FIRST ON FOX: Dozens of lawmakers in the House and Senate are calling for more information from the Justice Department about efforts to stop noncitizen voting in federal elections, which they call a “serious threat” to election integrity, citing officials in multiple states who have identified noncitizens on their voter rolls.

A letter from 73 lawmakers, led by Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland said they were “deeply concerned” by reports of noncitizens registering to vote and voting in federal elections and had not received a response from an inquiry in July on the matter.

“As of today, there has been no response from you or your Department regarding the inquiry on July 12, 2024, seeking information on efforts undertaken by your Department to enforce laws prohibiting non-citizen voting. Given that the 2024 Presidential Election is in less than 34 days, your Department’s inaction and refusal to provide any information regarding its efforts to promote public trust and confidence in our elections is especially alarming,” they wrote.

Specifically, they asked how many aliens have been prosecuted under laws related to noncitizen voting, how the DOJ handles allegations of noncitizen voting or registration and the steps it takes to prevent such practices.

Noncitizens are not allowed to vote, and top Republicans, including former President Trump, have repeatedly expressed concern that noncitizens may attempt to vote in federal elections, particularly given the influx of immigrants across the southern border in recent years.

DOJ: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT STOLE US CITIZEN’S IDENTITY TO VOTE IN MULTIPLE ELECTIONS, OBTAIN AMERICAN PASSPORT

In August, Republican lawmakers pushed for the SAVE Act, which aimed to require states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote and require states to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, to be attached to a spending bill extension to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year.

The lawmakers in the letter cited an announcement by the Virginia attorney general that it had identified 6,303 noncitizens on its voter rolls in 2022 and 2023, while Texas had removed 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. Of those, 1,930 had a history of voting.

The DOJ itself announced last month that it had charged an illegal immigrant with stealing a U.S. citizen’s identity to vote in multiple elections and fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport. 

“Clearly, there is a non-negligible amount of voter participation by non-citizens in federal elections, which is not only a serious threat to the integrity of our elections and the democratic process they represent, but also has the potential to reduce Americans’ trust and confidence in election results,” they wrote.

ALABAMA ELECTION OFFICIAL SAYS BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDER GIVES ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ‘MECHANISM’ TO REGISTER TO VOTE 

Lawmakers quizzed the DOJ on information related to the issue in a July 12 request but had not received a response.

It also asks what steps the department is taking to prosecute noncitizens registered to vote in the 2024 election. Fox News Digital reached out to the DOJ for comment.

This week, the DOJ sued Alabama, alleging the state removed voters who had been issued noncitizen identification numbers from its election rolls too close to Election Day. The agency argued that officials violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to complete any changes to the voter registration lists no later than 90 days before federal elections.

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.

Trump, a real estate developer, has fewer specifics than his opponent in addressing housing affordability. Most significantly, he has tied his plan for mass deportations to housing.

The Republican nominee said his administration would remove 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally by having the National Guard, local police forces in cooperative states and the military go door-to-door in a process that he said recently would be a “bloody story.” The effort would cause widespread disruption to families, including those having a mix of U.S. citizens and those living in the country illegally, and to the economy.

Trump’s campaign has said the reduction in the population would lessen demand for housing and therefore lower costs. Some research has shown that immigration in general — not limited to those living in the country illegally — can increase housing prices and rents in U.S. cities that have been destinations for migrants.

But the picture is more complicated. Migrants living in the country illegally have been more likely to live in overcrowded conditions, meaning their departure would leave fewer units available. Undocumented laborers make up a significant portion of the construction workforce. A recent paper from researchers at the University of Utah and University of Wisconsin found that greater immigration enforcement led to less homebuilding, higher home prices and fewer jobs for domestic construction workers.

Aside from immigration, Trump has called for cutting regulations that make it more difficult to build housing. At the same time, he wants to preserve local zoning regulations that prohibit the construction of affordable housing in areas set aside for single-family homes. On the latter point, Trump has said he would reverse Biden administration efforts to integrate wealthy communities with lower-cost housing, policies that the former president called “Joe Biden’s sinister plan to abolish the suburbs.” As a landlord in the 1970s, Trump settled a Justice Department lawsuit in New York that accused his family’s company of discriminating against Black tenants.

Trump has pointed to lowering interest rates to help with affordability. To combat inflation in recent years, the Federal Reserve raised rates, which led to a dramatic increase in mortgage costs and a chill on homebuying. Trump’s pledge to bring them down conflicts with the historical independence of the Federal Reserve in rate setting, which is supposed to guard against prioritizing political over economic concerns.

Harris and Trump share one idea for housing affordability, though they’re both light on details: making more federally owned land available for housing development.

Trump’s campaign said that housing affordability worsened during Biden and Harris’ time in office and that the former president would improve the situation.

“He will rein in federal spending, stop the unsustainable invasion of illegal aliens which is driving up housing costs, cut taxes for American families, eliminate costly regulations and free up appropriate portions of federal land for housing,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, in a statement.

In the next few months, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan will face what she herself recently called “a uniquely challenging” task. She will go line by line through the evidence the special counsel, Jack Smith, wants to present to a jury in support of his federal indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump on four criminal charges related to his plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

Her job is to determine which of myriad specific allegations about Mr. Trump’s actions can survive the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting presidents a broad form of immunity from criminal prosecution for most of their official actions. Here is a look at the types of decisions Judge Chutkan will have to make, many times over.

If Mr. Trump undertook a specific action in his private capacity as a candidate for office, rather than in his role as the president, that act is deemed unofficial, according to the Supreme Court ruling. Such acts are not subject to immunity, so evidence about them can be cited in court to support the charges that Mr. Trump illegally tried to overturn the election, or even introduced as context to help a jury understand the case.

By contrast, if the action fell within what the Supreme Court referred to as the outer perimeter of presidential duties, it counts as official. In that case, it is entitled to, at a minimum, presumptive immunity, and the court must perform some additional analysis to decide whether it is off limits for any trial.

On matters like Mr. Trump’s attempts to strong-arm state officials into changing election results and his public lies that the election was stolen, prosecutors and defense attorneys are likely to disagree sharply about whether Mr. Trump was acting as a candidate who was seeking a new term in office, or as a president who was constitutionally charged with overseeing the enforcement of federal election laws.

Under the Supreme Court’s new doctrine, “official” actions by Mr. Trump would fall into one of two categories. Some official acts are core to the president’s exercise of executive power, in which case they are absolutely immune and no information about them can be used in his prosecution. Other official acts are more peripheral, in which case prosecutors might still be able to use information about them in court, depending on the circumstances.

The Supreme Court has already declared that Mr. Trump’s interactions with Justice Department officials count as core executive actions because the Constitution charges the president with overseeing federal law enforcement. Mr. Smith has removed discussion of his purported actions that fall into that category from the indictment.

A president’s peripheral official acts, the Supreme Court has said, are presumptively immune, too. But depending on the circumstances, exceptions can be made that would allow the information to still be part of a prosecution of that president.

The test is whether prosecuting a former president for such an action would pose a danger of intruding on the authority and functions of the executive branch, and therefore chilling future presidents from robustly carrying out their responsibilities. If not, then the act is not immune and evidence about it can be used in court.

The Supreme Court has said that Mr. Trump’s pressuring of then-Vice President Mike Pence, in his capacity as Senate president, to block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory was an official act but that it might fall into the exception, since the Constitution assigns no role to the president or executive branch in such proceedings.

Judge Chutkan won’t make any decisions on immunity until at least the end of October, when the defense and prosecution have finished submitting their own written assessments of the case. At that point, she could ask the two sides to flesh out their arguments further at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington. Any determinations she makes on the question of immunity will almost certainly be appealed, likely eventually to the Supreme Court, which will have the final say of which parts of Mr. Trump’s indictment will have to be thrown out and which can survive and go to trial.