(See an earlier essay by Jack Hellner titled, “States’ rights and separation of powers are only an issue when a Republican is in office”.)
Here are a couple more things to consider when we watch the media and other Democrats protest and complain loudly about Trump with states’ rights and the separation of powers:
Trump is seeking to reign in mail-in voting because it is clearly ripe for fraud. The media and other Democrats are outraged. They say it is a state issue and claim that mail-in voting is completely safe. In 2005, one of the Democrats’ great heroes, Jimmy Carter, said that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud. Here’s this, from an article at the Wall Street Journal:
‘Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.’ That quote isn’t from President Trump, who criticized mail-in voting this week after Wisconsin Democrats tried and failed to change an election at the last minute into an exclusively mail-in affair. It’s the conclusion of the bipartisan 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III.
In 2024, there was rampant ballot fraud in Connecticut:
But most of the [election integrity] proposals failed to make it over the finish line during the 2025 legislative session, even though seven political operatives, campaign workers and elected officials are currently facing charges for allegedly manipulating Bridgeport’s absentee voting system.
Most of the world requires voter ID and blocks mail-in voting unless you are out of the country:
US an Outlier on Mail-In Voting Among Advanced Democracies
The United States is an outlier in the world when it comes to mail-in voting, as most industrialized democracies either ban it or require photo ID to acquire a ballot.
While not ‘all other’ countries abandoned voting by mail, an overwhelming 84.3% of countries in the world, or a total of 172, don’t allow what’s typically known internationally as in-country postal voting….
Where was the outrage over “states’s rights” when the Biden Justice Department sued Georgia for securing its electoral process?
US Justice Department sues Georgia over election laws
Pretending that mail-in voting is safe and not ripe for cheating would be similar to pretending that it is absolutely safe for students to take their ACT and SAT tests online, instead of admitting that it would be very easy to cheat.
On a side note about voter rolls: Illinois and other states are blocking the federal government from getting information on their voter rolls while they allow private groups like registered political committees to have access. What are they hiding? I thought Democrats want transparency?
In 2025, many states have pushed back against or outright denied broad requests for voter registration data from the Department of Justice, with Oregon and Pennsylvania being the latest to do so:
In the letters sent to DOJ this week, both states denied the department’s latest demands for private voter data — including statewide voter rolls containing voters’ driver’s license and social security numbers — citing privacy concerns.
Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt (R) called DOJ’s effort ‘concerning.‘
‘Your letter dated August 14 specifically asked for detailed personal and confidential information, including driver’s license numbers and social security numbers, for all Pennsylvania voters,’ Schmidt wrote in his reply to DOJ on Thursday. ‘This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process.’
So now Democrats are against federalizing elections? They’ve been fighting for a federal government takeover for years.
Democrats say they now support states’ rights, so why aren’t they supporting Trump when he seeks to close the federal Department of Education and give the authority back to states and cities?
Democrats whine like stuffed pigs when Trump wants to cut spending, but they were completely quiet when Biden threatened to cut off funds from schools if they didn’t allow boys to flash their privates in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms:
Biden Admin. Will Cut NSLP Funding For Schools That Discriminate Against LGBTQ Students
For schools, this means that they will have to adopt a range of controversial policies in things like sports, housing, locker rooms, and bathrooms if they want to continue receiving federal funds.
Where was the outrage about Biden being a dictator and fascist?
Where was the outrage by states’ rights advocates when the Obama administration stopped popular voucher programs in D.C. and sued Louisiana to stop their voucher program? Minorities widely support voucher programs, so why do Democrats oppose them? The answer is obvious. They care more about political contributors than kids or states rights.
The media and other Democrats also didn’t care at all when Biden dictatorially and unconstitutionally used unauthorized taxpayer money to pay off hundreds of billions in student loans to buy votes. They certainly didn’t care when he bragged that he didn’t care that the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t do it because he was doing it anyway.
Summary: The media and other Democrats don’t care about separation of powers or states’ rights when their chosen one is in the White House.
Image from Grok.