The Trump administration made a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to hear its request that California not count ballots from 20,000 voters it believes are noncitizens. It was 19-pages long. The Court replied with a sentence:
The application for injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied.
That about sums up the administration's legal attempts to put its thumb on the scale of local and state election administration this year.
An interesting note from the Wall Street Journal's SCOTUS reporter, James Romoser:
In a vacuum, an emergency election-related request from the federal government is the sort of thing that SCOTUS typically would take very seriously. A terse, 9-0 order denying such a request, without even getting the other side's response, is the court's way of sending a message.
Declare contributor Gabriel Sterling piled onto that message in a new piece for the site:
When I was coming up in politics, competence was one of the Republican Party’s superpowers, and a Justice Department attorney walking into a courtroom commanded respect. The department’s reputation for preparation, professionalism, and legal rigor carried real weight. Now, judges are being asked to accept arguments that repeatedly fail judicial scrutiny, while election officials across the country are spending time and taxpayer resources responding to demands the department has struggled to justify in court.
(Chris Deaton)