WASHINGTON — A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Thursday seemed weary of the Trump administration’s arguments that it should be allowed to proceed with its second attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

During the hearing, Judge Christopher Reid Cooper pressed Department of Justice attorneys to clarify when the second executive order went into effect, because no date was included when President Donald Trump signed his executive order in August. 

Cooper also questioned the advocacy groups that brought the suit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, if he should make a decision on whether to grant a preliminary injunction or wait, as he was concerned about issuing a ruling that would be redundant because there is a similar case out of Maryland. He noted that the judge who handled the first challenge to the president’s executive order in 2025 was also presiding over the second attempt and had more knowledge about the issue.

This is the Trump administration’s second try at curbing birthright citizenship. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the president’s executive order that would deny citizenship to babies born to parents who were either in the United States on a temporary visa or were immigrants without legal status. 

The case was brought by the ACLU, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, ACLU of the District of Columbia, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus and Democracy Defenders Fund. They are representing immigrants and their children who could be subject to the new executive order, and the groups previously challenged the first executive order relating to birthright citizenship. 

Trump’s recent executive orders would deny citizenship to babies born in the United States to parents deemed part of a designated terrorist organization and to parents who purposefully came to the United States to gain citizenship in what critics call “birth tourism.” 

The executive order also aimed to deny citizenship to children born to foreign diplomatic staff and children born in U.S. territories where Congress has not passed a law granting citizenship.

Passports potentially revoked?

Cooper, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, wanted to know when children would be subject to the second executive order, which Trump signed on August 6. 

Lucia Goin, an ACLU staff attorney, said there is concern that the second executive order is retroactive and that children who were issued passports would have them revoked by the State Department if the order went into effect. 

She added that the order does not have a set date, compared to the first executive order that made clear that any child born 30 days after the order was signed would be subject to it. 

Ty Turley Trejo, a DOJ attorney, said the Trump administration views the order as going into effect when it’s published. 

Cooper questioned if that meant a child who was born before the Aug. 6 order was published, such as on Aug. 4, would be subject to the order. 

Trejo said the executive order would not apply to the newborn, or any child born before the executive order was signed. 

Cooper said if he decided to proceed with the case, he would issue an order soon. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Friday he will elevate Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, the first shake-up of his administration officials since Democrats trounced Republicans in the midterms.

Former Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will move to the “Trump Political Operation,” the president announced in an afternoon post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump said Miller, a key figure behind the administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign, is “one of my most trusted advisors.” 

The president told reporters outside the White House that he wants Miller to “just run things well.”

“Stephen’s been with me from the beginning. He gets it, very good politically, and he’s a very good manager. He’ll do a great job,” he said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed the move, writing on X Friday that Miller “is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands.”

“His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today,” Jeffries, who is poised to become House speaker in January, wrote on X.

Blue wave

The move comes after voters rebuked Trump Tuesday, giving Democrats sizable majorities in both the House and Senate this coming Congress. In a backlash to Trump, Hispanics who voted for the president in 2024 shunned him in the midterms.

Every voter demographic sharply swung toward Democrats, but Latinos shifted sharply, by 21 points, according to an analysis by NPR, and a separate analysis by The Associated Press.

Miller has been a proponent of the Trump administration’s campaign against birthright citizenship, which it lost in a major case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an interview with Fox News host Will Cain in December 2025, Miller described birthright citizenship as “the greatest scam in history.”

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” he said. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

The claim that immigrants commit more crimes than other demographics in the United States is unfounded, according to several studies of national crime statistics compiled by the Migration Policy Institute. The institute found that immigrants in the U.S. commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population.

The New York Times, reporting those comments by Miller, said that studies have documented the upward mobility of immigrant children and that experts questioned his underlying arguments.

The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution has reported that “immigrants are a fiscal boon to the U.S.” and that “Empirical evidence indicates that immigrants have historically contributed more in tax revenue than they receive in public benefits, creating a substantial fiscal surplus for the U.S. government over time.”

During that same interview, Miller blamed immigrants in the United States for low test scores and healthcare costs, among other issues.

2026 deadly surge

Miller also advocated for the surge of immigration agents into mostly Democrat-led American cities throughout 2026, and did not back down after extreme instances of violence. 

In January after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minnesota, Miller reposted a video of the killing posted by the Democratic National Committee on X with the comments: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.”

Miller steered immigration policies during Trump’s first term.

He has been a fixture of Trump’s political apparatus for a decade, and played a role in Trump’s successful presidential campaign beginning in 2015.

A federal appeals court on Friday denied a Trump administration demand that California set aside and not count the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters, setting the stage for a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a U.S. Department of Justice request for an emergency order that would have required state and local election officials to not tabulate the ballots of voters on a list developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security unless they could prove their citizenship.

A separate 9th Circuit panel on Friday also denied a Justice Department request to allow Homeland Security to restart election-related field operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens. Civil rights groups had warned the operations put naturalized citizens at risk of disenfranchisement.

The rulings marked the third and fourth courtroom losses in less than a week for President Donald Trump’s administration in its 11th-hour legal campaign to assert authority over elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are administered by states.

“Exercising the power endowed to it by the Constitution, California comprehensively administers its elections, including by regulating voter eligibility,” the panel wrote in an unsigned majority opinion over California’s ballot counting.

The Justice Department in October provided California election officials with a list of approximately 20,000 individuals that it said were likely noncitizens registered to vote in the state. The DOJ cited a federal misdemeanor crime against noncitizen voting in demanding their ballots be set aside.

The DOJ says Homeland Security compiled the list after obtaining a public copy of California’s voter roll and checking it against government records and information from the LexisNexis research service. Officials in California and Los Angeles County have questioned the list’s accuracy and warned against relying on it to prevent the tabulation of ballots.

The Trump administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to pressure California election officials to set aside the ballots. 

It sued just 48 hours after giving election officials the list of 20,000 voters and since then, DOJ lawyers have raised the possibility that state and local officials could face criminal prosecution if they count the ballots of noncitizens. Grand jury subpoenas have been sent to election officials in Los Angeles County.

Risks ‘uncertain,’ panel says

The appeals court’s decision in the California ballots case upheld a ruling from Judge David Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, against the Justice Department. In a blistering decision, Carter wrote that the Trump administration was attempting to coerce California that evidence existed of federal interference.

Carter also echoed concerns raised by election officials over the origin of the list. The 9th Circuit panel voiced similar worries in its Friday decision and said the Justice Department request risks disenfranchising voters.

“There is a public interest in maintaining the integrity of elections,” the opinion says. “But as discussed, the district court found that the risks that noncitizens are voting are, at best, uncertain, and also tempered by California’s established voter-eligibility procedures.”

The 9th Circuit also previously rejected a preemptive appeal filed by the Justice Department.

Appellate Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, wrote in a dissent that he would have granted the Justice Department’s request. He wrote that the DOJ was seeking “limited relief” and that the federal government and the states can work together.

“California decided long ago that aliens can’t vote in its elections. Today, the federal government merely seeks to safeguard that decision. We should have let them try,” Bumatay wrote.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and a question about whether it would appeal.

“Every day, more ballots are processed by election officials. This ongoing emergency disenfranchises American citizens through dilution,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in an earlier statement.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said in a social media post that the Trump administration’s three court losses over the past week make clear it has “zero authority to interfere in California’s elections.”

DHS election-related operations blocked

Another 9th Circuit panel on Friday affirmed a district court judge’s decision prohibiting DHS from conducting operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens. The prohibition applies in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin until polls close on Election Day.

A Homeland Security Investigations internal memo dated Aug. 31 describes a “surge initiative” beginning Sept. 1 that includes conducting field interviews. The memo, which was filed in court, identifies those states as targets of the surge during September. Additional locations are redacted in the document.

In an unsigned opinion, the panel questioned the Trump administration’s timing in pursuing a surge in voter fraud enforcement just before Election Day. The federal law enforcement activity is ostensibly focused on past voter fraud, the judges wrote, meaning that DHS had more than a year to pursue investigations before the pre-election period.

“The Federal Defendants have not indicated why restrictions on the Surge now prevent them from conducting these operations,” the panel wrote. “Nor have they explained why an injunction enjoining specific aspects of the Surge through Election Day causes irreparable harm when implementation of the Initiative can resume on November 4, 2026” — the day after Election Day.

The original lawsuit was filed by San Francisco, Santa Clara, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation. They alleged voters, especially naturalized citizens, are at risk of intimidation and fear they could be wrongly targeted, the groups warned.

“Last week, the district court held that DHS’s frantic, last-minute voter investigations are unlawful voter intimidation. Today, the government’s attempt to restart that campaign failed,” Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, said in a statement.

“This was one more desperate attempt by the Trump administration to interfere in the midterm elections, and the courts have again said no.”

Supreme Court next?

How the Supreme Court would rule if the Justice Department appeals either of these cases is unknown. 

Conservatives hold six of its nine seats. The majority upended the electoral landscape earlier this year when it sharply weakened federal protections against racial gerrymandering, paving the way for Southern states to quickly redraw their congressional maps to favor Republicans.

But the Supreme Court has generally held that federal courts shouldn’t order dramatic changes just ahead of elections. For example, in September the justices repeatedly rejected requests to overturn a Missouri Supreme Court decision blocking a GOP gerrymander.

In the California ballots case, the 9th Circuit panel majority — which included Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Judge Gabriel Sanchez, an appointee of President Joe Biden — invoked that principle in denying the Trump administration’s request.

“Major concerns remain that granting the United States’s requested relief might … harm the public interest by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy,” they wrote.

As the Trump administration waged a public legal fight with California over the ballots of suspected noncitizen voters in mid-October, behind the scenes a federal grand jury in Santa Ana issued a series of subpoenas to election officials in Los Angeles County at federal prosecutors’ urging.

The subpoenas demanded a host of information, from how officials responded to warnings that the Trump administration had identified 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters to how they screen for unlawful voting. Among the demands: any records suggesting “someone has aided and/or abetted an alien voting in a federal election.”

As President Donald Trump’s administration loses round after round in federal court in his quest for authority over state-run elections, the U.S. Department of Justice is turning to criminal investigations as a way to dig deep into documents and records held by election officials. 

Democrats, election officials and legal experts warn the subpoenas are intended to intimidate in the absence of favorable court decisions for the president.

“The mask is off now. There’s clearly no legitimate law enforcement purpose here with regards to the service of these subpoenas, the ongoing litigation,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former DOJ Voting Section attorney, said during a press call Friday. “This is all a political effort at this point, and it’s an effort by what appears to be a desperate administration to interfere with the election.”

The Justice Department sued California on Oct. 15, two days after informing state and local officials that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had identified 20,000 suspected noncitizens on the state’s voter roll. The DOJ demanded California set aside the ballots of the 20,000 voters and not count their votes unless they can prove their citizenship.

A federal grand jury issued two subpoenas to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office on Oct. 21. A third subpoena was issued on Oct. 24.

An Oct. 24 Justice Department letter accompanying at least one of the subpoenas says they were “issued in connection with an official criminal investigation” conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a sub-agency of DHS. Los Angeles County officials must provide the information by Nov. 4, the day after Election Day, according to the subpoenas.

States Newsroom obtained the subpoenas through a records request. The New York Times first reported on their existence.

Focus on election officials

A grand jury subpoena represents an intermediate investigative step by the Justice Department. They aren’t as aggressive as a search warrant, but unlike a voluntary request for an interview or documents, they require mandatory compliance, though recipients can challenge them in court. It isn’t clear whether Los Angeles County intends to challenge the subpoenas.

Subpoenas to election officials are not in and of themselves unheard of. State and federal prosecutors sometimes use them to obtain information on voters who may be under investigation for unlawfully casting a ballot or registering to vote.

For instance, lawyers for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, wrote in a mid-October court filing that her office has received federal grand jury subpoenas for voter records on about 300 people since August.

A Reuters investigation published Wednesday found that the Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas for records on thousands of voters across 13 states. Most were issued within the past three months, and 49 were issued under the authority of grand juries. They arrived after Homeland Security arrested dozens of people across the country on allegations of noncitizen voting.

But recent subpoenas in Alaska and California appear more focused on how election officials are doing their jobs than on data about specific voters.

In Alaska, The Associated Press reported Thursday that grand jury subpoenas were issued in a Justice Department criminal investigation into the state’s U.S. Senate race. Trump has erupted in anger after The New York Times reported Democrats helped recruit Dan J. Sullivan — who shares a name with Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan — to run for Senate. Sen. Sullivan appears locked in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola.

In California, subpoenas issued to Los Angeles County officials don’t specify the target of the investigation but the information requested suggests prosecutors are interested in internal discussions over the handling of the list of suspected noncitizens. They direct officials to turn over records related to efforts to prevent noncitizen voting and any evidence that noncitizens have voted.

They also include a demand for evidence of aiding and abetting noncitizen voting — the same language that Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, used during a court hearing Tuesday. 

Threats of prosecution

Essayli warned election officials face “criminal liability” if they aid and abet noncitizen voting by counting their ballots. In turn, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, urged the Justice Department to drop threats against election officials.

“Judge Carter’s admonishment about threats directed at election officials on Tuesday was well placed and appreciated. At every step, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said in a statement.

Election officials are following state and federal law, Logan said, adding that rulings at the district and appeals court levels have confirmed they are acting legally. He said his office will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure employee safety and to remain focused on serving voters.

“Threats and intimidation have no place in elections,” Logan said.

In a statement, the Justice Department declined to comment on “leaks about alleged grand jury subpoenas.” 

But the DOJ noted a ruling by Carter that emphasized the federal government’s power to prosecute noncitizen voting, as well as court filings by California that say prosecutors have authority to bring criminal cases over noncitizen voting. 

“Thus, while DOJ maintains that a civil remedy is still available, all agree that noncitizen voting is properly addressed through criminal law,” the DOJ said in a statement.

Carter also denied the DOJ’s request for an emergency order and wrote that the Trump administration was engaging in election interference.

Several unions and civil rights groups sued the administration late Thursday over the prosecution threats. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the organizations asked a judge to order federal officials to stop “threatening election officials and workers” with prosecution for refusing to segregate ballots of suspected noncitizens.

The lawsuit says the Trump administration has “initiated a criminal investigation into county officials including issuing grand jury subpoenas.”

On Friday night, Judge Trina Thompson, an appointee of President Joe Biden in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, issued a temporary restarting order prohibiting the Trump administration from threatening election officials or demanding they segregate ballots.

“Free exercise of the right to vote is a core tenet of our democracy,” Thompson wrote.

California has also questioned the reliability of the data the Trump administration used to develop the list of 20,000 voters. The DOJ says Homeland Security analyzed a public copy of the state’s voter roll and compared voter records to government immigration records and included the use of the LexisNexis research service.

Federal courts ruled against the Justice Department three times in late October.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a preemptive appeal on Oct. 26, and Carter denied the DOJ’s request for an emergency order on Oct. 28. The 9th Circuit on Oct. 30 denied a fresh appeal.

Red states enter fray

Eleven Republican-led states have urged federal courts to grant the Justice Department’s demand that California segregate the ballots. In an amicus brief, the states say they have a direct interest in preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens in other states.

“The Constitution permits substantial differences among state election laws and procedures. But Congress’s prohibition on noncitizen voting in federal elections supplies a common rule that every State must respect,” the states, led by Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, wrote in their brief.

The other states include Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia.

In Washington state, election officials received a Justice Department demand Monday to segregate the ballots of about 400 suspected noncitizen voters. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a statement that a preliminary investigation found the list includes U.S. citizens.

As of Friday morning, the Justice Department hadn’t sued Washington. However, a DOJ letter sent to Hobbs warned the Trump administration would seek “emergency relief” if election officials didn’t comply.

“We are bound by state law,” Thurston County, Washington, Auditor Mary Hall, a Democrat who runs elections for the Olympia area, told reporters on Wednesday. “And state law really does not give us the authority to do what the federal government is asking us to do.”

WASHINGTON — A New Hampshire federal judge seemed skeptical during a Tuesday hearing that a civil rights group could continue with a challenge to block President Donald Trump’s second attempt to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, suggesting that a new lawsuit might be needed.

The American Civil Liberties Union last month asked federal Judge Joseph Normand Laplante to clarify a preliminary injunction he issued  that blocked Trump’s first executive order that tried to deny citizenship to certain babies. The ACLU wanted to know if the preliminary injunction also applied to Trump’s two new executive orders that would redefine birthright citizenship.

“I view the Barbara case as essentially over,” Laplante said, referring to the case initially filed in New Hampshire last year that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. 

Laplante said because the new executive orders apply to a different class than the original case, it seems like a new lawsuit. 

Trump’s most recent executive orders would deny citizenship to babies born in the United States to parents deemed part of a designated terrorist organization and to parents who purposefully came to the United States to gain citizenship in what critics call “birth tourism.” 

The executive order also aimed to deny citizenship to children born to foreign diplomatic staff and children born in U.S. territories where Congress has not passed a law granting citizenship, which is only American Samoa.

Maryland action

Earlier this month, Maryland federal Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction that barred the executive orders from taking place. Boardman handled the birthright citizenship lawsuit that stemmed from Trump’s 2025 executive order. 

After the August executive orders, immigration advocacy groups asked her for another preliminary injunction through the initial lawsuit from 2025. That case, also on the first executive order, was separate from the New Hampshire case but the Supreme Court decision affected both. 

Arguing Tuesday in New Hampshire on behalf of the ACLU, Cody Wofsy said he understands if the court views it as a separate suit, but that the organization views the two executive orders as somewhat identical to the first executive order that the Supreme Court struck down.

“This is one kit and caboodle, really,” he said. “It’s a continuing effort to strip birthright citizenship.”

Wofsy, who is deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said if Laplante wants a new lawsuit, the ACLU would like to know as soon as possible. 

“Our fundamental interest here is just in getting to the place where we can get some relief for this class, whether that’s before this court, in this district, another, it doesn’t really matter to us,” he said. 

Special Counsel for the Justice Department Brad Rosenberg said the Trump administration’s primary concern is efficiency.

“We don’t want to have to expend resources responding to motions that may very shortly become moot,” he said. 

Perceptions

Laplante, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, also expressed concern about the perception created by the ACLU asking the same judge for another preliminary injunction. 

“I’m concerned about the impression created by the very same judicial officer that handled the Barbara case, now handling new issues involving, not the same issue, but very similar, closely related issues involving birthright citizenship, and that’s of concern to me,” he said.

“If this case were brought, and I think the proper way, it might be that … I receive it again by random assignment,” he continued. “If that’s the case, we’ll be off to the races and we’ll litigate the case in the normal way I would approach preliminary injunctive relief.”