A Biden-appointed federal judge just shut down the Justice Department's attempt to force California to set aside ballots cast by ineligible noncitizens—and she allegedly did it after a secret meeting with Democrat operatives that excluded DOJ. The ruling means potentially thousands of illegal votes will be counted in Tuesday's federal election, and the federal government is barred from doing anything about it until after the damage is done.

This is the real election interference: not foreign trolls or foreign spending, but a domestic judiciary that blocks enforcement of federal election law when it matters most.

District Court Judge Trina Thompson, appointed by Biden, issued a temporary restraining order on Friday that blocks federal law enforcement through Nov. 16—conveniently after Election Day. According to legal expert Mike Davis of the Article 3 Project, Thompson issued the TRO after allegedly meeting in secret with the Democrat operatives bringing the case, without prior notification to the Justice Department.

The case stems from the work of Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who cross-referenced DOJ-furnished voter lists with Department of Homeland Security records of noncitizens. The analysis found approximately 12,000 likely overlaps between ineligible individuals and California's voter rolls out of more than 20,000 names flagged. Thompson's order demanded that federal officials halt threats to hold California election officials criminally accountable for allowing those ballots through.

And California officials aren't denying it. In a Ninth Circuit hearing captured on video and posted by Essayli on Oct. 26, a judge asked the state's legal representation: "You agree that if a non-citizen votes and we don't stop it now, that vote will be counted, correct?" The plaintiffs responded: "That's absolutely correct."

President Trump called it what it looks like. "Why would they reject fixing Election Fraud?" he wrote on Truth Social on Saturday, comparing the ruling to the Supreme Court's refusal to hear his 2020 challenges on standing rather than merit. "Think of it, the President, on a Federal Election, has NO STANDING over himself, and so it goes."

The Post Millennial framed the story squarely around the judicial activism and the secret meeting allegation. WTOP, for its part, was covering a different election integrity story entirely—Netanyahu's Likud party claiming Arab parties "stole" Israel's parliamentary election, only to have a judge release most suspects for lack of evidence. The contrast is telling: when an ally's political establishment cries fraud without proof, it's news; when a Biden judge in California blocks federal law enforcement after a secret ex parte meeting, the American establishment press looks the other way.

California's voter rolls have been a known mess for years. The question now is whether 12,000 confirmed overlaps with DHS noncitizen records is the tip of the iceberg—and whether any court will let the federal government enforce its own election laws before the votes are counted and the election is certified.

Thompson's TRO expires Nov. 16. By then, the ballots will already be in the tally.