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EARLY VICTORY FOR VOTING RIGHTS  
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Michael Waldman
April 29, 2025
Brennan Center for Justice
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_ A judge has blocked a key part of the president’s attempt to
rewrite election rules. “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the
States — not the President — with the authority to regulate
federal elections.” _

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The first hundred days of Donald Trump’s presidency have been marked
by power grabs, aggressive if chaotic attempts to upend the
Constitution’s checks and balances. Now another strategy has begun
to more clearly come into view: an unprecedented drive to undermine
elections, just in time for the 2026 midterms.

Also emerging: a fierce response, a defense of voting rights that won
an important early victory. How this fight unfolds will shape whether
we have free and fair elections in 2026 and beyond.

On March 25, Trump signed an executive order purporting to take
personal control over federal elections. Henceforth, he declared,
American citizens would have to produce a passport or other
citizenship document to register using the federal voter registration
form. But roughly half of Americans don’t have passports. The
“order” was stuffed with other misguided notions. For example, it
instructed an independent agency to strip federal certification from
previously certified voting machines, and it even ordered states to
give Elon Musk’s DOGE team access to the voter rolls to search for
“fraud.” (Hmm, what could possibly go wrong with that?!)

The Brennan Center went to federal court. Representing the League of
Women Voters, together with allies, our attorneys argued that this was
illegal and unconstitutional. Last week, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
agreed. In a powerful 120-page opinion
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she wrote, “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States —
not the President — with the authority to regulate federal
elections.” She issued a preliminary injunction blocking the key
part of the executive order. (Other elements are still being
litigated.)

The judge focused on the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which
gives states the duty to set rules for the “times, places, and
manner” of elections — and gives Congress the power to make
national voting laws. That provision is the basis for the Freedom to
Vote Act, the sweeping pro-democracy legislation that came within two
votes of passing three years ago. It does not give a president any
personal authority over elections, and certainly not the writ to act
like a king.

The executive order came as part of a wide-ranging effort to undermine
the vote. As my colleagues Sean Morales-Doyle and Lauren Miller
Karalunas note
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much of this strategy is set out in the Heritage Foundation’s
Project 2025 policy blueprint — and it’s right on schedule. Next
on the agenda is using the Justice Department to chill future efforts
to safeguard elections.

_The Guardian_
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Monday that Justice Department leaders “have removed all of the
senior civil servants working as managers in the department’s voting
section and directed attorneys to dismiss all active cases, part of a
broader attack on the department’s civil rights division.” The
department itself was founded in large measure to protect the voting
rights of Black formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, and the
Civil Rights Division is considered a crown jewel. Now the cop has
been pulled off the beat.

Already, the administration had purged the cybersecurity experts at
the Department of Homeland Security who worked to protect voting
systems. Trump even directed the Justice Department to investigate
Chris Krebs, the esteemed expert he appointed to lead the
cybersecurity office during his first term. Krebs’s infraction? He
had affirmed the integrity of the 2020 election.

Krebs spoke out
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raucous applause at a packed technology conference in San Francisco,
his first public comment since being targeted. “Cybersecurity is
national security,” he declared, adding, “To see what’s
happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal
government, we should be outraged. Absolutely outraged.”

These efforts are reflected in the SAVE Act, which if enacted would be
the worst voting law ever passed by Congress. It would require
citizens to produce a passport or birth certificate to register or
even to re-register — and as the Brennan Center’s research shows,
21 million Americans don’t have ready access to those documents.

The SAVE Act passed the House on a nearly party-line vote. Now it is
before the Senate. Encouragingly, senators have vowed to block the
measure, and if they stand firm, they have the votes to do so. Sen.
Jon Ossoff (D-GA) called it a “bad faith bill cynically intended to
disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin
(D-MI) reiterated her opposition on Fox News, saying, “It makes it
harder to have women vote, it makes it harder if you don’t have a
passport.”

If the SAVE Act is defeated — if, in fact, it never comes to a vote
— let’s not just move on. This would be a signal victory.

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. The fight to vote has been a
defining struggle throughout American history. Always, people have had
to press to get or keep access to our democracy, and just as
consistently, some have tried to shrink the circle.

We at the Brennan Center will take a moment next week to celebrate our
work and the organization’s 30th anniversary. Our annual Brennan
Legacy Awards dinner will honor Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. And we
will honor and hear from the Broadway musical _Suffs_, which tells
the story of how women won the right to vote in the United States.
Presenting our awards will be Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of
Women Voters, our client in the recent lawsuit.

For most of the play, we see the contest between insider strategies
and street protests, backstage strategists and charismatic public
figures such as Inez Milholland. The racism that tried to keep Ida B.
Wells from marching with her fellow suffragists down Pennsylvania
Avenue and the powerful political leaders who tried to stop the
expansion of the franchise.

The musical ends on a contemporary note. Today’s activists join with
the suffragists, recognizing the need to fight for equality even when
“you won’t live to see the future that you fight for/Maybe no one
gets to reach that perfect day.” That song’s title is a good
reminder of what we must continue to do at this moment of challenge:
“Keep Marching.”

* elections
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* voter suppression
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* Brennan Center for Justice
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* League of Women Voters
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* suffragists
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