US Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to block California ballots

On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to grant the Trump administration's emergency request to prevent California from accepting mail-in ballots from individuals they suspected of not being American citizens. The court's one-sentence unsigned ruling came a day before the US midterm elections, with no stated reasoning provided.

The federal government had previously claimed that there were 190,000 illegal voters in California, but later reduced the number to 20,000 and filed an emergency lawsuit to stop the state from sending ballots to these individuals. The Supreme Court's decision came after lower courts had previously rejected the DOJ's demand, with one judge describing it as pre-election interference.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that once the challenged ballots were mixed with lawful ones, they could not be retrieved. The case against California appears to be part of the administration's attempts to discredit the results of Tuesday's vote, in which the Republican Party risks losing control of Congress. Trump, who has never accepted his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, has long claimed there will be fraud in the midterms.

However, US District Judge David Carter last week rejected the DOJ's request to seize the ballots, siding with the Democratic-led California government.