Feds demand revival of national citizenship database ahead of midterms

Filed 19h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Manic Polka

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jules Dalou · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The Trump administration filed an emergency Supreme Court appeal seeking to revive a national citizenship verification database after a lower court blocked Homeland Security from collecting Social Security numbers and citizenship data in a searchable repository, ruling it violated federal privacy law. The modified SAVE system, ordered under a Trump executive order, now includes natural-born citizens' records, Social Security data, and bulk search capability.

DHS says the system has verified more than 65 million voters as citizens since May 2025 while flagging 28,635 potential noncitizens on state voter rolls, and argues the lower court's block leaves it with an older, less reliable tool ahead of November. Voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters, sued over the changes, comparing the database to the surveillance apparatus in Orwell's ‘1984.’

Democracy Forward, representing the challengers, says millions of Americans' sensitive data and election integrity are at stake. The administration counters that voters wouldn't be disqualified by the database itself, only flagged, and that anyone disqualified would need to sue their state separately.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Building a bulk-searchable database of Social Security numbers, medical records, and biometrics and calling it an election integrity tool is a bit like installing floodlights over the whole town to catch one guy jaywalking. The administration's own numbers say the system flagged under 29,000 people out of 65 million checked, which is not exactly a crime wave. Asking the Supreme Court to rush this back online with the clock ticking toward November tells you which deadline actually mattered here.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Manic Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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