll data.”
She said during a “surge” phase of the investigation starting in late August, agents were ordered to complete reviews of flagged individuals taking no more than 12 minutes per person to assess whether they were legally qualified to vote.
In their challenge, the plaintiffs said some U.S. citizens felt they were wrongly identified and investigated as part of the probe. Martinez-Olguin said those fears “are well understood as intimidation” that has chilled people from attending campaign events and working as poll monitors during the election.
Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer representing the unions and voter group, said in a statement that the ruling affirms the groups’ position.
“It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people’s homes weeks before an election,” Tremitiere said.
Details of the investigation, known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” came to light last month after Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California released a whistleblower report about it.
West Virginia
AG investigating ‘deception’ by environmental groups
West Virginia’s Republican attorney general has launched a broad investigation of the state’s leading environmental groups, demanding a decade of internal records involving “unfair or deceptive acts” in their fundraising and climate change advocacy.
The environmental groups decried the inquiry as a sham and filed lawsuits Thursday seeking to dismiss subpoenas they described as harassing and overly broad.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey has urged federal authorities to investigate and defund climate advocacy organizations and said that protecting the state’s fossil fuel energy industry from what he’s characterized as overreaching liberal climate and energy policies is a top priority of his office.
The subpoenas seek records related to the groups’ public statements on climate and energy, internal deliberations and requests for donations. The documents offer few details of any alleged deception but invoke “possible violations” of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act.
“The subpoenas were not issued for any legitimate governmental purpose but are a political action by the attorney general that is intended to stifle speech,” Derek Teaney, an attorney for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and 350.org, wrote in a court filing in U.S. District Court in West Virginia.
McCuskey applauded the Trump administration’s move earlier this year to revoke an Obama-era scientific finding that had underpinned much of the last 15 years of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
His office also led a 22-state challenge against New York state’s climate “superfund” law, which a federal judge struck down in September. The law, an attempt to make fossil fuel-producing industries pay into a $75 billion fund for damages related to climate change, exceeded the state’s responsibility, the judge found.
David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor and First Amendment scholar, called the West Virginia investigation “frivolous” and said the subpoenas should be quashed.
“If government officials can start prosecuting nonprofit groups because they disagree with the political view they take on a matter of public concern, that would chill a tremendous amount of protected political expression,” Cole told The Associated Press.
The investigation follows similar efforts elsewhere by Republican attorneys general and members of Congress to scrutinize the work of climate-focused advocacy groups.
In Florida, Republican Attorney General James Utheimer announced in April that his office had issued a subpoena to the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project, which seeks to educate judges on the science of climate change, “as part of an investigation into suspicions” that the nonprofit had violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Utheimer’s office didn’t respond to an inquiry from AP about where the effort stands.
Nick Collins, a spokesperson for the institute, said in a statement that ELI had faced years of “meritless allegations” and “answered countless questions and provided thousands of pages of documents.”
Federal judge orders Trump administration to halt investigation of noncitizen voting in 9 states
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states into whether noncitizens are registered to vote.
U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it’s leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on Election Day, Nov. 3.
She put her ruling, which was made Wednesday, on hold until Friday to give the administration a chance to appeal.
The ruling applies to investigations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
It comes as the Trump administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in the months leading into the midterm elections. The administration has signaled that it’s a major problem, when in fact it’s quite rare, as even its own investigations have shown.
The lawsuit was filed by the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, along with the Voto Latino Foundation, San Francisco and Santa Clara County.
In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued an email statement Thursday saying it’s focused on “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of U.S. citizens,” while adding, “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”
According to legal filings in the case, investigators were told to target naturalized citizens to see whether they had voted before they became U.S. citizens. The lists of voters to check came from sources that included state and local governments and publicly available information. Martinez-Olguin called them “voluminous and unreliable.”
“Even under the best conditions, there is a high likelihood of error in review because there is no federal database containing citizenship status of U.S. residents,” Martinez-Olguin wrote in her ruling. “The time limitations implemented during the Surge further exacerbate the risk of error.”
The Department of Justice has been demanding detailed and unredacted voter roll data from the states and has sued the 30 states that have refused to turn it over, losing each of those cases so far. The judge noted that for states that refused to share their records, the administration was trying to obtain them through “unreliable commercial versions of voter roll data.”
She said during a “surge” phase of the investigation starting in late August, agents were ordered to complete reviews of flagged individuals taking no more than 12 minutes per person to assess whether they were legally qualified to vote.
In their challenge, the plaintiffs said some U.S. citizens felt they were wrongly identified and investigated as part of the probe. Martinez-Olguin said those fears “are well understood as intimidation” that has chilled people from attending campaign events and working as poll monitors during the election.
Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer representing the unions and voter group, said in a statement that the ruling affirms the groups’ position.
“It was clear from the start that DHS built its lists on bad data, never checked how often it was wrong, and recklessly sent agents to people’s homes weeks before an election,” Tremitiere said.
Details of the investigation, known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” came to light last month after Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California released a whistleblower report about it.
West Virginia
AG investigating ‘deception’ by environmental groups
West Virginia’s Republican attorney general has launched a broad investigation of the state’s leading environmental groups, demanding a decade of internal records involving “unfair or deceptive acts” in their fundraising and climate change advocacy.
The environmental groups decried the inquiry as a sham and filed lawsuits Thursday seeking to dismiss subpoenas they described as harassing and overly broad.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey has urged federal authorities to investigate and defund climate advocacy organizations and said that protecting the state’s fossil fuel energy industry from what he’s characterized as overreaching liberal climate and energy policies is a top priority of his office.
The subpoenas seek records related to the groups’ public statements on climate and energy, internal deliberations and requests for donations. The documents offer few details of any alleged deception but invoke “possible violations” of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act.
“The subpoenas were not issued for any legitimate governmental purpose but are a political action by the attorney general that is intended to stifle speech,” Derek Teaney, an attorney for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and 350.org, wrote in a court filing in U.S. District Court in West Virginia.
McCuskey applauded the Trump administration’s move earlier this year to revoke an Obama-era scientific finding that had underpinned much of the last 15 years of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
His office also led a 22-state challenge against New York state’s climate “superfund” law, which a federal judge struck down in September. The law, an attempt to make fossil fuel-producing industries pay into a $75 billion fund for damages related to climate change, exceeded the state’s responsibility, the judge found.
David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor and First Amendment scholar, called the West Virginia investigation “frivolous” and said the subpoenas should be quashed.
“If government officials can start prosecuting nonprofit groups because they disagree with the political view they take on a matter of public concern, that would chill a tremendous amount of protected political expression,” Cole told The Associated Press.
The investigation follows similar efforts elsewhere by Republican attorneys general and members of Congress to scrutinize the work of climate-focused advocacy groups.
In Florida, Republican Attorney General James Utheimer announced in April that his office had issued a subpoena to the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project, which seeks to educate judges on the science of climate change, “as part of an investigation into suspicions” that the nonprofit had violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Utheimer’s office didn’t respond to an inquiry from AP about where the effort stands.
Nick Collins, a spokesperson for the institute, said in a statement that ELI had faced years of “meritless allegations” and “answered countless questions and provided thousands of pages of documents.”
