Thoughts on the Mass Rape at Cornell University - Read by Eunice Wong

 

I had a brief experience with a fraternity at Cornell University. I was a senior in high school. I stayed in a frat for a weekend with a former high school classmate. His “brothers” dragged me off a couch where I was sleeping and pinned me to the floor. They yanked up my shirt and dumped dog food on my stomach. They called in the fraternity mastiff and goaded the dog to “eat me.”

The former classmate, Don Chartier, decided he would rather remain in the good graces of his “brothers” than intervene. The experience dissuaded me from applying to the university, destroyed a high school friendship — we had run cross country and track together — and left me with deep loathing for fraternities.

Of course, that prank pales in comparison to the reported gang rape of a female student. But it is part of the same culture of sadism and abuse that runs like an electric current through all fraternities.

You are admitted to these male enclaves by allowing yourself to be hazed, humiliated and stripped of your dignity. Hazing rituals weed out those with enough self-esteem and independence to stand up to the hierarchy. They ensure conformity and obedience. It is a filter. Fraternity “brothers” are self-selected. Those who have the strength to oppose public humiliation and that perpetuated on each new cycle of recruits, leave.

Fraternities across the country are plagued by allegations of rape and sexual assault. Men in fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape than those who do not belong to fraternities. These crimes, well known to fraternity members and university administrators, are masked by a culture of silence.

The president of Cornell, Michael I. Kotlikoff, whose university expels students who protest genocide and shields students who commit rape from criminal prosecution, issued the usual hour-of-reckoning statement that comes accompanied with a lot of vague promises of reform. He is no doubt busy doing damage control with his big donors, not a few of whom come out of the fraternity system.

Kotlikoff and all administrators involved should be fired. Those accused of rape should be criminally charged. The disciplinary investigations of fraternities — which universities keep secret — should be made public. Fraternities found to have engaged in sexual assault — which will be most of them — should be closed. Those fraternity members who carried out sexual assaults — no matter how many years ago — should face trial. This is the minimum. But it is a minimum I am certain Cornell will never achieve.

Universities in the United States have turned education upside down. They make war on scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and the search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression — in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas. They cater to the demands of rich alumni, who censor curriculum and purge professors and programs. They perpetuate the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender roles in male fraternities. It is a culture of conformity and intolerance.

Education in the U.S. is a mindless quest for collective euphoria. Students are taught that self-worth and self-fulfillment are found in crowds, in mass emotions, in status, rather than individual transcendence. Those who do not pay deference to the celebration of wealth, privilege and power are cast out as freaks.

It is a war on knowledge in the name of knowledge. “Knowledge,” as C. Wright Mills and Alan Wolfe wrote in “The Power Elite,” is “no longer widely felt as an ideal; it is seen as an instrument. In a society of power and wealth, knowledge is valued as an instrument of power and wealth, and also, of course, as an ornament in conversation.”

James O. Freedman — the former president of Dartmouth College — fought the school’s entrenched culture of elitism, white male entitlement, fraternities and football. The Dartmouth Review published a cover article that depicted Freedman — who was Jewish — as Hitler and wrote that he was orchestrating the “Final Solution” to traditional conservatism at Dartmouth.

Freedman told the college in his inaugural address: We must strengthen our attraction for those singular students whose greatest pleasures may come not from the camaraderie of classmates but from the lonely acts of writing poetry or mastering the cello or solving mathematical riddles or translating Catullus. We must make Dartmouth a hospitable environment for students who march “to a different drummer” — for those creative loners and daring dreamers whose commitment to the intellectual and artistic life is so compelling that they appreciate, as Prospero reminded Shakespeare’s audiences, that for certain persons a library is “dukedom large enough.” It was a forlorn and lonely battle. Dartmouth proved impervious to change.

Andrew Lohse, a former Dartmouth fraternity member, was profiled in an article in Rolling Stone magazine. He was ostracized, not only by students, but the university administration, for his public exposure of the hazing and abuse he experienced.

“I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,” he wrote.

He accused Dartmouth’s 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three co-ed houses — to which roughly half of the student body belonged — of perpetuating a culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” as well as an “intoxicating nihilism” that dominates campus social life.

“One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth — one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men — is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,” he wrote. “Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.”

Any effort to hold football programs or Greek organizations to account becomes an attack against the collective identity that gives universities their sense of prestige and empowerment. All those who question or criticize these organizations are treated as the enemy.

Bernard Lefkowitz captured the sickness of this culture in his book “Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb.” Lefkowitz wrote about a group of high school athletes in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, who in 1989 lured a 17-year-old developmentally disabled girl to a basement. The boys sexually abused her with a broomstick and a baseball bat. When the assault became public, the town rallied not around the victim, but “our guys.”

The woman who said she was drugged and raped by the Cornell fraternity members has received “multiple threats” to withdraw her civil lawsuit, according to her lawyer Thomas Giuffra.

The corporate world sees football players, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters as prime recruits. Students are conditioned to join the team, to surrender moral autonomy, to accept and carry out acts of personal humiliation, to treat with contempt those who oppose them or who are different, to define their life by an infantile narcissism centered on greed and self-promotion and to remain silent about crimes they witness or take part in.

It is the very ethic of corporations. The ruling elite sees in Greek organizations and college sports programs the training ground for an amoral class of speculators, bankers and corporatists who pillage the country. The goal is to train people to subsume themselves into the herd, to unquestioningly use technical and vocational skills to serve the system.

These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities, where students are taught to question assumptions and structures. The humanities prod students to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill.

The goal of education is not to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think. It is to instill the capacity for moral choice and moral action. The latest sexual assault case is a savage indictment of Cornell University and a savage indictment of us.

-Chris Hedges & Eunice Wong

What's That Smell?

 

The President of the United States has been accused of "letting a huge fart rip" on live TV, as it's been claimed a bystander "struggled to breathe" following the alleged blunder.

On October 7, Donald Trump made an announcement, which was streamed by the White House and various news outlets, but people were drawn to something specific when he was speaking, as many think he seemed to have a bit of an accident. When he was talking, viewers were drawn to the woman standing close to him, as they believe her facial expression said a lot about what could have been happening behind the scenes.

It comes after Trump's "awkward walk" is claimed to have sparked a number of diaper rumors and "poo smell theories."

George Conway re-posted a clip of Trump talking; however, he seemed to zoom in on one particular moment, as he was distracted by the woman standing beside Trump. It was later revealed it was Susan Dell, and her facial expression has now sparked widespread discussion.

Alongside a picture of Susan, George wrote: "This poor woman looks like she is struggling to breathe." You then see a screengrab of her near Trump, and people think she seemed to appear quite uncomfortable. Her face is quite serious, and it almost looks as if she's trying not to breathe in the surrounding air. It triggered all sorts of conversation online.

One person said: "Well she is standing directly behind poopy pants!" Another added: "Loaded Diaper Don strikes again."

-The Mirror

Donald Trump accused of 'letting huge fart rip' on TV as bystander 'struggles to breathe' - The Mirror US

 

The biggest question lurking behind the midterm campaigns is: Can we reverse the power shift that began four decades ago?

 

Behind this election’s dominant issue of affordability lies the record concentration of wealth at the top of America. The richest 0.001% of Americans — a handful of extraordinarily wealthy men — now controls more of the nation’s wealth than at any time in modern history. To be sure, wealth is not a zero-sum game in which the riches of those at the top necessarily come at the expense of everyone else. But power is a zero-sum game, because the more of it that is held by some people, the less of it is held by others.

Wealth cannot be separated from power. Great wealth becomes great power through campaign contributions, media ownership, the ability to buy off opposition, the capacity to wage public relations campaigns and the resources to deploy armies of lawyers who litigate on your behalf. Recent years provide abundant illustration of all this.

Wealth cannot be separated from power. In these ways, great power also becomes great wealth. It buys changes in laws, regulations and court decisions that bestow even more wealth on those with the power to alter the system to their benefit — and to siphon off resources from everyone else.

This power shift has also become clearly evident in recent years. In the Trump era it has taken the form of blatant corruption. But the political bribes, billionaire media ownership, PR campaigns and well-financed litigation predated Donald Trump.

For many years (with the notable exception of the Biden administration), antitrust enforcement has been defanged to make it easier for big firms to monopolize. Among the most widely discussed findings about the U.S. economy is the rise of corporate concentration since the 1980s. The biggest firms, their top executives and their major shareholders have all done wonderfully well. Consumers and employees, however, have faced higher prices, lower paychecks and fewer choices.

At the same time, labor laws have been altered to make it more difficult to organize unions. In the 1950s, more than a third of private-sector workers were unionized. Now, fewer than 6% are. Tax laws have been changed to reduce the rates and amounts paid by the super wealthy, to the point where many pay no taxes at all — even though they have more wealth than ever.

This massive power shift is even more starkly illustrated by the billionaires, financial mavens and tech bros who put Trump in power, who refuse to slow climate change and who are now deciding on the future of AI and therefore humanity.

The question I keep coming back to is whether this can be reversed. There is historic precedent. After the first Gilded Age — which ran from the 1890s to the start of World War I, and which featured wide inequalities of income, wealth and political power — America reacted in what came to be known as the Progressive Era.

This paradox should soon be the center of our national debate. Starting under Theodore Roosevelt, monopolies were busted up, corporations were regulated, a progressive income tax was enacted, and corporate political donations (bribes) were barred. Then, starting in 1933, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, power continued to be shifted to what became the largest middle class in world history. Then came the 1970s and 1980s, when the process began to go in reverse.

The challenge is arguably much greater today because wealth and power are more concentrated than in the first Gilded Age, creating a chicken-and-egg paradox: How can government enact and enforce the necessary reforms if it’s under the control of a power elite that won’t permit them?

Now, just four weeks from what could be a major political victory for the Democrats in taking back at least one chamber of Congress, this paradox should soon be the center of our national debate.

-Robert Reich, Truthdig

-Stephen Kolarin, Graphic

"He is deranged and dangerous!" Impeach Him!

 

Leaders in California have denounced Donald Trump as “reckless” and “deranged” after the US president suggested Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego – two liberal cities in the blue state that has been a frequent target of his administration.

At a rally in ruby red Nebraska on Monday night, Trump told supporters that he hoped to see a “tremendous victory” in the fast-approaching November midterm elections. He then suggested high prices due to the war with Iran were a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe – keeping our country safe”.

“They can take out a city,” Trump said in Grand Island. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” The crowd applauded. “It’ll be over very soon,” Trump said of the war.

The governor and the cities’ mayors quickly condemned the comments. “After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on X. 

“He is deranged and dangerous.”

Newsom, a Democrat who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over his two terms, said from his press office account: “Let’s be clear: The President is advocating for an attack on 10+ million U.S. residents in two of America’s largest cities. This is not normal. None of this is. And we will continue to remind folks of that every day.”

Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, assailed the president for making what she called “irresponsible threats” that “could potentially compromise” the safety of America’s second-largest city. “The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” she said in a statement.

Todd Gloria, the mayor of San Diego, said his city was “not collateral damage” in the president’s war. “We are not expendable. And we are never a “small price to pay,” he wrote on X “Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, is home to critical US military infrastructure.

Online, the comments – part of a rambling, nearly hour-and-a-half speech – set off a debate about what the president actually meant. Was it a crude joke about two blue cities or had he, accidentally perhaps, disclosed confidential intelligence about potential Iranian targets?

Some conservative activists argued that Trump, in his elliptical way of speaking, was referring to high gas prices when he argued that it was a “small price to pay”, and not the capacity of Iran to “take out” a US city.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US defence officials have previously stated that Iran currently lacks the capability to launch a direct missile attack on the US mainland.

Trump has argued in previous speeches that allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon would threaten US cities. In his last state of the union speech, he claimed that Iran was working to build missiles that would “soon” reach US soil...

“Thirteen million Californians call LA and San Diego counties home,” said Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee for governor who has sought to take up the anti-Trump mantle carried by the outgoing Newsom. “Their lives are not a ‘small price to pay’ or a punchline for Donald Trump.”

-The Guardian

 

The List of Dread: Elections, Guns, Parental Rights vs. Trans Rights, and Immigration -Joyce Vance

 

I used to joyously await the start of a new term of the Supreme Court and the interesting (in a lawyerly way) issues that were about to consume us for the next nine months. New developments to discuss. Cases and analysis to parse. For a federal prosecutor, there was always something interesting happening.

No more. Now, even though its active shadow docket has made the Court an ever-present feature of American life, without summers off, I approach the first Monday with an unsettled feeling. What will the Court do to us this year?

It’s already taken away Roe v. Wade, allowed dark money to pervade our politics, given Trump a pass from prosecution for January 6, and permitted partisan gerrymanders. How much worse can it get? This term, there are some distinctly unpleasant possibilities.

Everyone else is picking their favorites, or at least their top cases, for the term right now. Instead, I have my list of dread. I’m not here to tell you what undecided petitions I’m eagerly awaiting decisions on. I’m here to assess just how much damage—or major advancement of the conservative hetero-orthodoxy, depending on your perspective—the Court will do this term.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be Civil Discourse if I didn’t remind you that this is one of the reasons it’s so critical to do everything we can to advance Democratic Senate candidates wherever we can. Justice Alito is already teasing a resignation at the end of the term. He told CBS Court reporter Jan Crawford he’d thought about it at the end of the last term but decided there was still more work he could do.

Here, then, is:

The List of Dread

Elections: Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota. Scheduled for oral argument on December 8, Mi Familia Vota tees up two connected issues. The first is really quirky. In a case called Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the Court ruled in 2013 that an Arizona law that required documentary proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or Motor Voter Act) and an existing consent decree. 

The law requires Arizona to “accept and use” the federal form for registration, which permits voters who attest under penalty of perjury that they’re citizens to register without showing the actual documents, which of course, many people don’t have readily available.

Arizona looked for a way to get around that decision and ended up creating a dual-track system for registering in which voters without physical proof of citizenship are “federal-only” voters and can’t vote in state elections. The RNC and Arizona lawmakers are arguing that the state has the ability to dictate conditions that apply to state forms. 

When the case is argued, we’ll be listening for whether there are five Justices who believe that either the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or “Motor Voter Act”) or an existing federal consent decree prevents Arizona from forcing people to show their documents instead of just opening themselves up to criminal prosecution if they lie, as the current system does, in order to be able to vote in state elections.

If there aren’t, states will be able to come up with any number of restrictions that will keep eligible citizens from registering to vote in critical state elections by virtue of making it difficult for some people (for instance, as with the proof of citizenship requirement, those who can’t afford the documents or are transient, etc.)

As if that’s not enough, there’s also a second issue, involving whether the NVRA prohibits Arizona from implementing a program to systematically remove people it suspects of being noncitizens from voter rolls within the 90-day period in advance of the election, which has not been permitted until now. 

We’ve seen how error-prone the federal government is at identifying noncitizens it believes have registered to vote. If the majority accepts this view, it could become infinitely more difficult for voters to stay registered and be able to cast ballots that will be counted.

That’s why Mi Familia Vota tops the list of dread.

Guns: Viramontes v. Cook County & Grant v. Higgins. We talked about this one in June when the Court declined to take a case called Snopes v. Brown that challenged the constitutionality of a Maryland law that banned semiautomatic rifles, including the AR-15. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch wanted to hear the case. Justice Thomas wrote an eight-page dissent from the denial of cert, with which he called the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning that AR–15s are not “arms” protected by the Second Amendment a “surprising conclusion.” 

That’s not the kind of language you use if you intend to continue to ban AR-15s. Justice Kavanaugh did not vote to hear the case; he seemed to want to wait for another one, and he mentioned Viramontes. Now, here we are. When Snopes was rejected, Kavanaugh wrote: “Given that millions of Americans own AR–15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR–15s are in ‘common use’ by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment.” 

He concluded, “in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” All that stands between us and legal AR-15s is whether the other five Justices are willing to stop the madness.

Parental rights versus trans rights: International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson is scheduled for oral argument on December 7. This is a case about standing and whether parents whose children are at home with them can sue over what might happen if they run away. Bear with me for a second, although the case is currently just about that threshold issue of whether parents have standing in this situation. If the answer is yes, then the parents will be able to sue to invalidate a Washington state law that lets shelters notify the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families, rather than immediately telling the parents where the child is if that minor child is trying to receive gender-affirming care.

Does the First Amendment protect religious beliefs at the expense of LGBTQ rights: St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. Colorado law permits religious schools to participate in its universal pre-K program, so long as they follow the same rules as everyone else. But Catholic schools are challenging that, arguing that binding them to follow LGBTQ nondiscrimination rules interferes with their free exercise of their religious beliefs. 

They want an exemption, even as they want to be included in the state-run education program. If there are five votes here (and religion has been trumping other rights and especially LGBTQ rights in a series of cases, including a number out of Colorado), constitutional rights will give way to religious beliefs the Court chooses to elevate.

Immigration and whether the Supreme Court will sign off on letting the Trump administration abandon due process: Last month, the Supreme Court decided the Trump administration could continue with “third country” deportations at least until the Court hears oral argument in DHS v. DVD in December. Only the three liberal Justices dissented, and it’s hard to contemplate why the Court would permit deportations to countries like war-torn South Sudan that the U.S. has deemed too unsafe for Americans to travel to if they were going to tell the administration no after the argument.

This case is about whether people can be sent to unsafe countries they have no prior connection to, may not even speak the language in, where they will potentially face torture, violence, and even death without having the opportunity to ask a court to prevent them from being sent to a specific country where they will be in harm’s way. It’s not about whether they can avoid being deported altogether, just about whether the administration can dump them, for instance, in a war zone, without minimal due process—notice and a hearing—first.

The justices’ ruling means that, at least temporarily, the administration can continue sending people to countries like Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound and beaten by the police, according to a report in The New York Times. In his brief, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the third-country deportation program is “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”

The technical issues at argument will be whether the judge who enjoined the due process-less deportations had jurisdiction and whether the administration’s policy violates the Constitution and international protections against torture.

There is plenty to watch on the Court’s docket this term. We’ll read the briefs, listen to oral argument, and of course, discuss what the opinions mean when they are handed down. We’ll figure out what it means for our lives and our democracy.

That work takes time. Civil Discourse isn’t behind a paywall six days a week because I believe everyone should have access to reliable information about what our government is doing and what the law actually says. Paid subscriptions are what make it possible for me to keep it that way.

So, as we begin another Supreme Court term, if you read Civil Discourse regularly and find this work useful, I hope you’ll become a paid subscriber. If you already are one, thank you. You make it possible for everyone—including people who can’t afford to pay—to be part of this community and have access to the information we’ll need in the months ahead.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

"Americans...have the power to throw the Trump administration out of office and, together, to build a better nation"

 

On Saturday October 3^rd, the Power to the People festival, organized by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, took over the stage at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. On two stages were rock, alternative, and hip-hop royalty, joining together to remind Americans of their agency to change the future and reclaim American democracy.

The line-up of musicians was legendary. Joan Baez, Jack Black, Cypress Hill, Dropkick Murphys, Flavor Flav, Foo Fighters, The Linda Lindas, Mike McCready, Killer Mike, Dave Matthews, Public Enemy, Nathaniel Rateliffe, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Stills, and Serj Tankian, among others, covered seven decades of American music.

The festival featured a “Freedom Village” where attendees could find ways to get involved in government, grassroots organizing, education, mutual aid, and social impact organizations. Festival organizers donated a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales to VoteRiders, a nonpartisan organization that works to overcome barriers to voting and make sure everyone who is eligible can vote.

Both in person and in the live stream of the concert, artists urged Americans to remember that they have the power to throw the Trump administration out of office and, together, to build a better nation.

The artists at the event pointedly demonstrated their right to free speech. They were explicit and thorough in their spoken descriptions of their anger at the Trump administration and billionaires who have taken over the country, and they chose songs that needled Trump—John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son,” for example—or excoriated his policies: Baez and Rateliff sang Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Springsteen sang “Streets of Minneapolis,” and the Dropkick Murphys’ sang “Don’t Call Me a F*cking Terrorist,” the last two both written in the wake of the Minneapolis shootings by ICE agents. They emphasized their freedom to express themselves by singing Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The ten-hour concert ended with the performers singing Guthrie’s famous anthem “This Land is Your Land,” written in 1940 as the Great Depression dragged on. Guthrie wrote it to reclaim the United States of America for its working people. “This land is your land,” he wrote, “this land is my land/From California to the New York islands/From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters/This land was made for you and me.”

Tonight Morello sang a verse often left out of the anthem: “In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple/By the relief office, I saw my people/As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/Is this land made for you and me?”

Famously, Guthrie painted on his guitars the words “This Machine Kills Fascists,” a slogan he took from the World War II machinists and workers who put stickers saying “This Machine Kills Fascists” on their heavy equipment to express their support for the war effort. Guthrie believed that music could fight the hatred, ignorance, and greed that built fascism just as powerfully as a gun.

Tonight Morello reminded the audience: “Every act of art is an act of resistance.” Curiously, today’s concert took place on the anniversary of the day that Woody Guthrie died in 1967. And eighty-six years after he wrote “This Land is Your Land,” his work continues to echo. “This is still America,” Springsteen told the audience of the administration’s tyranny, “and this will not stand.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

The Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Could Hand the GOP the Midterms

 

Just when it seemed the Supreme Court might be prepared to stop Donald Trump from sabotaging the midterm elections, the six Republican justices who dominate the court handed the president a potentially far-reaching victory on Sept. 25 with another ruling on its emergency “shadow” docket.

The ruling in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters permits the administration and Republican-led states to use a newly expanded federal database to review state voter lists, overturning a lower-court decision that had concluded the database could not be used for the midterms because it violates federal privacy laws and the Administrative Procedure Act. 

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program was created in 1986 to allow federal, state and local government agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits, relying on records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State.

However, in March 2025, Trump promulgated Executive Order 14248 (titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”), that revamped the program to permit state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters so they could purge noncitizens from the rolls — a purpose the SAVE program was never intended to serve.

The executive order also directed the Social Security Administration to make its records available to the DHS for that purpose. Two months later, the DHS, acting on its own, launched a modified SAVE program that allows state and local authorities to conduct unlimited bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. 

In September 2025, the League of Women Voters, together with its affiliates in Texas, Louisiana and Virginia, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the federal government, claiming that the expanded SAVE program violated the Social Security Act, the federal Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

On June 22 of this year, District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who sits in Washington, D.C., blocked the revamped SAVE program from being used for the midterm elections. The Justice Department, led by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, took its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and, after failing to secure relief there, turned to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, where the administration has enjoyed great success.  

The court’s three Democrats argued that the use of the database will result in voter disenfranchisement.

The high court granted Sauer’s request with a seven-page unsigned “per curiam” ruling, holding that the plaintiffs’ claims about the expanded database lacked merit, and that “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.” In their dissent, the court’s three Democrats argued that the use of the database will result in voter disenfranchisement. 

On its face, as some commentators have noted, the court’s ruling appears limited in scope because the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits states from conducting “systematic” purges of registered voters in the 90-day “quiet period” prior to elections.

If the terms of the NRVA are faithfully and literally applied, this means that states can utilize the expanded SAVE program to conduct only “individualized” (one at a time) citizenship checks of prospective voters in the weeks remaining before the midterms. Use of the SAVE program is also voluntary, as states are not compelled but only urged to use the system. 

The problem is that neither the NRVA nor the Supreme Court’s shadow docket ruling defines what is meant by “systematic” purges, and that individual purges can easily be aggregated to have a mass impact. In a post for Democracy Docket, reporter Yunior Rivas explained the problem this way:

Now, a crucial voter protection [under the NRVA] could hinge on whether the Supreme Court [in subsequent cases that will surely come its way before the midterms] wants to narrow the definition of “systematic” as applied to purges. And there’s reason to fear that it does [ … by allowing states to] run thousands of voters through SAVE and then evade the NVRA’s quiet period by treating each resulting citizenship challenge as an “individualized” inquiry. 

Rivas also observed that the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decision does not prevent the Trump administration from preparing master citizenship lists for each state, which GOP-led states could use to purge unlimited numbers of individual voters without even using the SAVE program. 

The legality of the lists is currently pending in litigation.

In fact, those citizenship lists are being compiled pursuant to Executive Order 14399, which directs the DHS, SSA and State Department to create lists of all “confirmed” citizens residing in every state who are entitled to vote. Once again, states are not required by the order to use the lists to purge their voting rolls, but the order stipulates that election officials in states that permit noncitizens to vote will be referred to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution. 

On Sept. 14, the Supreme Court handed Trump a rare shadow-docket defeat, preventing the U.S. Postal Service from interfering with mail-in balloting. But that decision did not address the legality of the citizenship lists. The legality of the lists is currently pending in litigation brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the public-interest groups Protect Democracy and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, but no decision has been rendered. 

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. 

According to the DOJ, 27 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana, have agreed to use the expanded SAVE database, which in practice has proven to be plagued by serious mistakes. In one Texas county alone, searches conducted under the database returned an astounding error rate of 21%. There is no reason to believe the master citizenship lists will be any more reliable. 

Standing alone, neither the expanded SAVE program nor the citizenship lists may be capable of changing the outcome of the midterms. But they do not stand alone. They are part and parcel of a multifaceted plan to sabotage the elections, engineered by a president with dictatorial aspirations and a core of committed quislings determined to keep him and the MAGA movement in power through the midterms and beyond.

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