President Joe Biden aligned his Department of Agriculture with liberal activist organizations to register voters and staff polling places, a move that may have violated federal law, according to a memo obtained by the Daily Caller.
This practice was later reversed by President Donald Trump, who ordered a review of the Biden administration’s federal get-out-the-vote initiatives.
Biden had signed an executive order in March 2021—rescinded by Trump in March 2025—that required federal agencies to engage in voter registration and mobilization efforts. Under this order, the USDA partnered with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and D?mos, a left-leaning policy advocacy organization, to carry out the administration’s plan, the memo revealed.
The memo also noted that the Biden administration utilized programs such as the USDA’s Rural Housing Service and the National School Lunch Program as part of its get-out-the-vote efforts.
“Under the Biden administration, instead of prioritizing the accurate delivery of food nutrition to Americans in need,” the Biden administration and his USDA partnered with groups like the ACLU and D?mos, a senior White House official told the Caller.
The official noted that the ACLU has “no nexus with American agriculture or serving Americans in need of food support” and that D?mos “has never been a part of serving the agricultural community or those who need food assistance.” The official stated that under the USDA’s initiative, anyone who applied for a federally funded food benefit program was likely encouraged to vote and provided with a voter registration form through the Biden plan.
The memo states that the USDA collaborated with organizations such as Demos and the ACLU to “support voter registration efforts.” The interactions with the organizations focused “on guidance, updates and support for implementation efforts,” but they never entered any formal contracts with the groups, according to the memo.
A senior White House official told the Daily Caller that many of the USDA’s engagements with these organizations took place during meetings that were poorly documented.
“I think it is an interesting signal that the Biden administration knew they were pushing the bounds of what is statutorily allowed by law if they’re holding meetings … but they’re not actually producing documents that would either be subject to FOIA or Presidential Records Act releases,” the official told the Caller.
Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans Von Spakovsky previously described Biden’s executive order as an “unlawful, potentially partisan interference in the election process.”
