Whiplash: Judges flip-flop on Trump DOJ’s election pressure

.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he welcomes the Florida Gators, the 2025 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Champions, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump has long warred with the courts, and in particular the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet in a shocking decision, the 9th Circuit flip-flopped from an initial decision to bar Trump from intimidating election workers to allowing him to do precisely that.

"To recap: in the space of 12 hours, during which election-day voting started, the 9th Cir. issued a panel decision blocking a TRO stopping Trump admin interference with CA election workers, vacated that panel decision, then *reinstated* that panel decision," wrote journalist Gabriel Malor on Bluesky on Tuesday. "Purcell? I don't know her. How could this happen? A majority of the 29 active judges in the 9th Cir. voted for en banc rehearing, which vacated the panel decision. Then, the newly-constituted en banc panel, which is only 11 judges, voted to reinstate the panel decision. Crazy."

He added, "This could only happen in the 9th Cir. which uses en banc panels bc actually seating the entire bench is impracticable. This does present an excellent case for breaking up the 9th Cir."

One judge issued a blistering dissertation from the 9th Circuit's decision.

"With the election underway, Defendants insist they must be free to use their prosecutorial powers to do what they could not through their applications for injunctions in this court and the Supreme Court," Judge Mary H. Murguia wrote in her dissent on Tuesday. "But the federal executive has no right to dictate election procedures to the states. And if Defendants cannot dictate these procedures directly, then they likewise cannot dictate them by subjecting vulnerable election workers to baseless—but chilling—threats of federal prosecution. The Constitution’s allocation of election procedures to the states is meaningless if Defendants can coerce states into foregoing their chosen procedures by abusing their prosecutorial powers."

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, told AlterNet in June. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

Vicuña went on, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

He also speculated that the administration's election meddling is illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña explained. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

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