In one of his earliest techniques, President Donald Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order that Republicans argued set off federal cash to enroll Democrats to vote in elections. While doing so came as no surprise to officials tracking the problem, the voter turnout struggle, which has played out in courts and in Congress since 2021, is not over.
“I’m delighted to discover President Trump is now taking steps to improve our election integrity, ” Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI ) told the Washington Examiner. “As chairman of the Committee on House Administration, I sent letters to the professional tree companies that were suspected of violating the law demanding the protection of documents related to Executive Order 14019. We look forward to receiving those records from the previous supervision and are eager to begin working with President Trump on this important matter. ”
The renegotiation of former President Joe Biden’s administrative order, called “Promoting Access to Voting, ” was part of a broad Day One efforts by Trump to roll up activities that Republicans said empowered progressive nonprofit organizations in an illegal manner. The order, which earned the nickname “Bidenbucks ” from Republicans, required every federal agency to hand over a plan to the president ’s domestic policy adviser detailing how it would increase voter registration and participation.
The executive get expanded the scope of cooperation between the U. S. state and what were classified by authorities as “approved, impartial third-party organizations ” for voter registration activities. But Republican politicians, as well as traditional think tank such as the Heritage Foundation and the Foundation for Government Accountability, were not convinced that parties connected to the purchase were truly democratic under federal regulation.
Heading into the new Trump name, they are also calling hill.
The think tanks have continued claims against firms and found internal documents, first reported by the Washington Examiner in May last time, on the professional order’s ties to progressive activists. The documents detailed a 2021 meeting between the White House and groups that provided advice on carrying it out, and, in some cases, helping to shape it behind-the-scenes.
On Capitol Hill, Steil’s House Administration Committee onexaminer.com/news/house/3137936/agencies-subpoenaed-bidenbucks-elections/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” title=””>issued subpoenas to five government agencies to appear for closed-door depositions — accusing the Biden administration of failing to turn over details about the executive order and appearing to violate a pair of laws, such as the Hatch Act, on federal funding unlawfully boosting partisanship. The GOP-led House Small Business Committee also subpoenaed federal officials over the voter registration push.
Spurred by a follow-up report in May 2024 in the Washington Examiner on Democratic megadonors fueling taxpayer-backed health centers, Republican lawmakers increased their demands for documents from the White House that they said would further show it violated federal law. The Biden White House called Republican-led scrutiny into the order “baseless, ” arguing that it aimed to protect voting rights for all people.
The Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank, said Trump’s rescission of the order blocks welfare agencies from being used for partisan voter registration, reinforces state sovereignty over election procedures, and ends backdoor coordination between the government and its outside allies.
At the same time, questions remain about how the order came to fruition, the key players behind it, and its impact. The order itself, pointed out Scott Walter, the president of the conservative Capital Research Center think tank in Washington, D. C. , closely resembled a document in 2020 that was quietly prepared by a left-wing group called Demos.
“Imagine if, say, the Heritage Foundation drafted an executive order for President Trump to boost voter turnout, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives worked with the National Rifle Association to carry it out while ignoring subpoenas from Democratic-run committees, ” Walter said. “The mainstream media and Democratic leaders would be properly outraged. Americans deserve accountability now from bureaucrats who ignored the law to boost partisan turnout. ”
During the Biden administration, the Department of Justice worked to block government documents from seeing the light of day that FGA sought through a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act. FGA sued for “strategic plans ” behind the executive order.
The DOJ, which did not respond to a request for comment, invoked executive privilege to shield the release of those plans. Executive privilege, per a DOJ policy guidance memo, refers to information deemed as necessary to remain confidential to protect the president ’s decision-making. It derives from the president ’s powers under Article II of the Constitution and the separation of powers, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.
The DOJ’s assertion of executive privilege lacks merit, conservatives say, because some individual agencies already publicly released their strategic plans in response to requests.
“Joe Biden spent his entire term turning the federal government into a get-out-the-vote machine for the Left and hiding the evidence, ” said FGA Federal Affairs Director Stewart Whitson, who worked for nine years in senior FBI intelligence and counterterrorism roles.
“Our lawsuit is ongoing, and we’re pursuing those records so the American people can see the full scope of the Biden administration ’s attempts to use the federal government to change the outcome of an election, ” Whitson said.
The Heritage Foundation, the architect of the “Project 2025” plan to overhaul the federal government, is also seeking documents pertaining to the executive order.
Heritage’s oversight project filed a lawsuit filed last year against the Small Business Administration. The office is still receiving documents in production and expects to press for more records during the Trump-era, according to Colin Aamot, an oversight project staffer.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the think tank and a former Federal Election Commission member, said the DOJ’s claims of executive privilege are “ridiculous. ”
“The Justice Department needs to withdraw its claims of executive privilege and order these agencies to, in full compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, produce all documents in connection to Biden’s order so that we can have public disclosure and transparency, ” Spakovsky said.
The lawsuits from FGA, Heritage, and other groups over the “Bidenbucks ” order, ultimately, came in a flurry. Now, lawmakers, who criticized Biden’s order as an allegedly unconstitutional power grab are pressing ahead under Trump to obtain documents.
“It was a ballot harvesting opportunity, ” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), who runs the House’s Election Integrity Caucus, told the Washington Examiner. “We would love to know if there’s any way to find out who the voters were and what the numbers were for people that actually got registered to vote. ”
“That might [include ] illegal immigrants, ” Tenney speculated.
Tenney, who has investigated the executive order and introduced proposals to block it, cited her concerns about a government memo that indicated outside groups advised the White House to support registering illegal immigrants to vote. The existence of the memo was first reported on by the Washington Examiner last year.
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Her office is looking into obtaining further records from agencies on the 2021 order, she said, including on “how many members of Congress in really close races might not have been able to get over the line ” in the 2024 election cycle because of it.
“That’s something, ” Tenney added, “that we’re probably going to look at through the Election Integrity Caucus. ”
