An executive order requires citizenship verification and rewrites mail-ballot rules.

OK. Pull up a stool. Tuesday afternoon. The President of the United States, in the Oval Office, with the Press Secretary at his right shoulder and the Postmaster General at his left, signed an executive order titled Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.

Hon. The executive order, on its face, directs the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Social Security Administration, to compile and transmit to each State a State Citizenship List of confirmed U.S. citizens. It also directs the Postmaster General to initiate rulemaking to require all mail-in and absentee ballots to be placed in secure ballot envelopes.

That is the executive order. That is the whole order. Citizenship list. Ballot envelope.

Hon. The Constitution of the United States, in Article I, Section 4, on the page, says the times, places, and manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations. That is the whole sentence. The power over federal elections, hon, is split between the State legislatures and the United States Congress. The President of the United States is not in the sentence. The President of the United States is not anywhere on the page. The Founders, hon, deliberately did not put the President in the page.

Rick Hasen, who is the election-law professor at UCLA and the guy who literally wrote the textbook on the law of democracy, posted on his blog, on Tuesday afternoon, that the order is likely unconstitutional. I want to point out, hon, that Rick Hasen is not a Democratic-Party operative. Rick Hasen is a law professor. Rick Hasen is a guy who teaches the cases. Rick Hasen, on Tuesday, said the order is likely unconstitutional because the Founders did not give the President this power.

The administration, hon, has signed an order like this before. In March 2025, in the early weeks of the second term, the President signed a similar executive order on citizenship verification and mail-in ballots. That order, hon, was enjoined by a federal district court in Massachusetts within thirty days. The injunction was upheld by the First Circuit the following summer. The Supreme Court, on the cert petition, declined to take it up. The order, by the fall of 2025, was a dead letter on the Federal Register.

Hon. They are doing it again. The order is substantially identical to the enjoined order. The constitutional defect is the same defect. The legal challenge, on Tuesday afternoon, was filed by six different organizations in six different federal courts. By Tuesday evening, hon, six suits. By Wednesday morning, the first hearing. By Friday, the first injunction. That is the standard timeline, hon, for executive orders the administration knows are unconstitutional and signs anyway because the signing is the story.

The signing is the story, hon. The order is not. The order is the prop. The prop is the thing the President holds up in the Oval Office on a Tuesday afternoon in front of the cameras. The cameras take the picture. The picture runs on the evening news. The evening news runs the picture and not the legal analysis. The legal analysis runs in the Wednesday morning legal trade press. By Wednesday morning, hon, the next news cycle is already going.

You ever notice how the people who say they are protecting election integrity keep signing executive orders that cannot survive a Tuesday afternoon legal review?

The new DHS Secretary, hon, took the oath of office on the same Tuesday morning. The first thing on his desk, by Tuesday afternoon, was the order. The order, on his desk, by Tuesday evening, was the subject of a lawsuit. That, hon, is what we call, in the diner business, a hot first day.

Funny how that works.