A legal expert is sounding the alarm on a Trump move that seeks the Supreme Court's help with a "nasty" power grab.
During an episode of Talking Feds, former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman warned that the Trump administration is seeking to take away states' control of upcoming elections after filing an emergency application with the Supreme Court through the Solicitor General.
"It's their first effort to get the Supreme Court to weigh in on one of Trump's really pernicious ham-handed efforts to just wrest control of the voting process from states," Litman said. "It's about as nasty as it goes."
Trump's Solicitor General filed an emergency Supreme Court application asking the court to vacate a lower-court injunction on an executive order restricting mail-in voting. The executive order would take effect before the November 3 midterms, according to Litman.
"This would be really cataclysmic for the election," Litman said. "The executive order itself was from a few months ago, and it gives the executive branch an unprecedented — and I think, in the reading of all courts so far — unconstitutional role in the elections."
Litman added that Trump is doing it "in a way that would really disenfranchise millions of people, and disproportionately by a large margin, Democrats." He also pointed out that the emergency application is reaching the Supreme Court via the "shadow docket."
Until now, the Trump administration "shied away" from appealing its voting losses, "so this is the first one, and surprise, surprise, it's by emergency docket...so now, really unfortunately, this goes boom into the court by the so-called shadow docket."
The Supreme Court issued a briefing order after getting the emergency application that gives the states and other challengers until August 3 to file a response, Litman noted.