The Supreme Court deals Trump a blow hours before the election: the votes of more than 20,000 voters in California will be counted

Hours before the US midterm elections, the US Supreme Court, on an emergency basis, rejected the Donald Trump administration's request to block the counting of the ballots of more than 20,000 registered voters in California. Federal officials claim those people are not US citizens. The court declined to intervene.

For Trump this is another legal defeat, at exactly the moment Republicans are fighting to keep control of Congress. And California isn't just any state: it's the most populous US state, a traditional Democratic stronghold, with 52 seats in the House of Representatives - more than any other.

The administration's logic was simple. "Because California commingled the unlawful and lawful ballots, there is no way to separate out the unlawful ones," they wrote in their application to the court. They asked for California to set the disputed ballots aside and not count them until it was established whether the voters were US citizens. Acting Solicitor General Trent McCotter said they would continue to pursue "every possible legal avenue" to protect the integrity of the election.

The list of 20,000 disputed voters itself was drawn up by the Department of Homeland Security and sent to the authorities of California and Los Angeles County. California hit back that it has strict rules preventing non-citizens from voting and that the federal list is inaccurate and full of errors.

What the court didn't say matters too. It didn't find that everyone on the list is a US citizen - it only refused to urgently interfere in the vote count. And this isn't the first such blow: in September the Supreme Court also rejected the administration's request to restrict postal voting, which traditionally favours Democrats. Under the US Constitution, elections are run by the states, and the federal government only has the option of oversight.

Today Americans elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 senators - 33 in regular and two in special elections - and governors are also being elected in several states. Republicans currently control both chambers, but have a narrow majority in the House. Democrats need a net four more seats to take it. If they succeed, they'll be able to open investigations into the administration and block the laws Trump supports for the remaining two years of his term.

The main campaign issues are the high cost of living, the economy, immigration and the war with Iran. But the episode right before the vote shows something else: when those in power try at the last minute to decide whose votes are counted and whose aren't, the only barrier is the institutions. Would a court here have the nerve to tell the government "no" a few hours before the polling stations open?