Appeals court resists DOJ’s bid to immediately segregate 20k California ballots
The most telling moment here is Judge Bennett asking whether the appeals court even has jurisdiction. That's not the question the Trump administration wanted to hear when it called for a rare Sunday hearing. It suggests the push to segregate those 20,000 ballots at lightning speed may have overreached, procedurally speaking.
I get the impulse behind the administration's concern. If noncitizens are on the rolls and voting, that's a real problem worth investigating, and California's resistance to sharing voter data has frustrated federal officials for years. But the way this is being pursued matters too. Courts exist to slow things down and check that process, and asking a trial judge to jump the line on a contested factual question should face scrutiny.
What I'd want to know next is what the underlying evidence actually shows. The DOJ says these ballots are likely noncitizen voters, but likely is doing a lot of work in that sentence. If the evidence is thin, the push to segregate looks more like political theater. If it's solid, the appeals court's hesitation could end up delaying a legitimate investigation. Either way, the Sunday hearing shows how fast this fight is moving, and how much is riding on a question of procedure rather than the ballots themselves.