Jeffries hammers Trump order on voting guidelines: ‘Not worth the paper it has been written on’

Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Thursday denounced President Trump’s latest govt order to make voting guidelines extra strict, saying it’s an unlawful energy seize that may rapidly be rejected by the courts. 

“The executive order that was recently issued by President Trump is not worth the paper it has been written on,” Jeffries instructed reporters within the Capitol. “It will be challenged in court, and it will be invalidated.”

Trump on Tuesday signed an govt order designed to overtake how elections are carried out throughout the nation. Central to the decree is a brand new proof-of-citizenship mandate, forcing states to require potential voters to indicate passports, drivers licenses or different types of authorities ID as a way to register. 

Beneath present federal legislation, potential voters should swear an oath that they’re residents to realize registration, however not produce an ID. Violators can face fees of perjury.

Trump and his GOP allies have forged the harder guidelines as a common sense change that’s essential in hunting down voter fraud, which the president and plenty of Republicans have claimed was the one motive for former President Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020.

They’ve produced no proof to again that allegation, nevertheless, and the courts dismissed greater than 60 lawsuits difficult Biden’s win. 

Democrats have opposed the stricter voting guidelines, noting that circumstances of voter fraud are exceedingly uncommon within the U.S. With that in thoughts, they are saying Trump’s govt order has a extra sinister goal: to discourage voting by low-income individuals who are likely to vote Democratic and are least prone to have up-to-date authorities IDs. 

Jeffries on Thursday mentioned Republicans have “zero credibility” in relation to safeguarding elections and defending democracy. Fairly other than Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election primarily based on false claims of fraud, Jeffries additionally pointed to the GOP’s latest effort to redraw the congressional map in North Carolina. 

The Tar Heel State is break up roughly 50/50 between the events, and it lately elected a Democratic governor and lawyer normal. However Republican gerrymandering closely favors the GOP within the U.S. Home, the place the state’s delegation was evenly divided within the final Congress — seven Republicans and 7 Democrats — however now leans closely in the direction of Republicans, 10 to 4, below the brand new map.

“Republicans have actually concluded that voter suppression is an electoral strategy,” Jeffries charged. “These individuals within the Home would not even be within the majority proper now if it weren’t for the egregious, mid-decade, extremely partisan gerrymandering that happened in North Carolina. Take into consideration that. They’d not even be within the majority proper now, however then they’re working across the nation claiming to have a mandate.

“Give me a break.”