![\"California](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4328_NSL_251028_SNAP.JPG\" "\\"California")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, shown here with Gov. Gavin Newsom at a news conference on October 2025 in Sacramento, announced California was joining 23 other states in suing President Donald Trump over his executive order restricting mail ballots. <\/p>\n
NATHANIEL LEVINE<\/p>\n
nlevine@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
California filed its 66th lawsuit against President Donald Trump since he took office 62 weeks ago, this time challenging his executive order<\/a> to create lists of federal voters to curtail mail-in voting.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create lists of eligible voters in every state and ordered the U.S. Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to voters DHS and Social Security Administration officials deem eligible. On Friday, Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coterie of 23 states and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court<\/a> challenging that order.<\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly taken aim at vote-by-mail, which he claimed is vulnerable to fraud, even as he recently cast his own Florida ballot via mail<\/a>. He has pushed Congress to take up the SAVE Act, which would require people to show a U.S. passport or birth certificate when registering to vote. Elections experts say the bill<\/a> would disenfranchise voters without ready access to those documents and married women whose documents reflect their names given at birth.<\/p>\n Bonta told reporters he was worried about where DHS would source its data to fulfill Trump\u2019s order, which requires the agency to use \u201cfederal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA records, SAVE data, and other relevant federal databases\u201d to create a list of eligible voters. DHS would then share those lists with state election officials and determine if every person on them is a citizen who maintained a residence in the state they\u2019re registered to vote.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump\u2019s goal is clear: to upend our election system, create voter confusion, impose enormous costs on state agencies and undermine public trust, which is why we\u2019re asking the court to put a stop to the specific provisions of Trump\u2019s executive order,\u201d Bonta said during an online news conference. \u201cEvery eligible voter should be able to vote, and every state and local elections official should be able to administer elections without fear of federal overreach or threats of prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump was \u201clighting democracy on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia will not sit idle while he tries to limit which American citizens can participate in our democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is above the U.S. Constitution \u2014 see you in court, Mr. President.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal administration has previously targeted some of the states that are suing to block Trump\u2019s latest executive order. He has ordered probes or seized election records from states like Arizona and Georgia<\/a> as part of an investigation into his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n Some of Trump\u2019s election conspiracies have touched parts of California politics.<\/p>\n FBI Director Kash Patel recently reassigned agents in the bureau\u2019s San Francisco office to prepare to publicly release files from a decade-old investigation<\/a> about potential ties between a Chinese spy and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, who is leading Democrats in the governor\u2019s race. Swalwell, who the bureau previously cleared of wrongdoing in 2015, claimed Patel is carrying out Trump\u2019s wishes to influence the governor\u2019s race, a claim Bonta found \u201cperplexing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand how that\u2019s election interference,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Last month, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Trump supporter who is running for governor, seized 650,000 ballots from the 2025 special election<\/a>. He claimed to be on a \u201cfact-finding mission\u201d after a local group of election skeptics claimed the local registrar of voters had inflated vote tallies. Bonta sued to stop Bianco\u2019s probe, which is currently being litigated in a Riverside County court.<\/p>\n Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jay Kiel sealed the warrants to seize the ballots at Bianco\u2019s request, which Bonta and a host of news outlets took<\/a> issue with. Bianco previously endorsed the judge during his 2022 election campaign<\/a>, and the two share political advisers and overlapping donors.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very concerned about our observation that there appears to be no adequate basis for a search warrant, that there is no potential criminal conduct being identified, and no potential criminal perpetrator being identified in the search warrant or by the Riverside sheriff,\u201d Bonta said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot have a search warrant and a criminal investigation if you can\u2019t identify a crime and a potential criminal. That is criminal law and criminal procedure 101.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n
![\"Profile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/SAC_54_HA_241126_LiaRussell.jpg\")