Richard Hasen

You have to draw 10 equally-sized districts.

So Congress has that power, but it's a power to pass laws that regulate how federal elections are conducted.

What is in the Constitution is about states and Congress.

There is nothing about the president.

And in fact, there have been a number of lawsuits over Trump's earlier executive order from back in last August when he tried to mess with that federal form for how people can register to vote in congressional elections.

There have been a number of lawsuits where the courts have said the president has no role to play in the conduct of Congress.

federal elections.

And so just out of the gate, the idea that the president could unilaterally do this through an executive order, some kind of royal edict that changes how our elections are run, that's a non-starter as far as the Constitution goes.

Well, so we have a little bit of experience with the earlier Trump executive order, which is the one that was issued in August that, among other things, would make it harder for people to register to vote using this federal form for voter registration.

It would require people to produce that documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

And what we know is that...

Multiple courts have issued preliminary injunctions.

So these are orders before the case has been fully adjudicated that say, in the meantime, while this case is pending, your rules, your executive order is put on hold.

So an executive order is not a law.

It's basically the president directing parts of the federal government to do certain things.

And those certain things that Trump tried to direct different federal officials to do and also to direct states to do, which he has no power to do through an executive order, these were put on hold pending a full trial.

And we've now had, on various aspects of this executive order, full trials.

And we got one of our first opinions back in early February from a federal district court in Washington, D.C., that permanently stopped these things.

Sure.

I mean, there's a whole constellation of people.