In a sweeping legal rebuke, a federal judge issued an order late Friday night blocking the Trump administration from threatening or intimidating state and local election officials. The injunction follows a series of aggressive tactics deployed by federal agencies in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 midterm elections, including demands for counties to segregate ballots based on unsubstantiated allegations of noncitizen voting.
U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson, presiding in California, issued the eight-page order after concluding that high-ranking officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had launched a concerted campaign to coerce election workers.
“In the lead-up to the election, high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees who are engaged in administering the ongoing midterm 2026 election,” Thompson wrote.
The order explicitly prohibits the administration from taking any action intended to intimidate election staff into halting the processing of ballots based solely on claims that a voter is ineligible. The ruling remains in effect through Nov. 16, ensuring that the protection of election workers extends nearly two weeks past Election Day.
The conflict centers on a DOJ pressure campaign that saw letters sent to election officials in 57 of California’s 58 counties. These letters demanded that counties verify the citizenship status of individuals flagged by federal agencies, while threatening investigations into the officials themselves if they failed to comply. In one instance, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli provided a San Bernardino County official with a list of “1,133 likely aliens,” demanding that officials turn over sensitive, nonpublic information—including Social Security numbers and state IDs—within 48 hours. The DOJ further urged officials to segregate the ballots of these individuals until their citizenship could be verified.
The administration’s demands have faced consistent opposition in the courts. Earlier this week, a federal appeals court rejected a DOJ bid to block more than 20,000 ballots from being counted in California over similar claims of noncitizen registration. On Friday, the same court denied a request to force the segregation of contested ballots. Other federal judges have openly questioned the accuracy of the administration’s “multiagency investigative methodology” used to compile these lists, noting that the federal intervention infringes upon the constitutional rights of states to oversee their own elections.
Judge Thompson underscored the danger of these tactics, noting that while the administration claims its efforts are aimed at preventing illegal voting, the actions are likely to produce the opposite result.
“Although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters,” the judge wrote.
With the injunction now in place, the administration is legally barred from continuing the pressure tactics that have disrupted the pre-election period in multiple states.
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