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Michelle Obama joins the polarizing cause of universal vote-at-home

Michelle Obama
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
David Hawkings
By David HawkingsApr 13, 2020
David Hawkings
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Michelle Obama has joined the increasingly politicized debate over making voting easier during the coronavirus outbreak.

On Monday she endorsed the sort of national mandates for voting at home, online registration and expanded in-person early voting that fellow Democrats have returned to pushing in Congress despite the emphatic opposition of President Trump and congressional Republicans.

The rare foray by the former first lady into a policy dispute threatens to overshadow and complicate the more immediate efforts by civil rights groups and democracy reform advocates: enlisting officials in red as well as blue states to ease the rules on their own, and to help press Congress to deliver hundreds of millions in federal aid to respond to the surge of absentee voting and other stresses on the electoral system because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

With citizens told to stay at home and nonessential businesses shuttered across the country, in-person campaigning has stopped and primaries in almost a third of the states have been postponed or revamped to minimize people at the polls. The singular dramatic example was Wisconsin, where thousands were compelled to put on masks and wait in long lines to vote last week because a partisan impasse meant the election went ahead on schedule.

"Americans should never have to choose between making their voices heard and keeping themselves and their families safe," Obama said in a statement released by When We All Vote, a nonpartisan group promoting voter registration that she co-chairs.

The organization has never before taken sides in a legislative debate, but it endorsed a Democratic measure that would set national standards for this year's election. That bill would require states to offer absentee voting to all voters, who could return their ballots by mail or in drop boxes; permit them to request ballots electronically until five days before the election; assure they could register online; and expand in-person early voting for the disabled, homeless, non-English speakers or others for whom mail ballots don't work.

Democrats abandoned efforts to include such language in the $2 trillion economic recovery package enacted last month, settling instead for $400 million in open-ended grants to the states for making voting easier. They are pressing for at least $1.6 billion in additional aid in the next coronavirus response bill and, at least in the House, are reviving the mandate legislation as well.

Republicans have sounded skeptical about such additional funds and have been totally opposed to requiring vote-at-home in November, which they say would be practically impossible to implement so quickly and would incubate extensive fraud — a contention Trump has returned to, without producing credible evidence, several times in the past week.

"Expanding access to vote-by-mail, online voter registration and early voting are critical steps for this moment — and they're long overdue," Obama said. "There is nothing partisan about striving to live up to the promise of our country; making the democracy we all cherish more accessible; and protecting our neighbors, friends and loved ones as they participate in this cornerstone of American life."

The statement was issued as Gov. Ralph Northam signed a series of measures turning Virginia into something of a model for what advocates for easier voting aspire to nationwide. The new laws allow early voting for 45 days before an election without an excuse, make Election Day a state holiday, expand in-person voting hours and implement a system for automatically registering eligible people when they do business with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Northam and leaders in the General Assembly are all Democrats, and the party took control of Richmond this year for the first time since 1993.

While her husband was in the White House and since, Obama has voiced political views extremely rarely and has said repeatedly she has no interest in becoming a policymaker herself — especially in such polarized times. In encouraging turnout in the 2018 midterm, for example, she pronounced herself "sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics" but asserted the importance of voting was undiminished.

Obama founded When We All Vote that year with a cadre of A-list celebrities as her co-chairs: actor Tom Hanks, "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapper and actor Janelle Monáe, NBA player Chris Paul and country stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

With in-person registration efforts impossible, the group has recently gone online — signing up 61,000 last month during a "couch party" livestreamed on Instagram and featuring Obama and the DJ D-Nice. Another such event is planned for next week.

Obama also took to Twitter a week ago to denounce the situation in Wisconsin, and longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who now heads the When We All Vote board, called the lines to vote "deeply, profoundly concerning."

The results of the contests are supposed to be released late Monday afternoon, after a delay ordered by a federal judge to allow time for the arrival and counting of the record surge of absentee ballots. With the Democratic presidential contest having ended in the intervening days, the main interest is the outcome of a hotly contested partisan battle for a state Supreme Court seat.

How many ballots were postmarked by Tuesday and arrived on time is not yet known, but 1.3 million were requested — about 10 times the average for the springtime elections in the state over the past decade. The state says on average 92 percent of the requested ballots get returned and about 1 percent of those are ruled invalid.


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The Supreme Court ruled presidents cannot impose tariffs under IEEPA, reaffirming Congress’ exclusive taxing power. Here’s what remains legal under Sections 122, 232, 301, and 201.

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Just the Facts: What Presidents Can’t Do on Tariffs Now

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.


What Is No Longer Legal After the Supreme Court Ruling

  • Presidents may not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court held that IEEPA’s authority to “regulate … importation” does not include the power to levy tariffs. Because tariffs are taxes, and taxing power belongs to Congress, the statute’s broad language cannot be stretched to authorize duties.
  • Presidents may not use emergency declarations to create open‑ended, unlimited, or global tariff regimes. The administration’s claim that IEEPA permitted tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope was rejected outright. The Court reaffirmed that presidents have no inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs without specific congressional delegation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • The president may not use vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language—such as IEEPA’s general power to “regulate”—cannot be stretched to authorize taxation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • Presidents may not rely on vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language, such as IEEPA’s general power to "regulate," cannot be stretched to authorize taxation or repurposed to justify tariffs. The decision in United States v. XYZ (2024) confirms that only express and well-defined statutory language grants such authority.

What Remains Legal Under the Constitution and Acts of Congress

  • Congress retains exclusive constitutional authority over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution vests taxing power in Congress. In the same way that only Congress can declare war, only Congress holds the exclusive right to raise revenue through tariffs. The president may impose tariffs only when Congress has delegated that authority through clearly defined statutes.
  • Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Balance‑of‑Payments Tariffs). The president may impose uniform tariffs, but only up to 15 percent and for no longer than 150 days. Congress must take action to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. These caps are strictly defined. The purpose of this authority is to address “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments deficits. No investigation is mandatory. This is the authority invoked immediately after the ruling.
  • Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (National Security Tariffs). Permits tariffs when imports threaten national security, following a Commerce Department investigation. Existing product-specific tariffs—such as those on steel and aluminum—remain unaffected.
  • Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Unfair Trade Practices). Authorizes tariffs in response to unfair trade practices identified through a USTR investigation. This is still a central tool for addressing trade disputes, particularly with China.
  • Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Safeguard Tariffs). The U.S. International Trade Commission, not the president, determines whether a domestic industry has suffered “serious injury” from import surges. Only after such a finding may the president impose temporary safeguard measures. The Supreme Court ruling did not alter this structure.
  • Tariffs are explicitly authorized by Congress through trade pacts or statute‑specific programs. Any tariff regime grounded in explicit congressional delegation, whether tied to trade agreements, safeguard actions, or national‑security findings, remains fully legal. The ruling affects only IEEPA‑based tariffs.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s ruling draws a clear constitutional line: Presidents cannot use emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, cannot create global tariff systems without Congress, and cannot rely on vague statutory language to justify taxation but they may impose tariffs only under explicit, congressionally delegated statutes—Sections 122, 232, 301, 201, and other targeted authorities, each with defined limits, procedures, and scope.

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The False Comfort of a Good Headline

A mirage can look real from a distance. The closer you get, the less substance you find. That is increasingly how Washington talks about the federal deficit.

Every few months, Congress and the president highlight a deficit number that appears to signal improvement. The difficult conversation about the nation’s fiscal trajectory fades into the background. But a shrinking deficit is not necessarily a sign of fiscal health. It measures one year’s gap between revenue and spending. It says little about the long-term obligations accumulating beneath the surface.

The Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the annual deficit narrowed. In the same report, however, it noted that federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly 100 percent of GDP. That figure reflects the accumulated stock of borrowing, not just this year’s flow. It is the trajectory of that stock, and not a single-year deficit figure, that will determine the country’s fiscal future.

What the Deficit Doesn’t Show

The deficit is politically attractive because it is simple and headline-friendly. It appears manageable on paper. Both parties have invoked it selectively for decades, celebrating short-term improvements while downplaying long-term drift. But the deeper fiscal story lies elsewhere.

Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt now account for roughly half of federal outlays, and their share rises automatically each year. These commitments do not pause for election cycles. They grow with demographics, health costs, and compounding interest.

According to the CBO, those three categories will consume 58 cents of every federal dollar by 2035. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, triggering an automatic benefit reduction of roughly 21 percent unless Congress intervenes. Federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 118 percent of GDP by that same year. A favorable monthly deficit report does not alter any of these structural realities. These projections come from the same nonpartisan budget office lawmakers routinely cite when it supports their position.

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Americans are watching a government that seems to have lost its balance. Decisions shift by the hour, explanations contradict one another, and the nation is left reacting to confusion rather than being guided by clarity. Leadership requires focus, discipline, and the courage to make deliberate, informed decisions — even when they are not politically convenient. Yet what we are witnessing instead is haphazard decision‑making, secrecy, and instability.

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