From Pennsylvania to Texas, conservatives are fighting back against the Biden administration’s biggest rig of the 2024 election, with a host of lawsuits challenging the executive branch abuse that is “Bidenbucks” — aka “KamalaCash.”
As The Federalist reported last week, attorneys general from nine states — Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota — filed a federal lawsuit asking a U.S. district court in Wichita, Kansas, to shut down President Joe Biden’s executive order that mobilizes federal agencies to register and mobilize left-leaning voters.
The multi-state lawsuit is just the latest challenge to the constitutionally suspect Executive Order 14019, Biden’s edict that taps into your tax dollars to pay for the massive get-out-the-vote effort to elect Democrats in November and beyond. While the complaints make compelling cases, the damage from Bidenbucks-KamalaCash may already be done.
‘Pushing Back’
The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky believes the best lawsuit of the lot is America First Policy Institute et al v. Biden, filed in Texas federal court on behalf of U.S. Reps. Ronny Jackson and Beth Van Duyne, both Lone Star State Republicans, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
“It goes through great detail in describing the various things the administration has done and why it’s unlawful,” von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told me in a phone interview. The former member of the Federal Election Commission has extensively studied the constitutionally suspect executive order and the lawsuits challenging it.
At the core of the legal argument is the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires federal agencies to publish and provide notice of any new rule, with opportunity for the public to comment. The agency also must offer a justification for the rule, von Spakovsky said. The Biden administration has done none of that in pushing a sweeping change that federalizes voter registration.
As the America First Policy Institute lawsuit notes, proponents of the Biden administration edict have estimated that federal agencies will register an additional 3.5 million voters. The effort will have a “substantial impact on the outcome of those elections, thereby indirectly affecting the rights of many millions of other voters.”
Of equally urgent concern is the registration of an untold number of illegal immigrants and other noncitizens who have poured through Biden’s open border over the last three and a half years.
“We are pushing back on Biden’s unlawful attempt to weaponize federal agencies into a leftwing election operation that opens the doors to noncitizen voting and all manner of lawbreaking,” Ken Blackwell, chairman of AFPI’s Center for Election Integrity, said in a July 12 press release. “Congress has not authorized or funded any of this, so we seek a court order to stop it by simply enforcing federal law. The America First Policy Institute continues to lead the way in making it easy to vote but hard to cheat.”
‘Forbidden Partisan Political Activity’
Many of the lawsuits argue that very separation of powers point: that Biden’s executive order has circumvented congressional appropriation authority to fund a mass, politically targeted GOTV scheme with taxpayer money not designated for that purpose.
A lawsuit filed by Missouri and Arkansas — Ashcroft et al v. Biden — claims the administration has imposed “burdens and costs upon state and local government to respond to this federally mandated election scheme in violation of constitutional principles of federalism.” The executive order also forces “executive branch employees to violate the Hatch Act … and engage in forbidden partisan political activity.” The 85-year-old law, also known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, bars federal civil service members from participating in political activity on the job.
As The Federalist has reported, emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project show the Bureau of Indian Education was planning to use children in government-run native schools to help carry out the voter-registration campaign. And records also expose Biden’s secretary of the interior, Deb Haaland, arguably stepping over the Hatch Act line that bars executive branch officials from engaging in overtly political activities on the job.
‘Even More Egregious’
Biden’s voter registration fiat, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, is being driven by White House-approved leftist groups with deep ties to Democrat Party operatives and actors. Their involvement gives what proponents insist is a noble democratic initiative the stink of partisan politics with a mission to turn out Democrat votes.
Von Spakovsky said many of the lawsuits speak to the Antideficiency Act, which “prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation, and from accepting voluntary services,” according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The election law expert said third-party organizations tapped to implement the executive order at federal facilities present another problem. Under the Antideficiency Act, federal agencies cannot accept “voluntary services” — with the exception of “emergenc[ies] involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.” Voter registration drives clearly don’t meet such emergency standards, von Spakovsky said.
A lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee, the campaign of former president and GOP candidate Donald Trump, and a township election official in Michigan claims leftist-led Michigan’s collaboration with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs as voter registration arms violates federal and state law, which grants such authority to the legislature, not the governor.
Swing state Michigan’s far-left Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson signed a long-term agreement with the federal agencies to serve as voter registration hubs, specifically targeting left-leaning voters. In July, U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, blasted the Michigan Department of State for its “electioneering” partnership with the SBA.
“Perhaps even more egregious, the investigation conducted by the Committee found that 39 out of the 52 small business outreach events currently scheduled in Michigan from January through November 2024 coincidently take place in counties with the highest populations of demographics targeted by the Democratic National Committee (DNC),” Williams wrote in a letter to Benson.
“Additionally, 100 percent of the visits to Michigan from the SBA Administrator and Deputy Administrator have taken place in counties with the highest populations of DNC target demographics. While the SBA claims no actual voter registration efforts have occurred, it is curious that the SBA Administrator, appointed to help all small businesses thrive, has concentrated her efforts in areas key to the Biden campaign securing re-election,” Williams added.
‘We’re Paying for It’
As The Federalist has reported, a group of Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers have taken their “Bidenbucks-KamalaCash” complaint to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing, as other litigation claims, that Biden’s edict usurps congressional and state legislative authority on elections. The lawsuit, led by Pennsylvania State Rep. Dawn Keefer, alleges the executive order violates the state’s constitutional right to establish the time, place, and manner of elections. It further argues that the federalization of voter registration “usurps the state legislature’s powers and violates the state legislators’ federal civil rights under the Electors Clause and the Elections Clause.” The U.S. Supreme Court ended its last term without taking up the challenge, saying it would not consider the appeal until it returns in late September.
Erick Kaardal, an attorney in the Pennsylvania suit, says the legal team is completing the appellate briefing process in a lower court. They’re hopeful the high court will rule on the question of standing in the case by late September, prompting the district court to issue an injunction against Bidenbucks. Other lawsuits also are seeking a court order shutting down the executive order.
“I can’t think of a more important lawsuit than this one,” Kaardal told me last week.
But early voting begins in less than a month, and it appears the Biden administration GOTV machine has been humming since the president signed the executive order in March 2021. Why did it take so long for state officials and the Republican Party to act on the Democrats’ election interference scheme? The short answer, election integrity advocates tell me, is that many had to be sold on the power and scope of an executive order that makes “Zuckbucks” look like chump change. They’re playing catch-up.
“We’re paying for it,” Kaardal said. “We have government officials cooperating with [leftist NGOs] to do this. To me that’s unforgivable, working with nonprofits to influence elections.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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