The Trump administration is taking direct aim at California state election officials, issuing grand jury subpoenas to election offices statewide ahead of the final day of voting on Nov. 3.

The investigations, first reported by Bloomberg, center on alleged administration of illegal voting. They are ostensibly tied to demands by the U.S. Justice Department that California and other states use federal voter lists to determine whether a voter is a “potential noncitizen” and should be removed.

The Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters told CyberScoop it received multiple grand jury subpoenas last week related to the investigation. The office called the federal efforts an attempt to intimidate California election officials into accepting federal supremacy over state voter registration authority.

“At every step, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a confrontational, adversarial approach,” said Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan in a statement. “Election officials are acting in accordance with state and federal law. Clear court rulings at both the U.S. District Court level and the Court of Appeals have confirmed that. Threats and intimidation have no place in elections. We will take whatever steps necessary to ensure the safety of our employees and to remain focused on serving the voters of Los Angeles County so they can exercise their voting franchise.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, also reportedly a target of the federal probe, did not respond to a request for comment from CyberScoop.

One California election official, Clint Curtis, the outgoing registrar of voters in Shasta County, endorsed the federal government’s efforts to remove 20,000 voters from California voter rolls. Curtis, whose term ends in January, was previously part of a failed effort to hire Tina Peters, a felon and former Mesa County, Colorado, election clerk to help with the upcoming midterms. Curtis has long believed in widespread election fraud.

He told CyberScoop earlier this year that he believed Shasta County elections in 2024 were plagued by suspicious mail-in ballots, saying they looked, felt and “smelled” different from normal mail ballots.

The U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to administer elections and Congress the power to make election laws, something courts have repeatedly upheld in dozens of legal challenges by the Trump administration.

The Department of Justice has claimed there are at least 20,000 such potential noncitizens on California’s voter lists, while the Department of Homeland Security told CyberScoop the figure could be as many as 190,000. The administration’s data, drawn from public voter lists, federal databases and commercially purchased personal information, has been repeatedly criticized by election officials, voting experts and federal courts as inaccurate and unreliable for determining voter eligibility.

Most people identified as “potential noncitizens” turn out to be naturalized citizens who have since gained voting rights, or the result of state administrative errors that mistakenly registered a small number of ineligible voters. Many of those mistakenly registered never cast a ballot.

State officials have had to defend against attempts at federal coercion as well as third-party activists who are constantly testing and probing election procedures nationwide, sometimes without understanding the laws election officials must follow to verify voters.

On Wednesday, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota announced felony charges against a pair of right-wing provocateurs, James O’Keefe and Cam Higby, for unlawful voting and identity theft. According to a statement from Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the two showed up at various election offices, provided false identities of real voters to election judges, violating state laws against misrepresenting their identity in applying for a ballot.

“Elections are the bedrock of democracy and their protection is one of our highest priorities. Individuals engaging in unlawful conduct related to our elections will be held accountable,” said Moriarty. “Our office has had regular meetings with Hennepin County Elections staff in preparation for both the primary and the general elections this year and we are fully prepared.”

Voting rights and civil society groups are also executing short- and long-term plans to combat potential voter disenfranchisement ahead of Tuesday.

Jessica Ayoub, deputy political director for the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union, said her organization has “never been more prepared” for any expected fights with the federal government or local officials seeking to disenfranchise voters, saying they first began planning for different scenarios 18 months ago, cultivating relationships with hundreds of clerks and election staff across Michigan.

“We’ve gamed out 25 potential scenarios and have rapid response strategies that we’ll deploy to ensure our elections are protected and that our democracy remains intact,” said Ayoub, who cited a desire not to publicize further details ahead of next month.

On Friday, voting rights groups filed a new lawsuit against the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security in California, seeking to block the federal government’s efforts against state election officials.

The groups are asking a judge to declare that the federal government has exceeded its constitutional authority and that state officials are legally carrying out their duties. They also want the court to force the departments to contact all California election officials who received subpoenas and tell them the investigation has halted due to a court order.

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The Supreme Court dismissed one of two lawsuits blocking the Trump administration from implementing changes to U.S. Postal Service regulations regarding mail-in ballots, saying that states lacked standing because they could not prove that the regulations would cause “concrete harm.”

 California and 23 other states sued the federal government after a White House executive order directed USPS to begin creating “State Citizenship Lists” for each state, consisting of voters who, according to federal data, are eligible to receive mail-in ballots. 

The order states that the lists will be updated and transmitted to states 60 days before the election, and states that “An individual’s identification on the State Citizenship List does not indicate that the individual has been properly registered to vote in the State” and that “there may be State laws, not reflected in the State Citizenship List, that preclude voter registration, or the individual may choose not to be registered.”

That provision was thrown out by two federal courts, who found them unconstitutional and likely to result in the federal government intruding on the constitutional rights of states to run their elections.

But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted 6-3 to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that states have no standing to sue because “The Order is an internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies” and the order “neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the executive branch.”

Because the section of the order is prefaced to say that the Secretary of Homeland Security will transmit the lists “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law,” the majority said the claims of harm by states are, at this point, entirely speculative.

 “The true ‘source of any injury’ to the States would be the downstream action that the Secretary ‘might take in the future’ to implement” the USPS sections,” the court wrote. “Emphasis on might.” 

At the same time, another section directs the Department of Justice to prioritize investigation and prosecution of state and local election officials who “knowingly” allow instances of non-citizen voting.  

The majority argued the DOJ directive was internal guidance  that neither regulated states’ voter registration nor limited states’ authority to set their own election rules. Since it only prioritized enforcement of existing laws, the court said it did “nothing” to states.

“The States lack standing to challenge for much the same reason: It does nothing to them,” the majority wrote. “This provision directs the Attorney General to ‘prioritize’ the investigation and prosecution of those who violate existing federal laws by issuing ballots to ineligible voters.”

The USPS regulations remain blocked under a separate injunction issued by federal court in Massachusetts, but the ruling demonstrates there are major differences between the Supreme Court majority and lower federal courts on the Trump administration’s years-long effort to assert more federal control over elections. On Friday, USPS moved to finalize the new regulations despite the nationwide injunction.

The three remaining liberal justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Kentaji Brown Jackson – laid out their opposition to the ruling across two dissenting opinions. In one, Sotomayor and Kagan wrote that the majority’s decision “merely postpones adjudication” and does not address or rule in favor of the administration on many substantive constitutional questions.

Both would have granted relief to the states, writing that “a commonsense reading of the executive order, corroborated by the government’s own representations, make clear that the respondent states face a sufficiently concrete and imminent injury.”

Sotomayor also expressed incredulity at the majority’s view that the order’s sections on USPS state citizenship lists and directing DOJ to prosecute election officials were unrelated or nonthreatening.

“To pretend that the lists assembled [in one section] bear no relation to the prosecutions directed by [the second section] is to ignore the structure of the Executive Order and the Government’s words alike,” she wrote. “As this Court has long recognized, ‘[p]eople do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around.”

Justice Jackson, in her own dissent, was even blunter.

“The District Court held that the President’s Order is unlawful, the Government does not defend the lawfulness of the Order before this Court, and no judge or Justice has held (or holds today) that the Order comports with the Constitution,” wrote Jackson. “Still, the Court sees fit to grant the Government equitable relief to proceed with implementing the challenged Order on the grounds that, because the Government had not yet issued a final rule at the time the complaint was filed, the Plaintiff States lacked a concrete injury for Article III purposes.”

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