A federal judge in Los Angeles denied a Trump administration request Wednesday to immediately block California elections officials from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters whose citizenship the administration questions in a blistering opinion.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled that the administration\u2019s allegations were \u201cnot credible\u201d and that the intervention it sought would violate a host of federal laws, sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election, likely lead to the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters and foster future political meddling in elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,\u201d Carter wrote. \u201cIf [the Trump administration\u2019s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, wrote that never in American history \u201chas the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,\u201d and that, in bringing its suit, the Trump administration was asking the court to \u201cbelieve that it reigns as a sole sovereign.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut California and its people are sovereign, too,\u201d Carter wrote.<\/p>\n
Carter\u2019s ruling was the second to deny the Trump administration a temporary restraining order against the state and Los Angeles County this week, after a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government\u2019s emergency request in a separate order Monday.<\/p>\n
Carter ruled following a 3\u00bd-hour hearing Tuesday, where a slew of attorneys for the state, county and independent voting rights groups argued against the administration\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli \u2014 who is the top federal prosecutor in L.A. and argued for the Trump administration at Tuesday\u2019s hearing \u2014 did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling Wednesday. After Tuesday\u2019s hearing, he suggested the administration was likely to appeal Carter\u2019s ruling if it didn\u2019t immediately halt the counting of the flagged ballots. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Los Angeles denied a Trump administration request Wednesday to immediately block California elections officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[196898,7,1365,9,8,33465,15629,204,196899,196900,16047,63,975,6247,20897,225,196897,1522],"class_list":["post-511262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-administration-question","tag-california","tag-california-ballot","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-carter","tag-chaos","tag-election","tag-hearing-tuesday","tag-independent-voting-right-group","tag-judge","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-opinion","tag-request","tag-ruling","tag-state","tag-trump-administration-request-wednesday","tag-voter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}