This Wednesday, the 24th, a federal judge definitively prohibited the United States government, led by President Donald Trump, from implementing most of his first presidential decree on elections, part of which aimed to require people to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
The ruling by Judge Denise Casper of the U.S. District Court in Boston effectively turns a preliminary injunction she granted a year ago — in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s attempts to overhaul the electoral system — into an outright ban.
In an apparent acknowledgment of the difficulty of implementing the requirement to prove citizenship through presidential decree, Trump is working to pass legislation in the Republican-controlled Congress to do so. The Save America Act was approved by the House, but is stalled in the Senate.
On Wednesday, the American president abruptly canceled the expected signing of a bipartisan housing bill, saying he will not sign any legislation until Congress approves his requirement for proof of citizenship to vote.
Casper rejected the administration’s argument that the lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general to block the changes was premature because the rules had not yet been implemented. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections and that Trump’s demands violated the separation of powers. The Constitution “gives the president no specific power over elections,” she wrote.
Among other proposed changes, Trump’s order would require people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote; would prevent the counting of mail-in votes that arrived after Election Day, even if they were postmarked before that date; and would punish states that did not comply with the order by withholding certain federal funds.
In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said she was grateful that the court blocked Trump’s “unconstitutional attempt to take control of our elections” and said she would continue to defend voting rights in this year’s midterm elections. “Generations of Americans have fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who would seek to undermine it,” she said.
Requests for comment sent by the Associated Press news agency to the White House and the Justice Department were not immediately returned.
This was the latest in a series of decisions against the presidential decree on elections that Trump signed just months after taking office for his second term. He has since signed another decree on elections, seeking to create a national voter register and limit voting by mail – this directive also faces several legal challenges.
In late 2025, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruling on a separate lawsuit against the first election executive order, brought by civil rights and Democratic Party-aligned groups, blocked the government from taking steps to include a proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal voter registration form. That judge later prohibited the Secretary of Defense from requiring documentary proof of citizenship when military personnel register to vote or request election ballots.
The president and many of his Republican allies have been pushing the narrative that non-citizen voting is a big problem, when in fact, it is quite rare. The federal voter registration form already requires people to certify that they are U.S. citizens, and violating this requirement is punishable as a serious crime and can lead to arrest or deportation.
In another important voting case, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to soon issue an opinion on whether mail-in ballots must arrive by Election Day. That could immediately change rules in 14 states that allow grace periods ranging from days to weeks as long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day.
