Trump pardons women's voting-rights icon Susan B. Anthony posthumously amid his unprecedented effort to suppress the vote

• President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he's pardoning the women's-suffrage icon Susan B. Anthony.
• The announcement came on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing American women the right to vote.
• It also came with Trump engaging in a blatant effort to suppress the vote with his baseless attacks on mail-in voting.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced he's pardoning the women's-suffrage icon Susan B. Anthony.

Trump's announcement came on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the US Constitution's 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment is known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Anthony in 1873 was found guilty by an all-male jury in a Canandaigua, New York, courtroom of illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election.

"Later today, I will be signing a full and complete pardon for Susan B. Anthony," Trump said. "She was never pardoned. What took so long?"

—Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 18, 2020

The president's posthumous pardon for Anthony, however, comes at a time when the president is engaging in an unprecedented effort to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election and suppress the vote.

For months, Trump has pushed against expanding mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, repeatedly making the unfounded claim that it would lead to widespread voter fraud. Trump's misleading rhetoric on mail-in voting appears to be part of a broader effort to delegitimize the election as the president trails former Vice President Joe Biden in polls by a large margin. Trump told supporters on Monday that "the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."

Voter fraud is vanishingly rare in the US, and a wide body of research has shown that mail-in voting is safe and secure.

Trump last week said he did not want the cash-strapped US Postal Service to receive more funding via a coronavirus relief bill because he didn't want it to go toward mail-in voting.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was tapped to oversee the Postal Service back in May, has ushered in a slew of changes that have slowed the delivery of mail and raised major concerns among congressional Democrats ahead of Election Day.

DeJoy is now set to testify before both the Senate (on Friday) and House (next week) on recent changes at the USPS under his leadership.