National

A Minnesota state legislator killed in her home in June. The Pennsylvania governor’s house set afire in April. Candidate Donald Trump facing two apparent assassination attempts during last year’s campaign. And now conservative activist Charlie Kirk gunned down and killed Wednesday during a talk at Utah Valley University, horrifying a live audience and those who saw the shooting online. America is facing a new era of political violence reminiscent of some of its most bitter, tumultuous eras, including the 1960s, which saw the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “We are going through what I call an era of violent populism,” said Robert Pape, who heads the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. “It is a historically high era of assassination, assassination attempts, violent protests, and it is occurring on both the right and the left.” Read Article

National: Cleta Mitchell Thinks Trump Will Use Emergency Powers to Take Control of Elections | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

Cleta Mitchell thinks President Donald Trump may declare a national emergency to allow him to take control of national elections. Her comments will add to growing concern that Trump is plotting a way to use his power over the military and federal law enforcement to rig next year’s vote. “The president’s authority is limited in his role with regard to elections except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States — as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have,” said Mitchell, a prominent anti-voting lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, in an appearance on a podcast hosted by the Christian conservative leader Tony Perkins. “Then, I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” Mitchell added. Read Article

National: Trump calls for national voter ID requirement as he asserts election power | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Donald Trump is promising another executive order on elections — this time to make voter ID a national requirement. Voter ID requirements have always been popular with Republicans, but now Trump is hinting at imposing one using federal power, in ways even conservatives used to reject. Elections — I know, I know, I am repeating myself — are managed by the states, with oversight from Congress. There’s a whole clause about it in the Constitution that you can read yourself. Sure, he lacks constitutional authority over elections, but the point may not be policy alone — it’s also politics, and possibly a dangerous power grab. Democratic leaders typically oppose voter ID requirements as an unnecessary barrier to voting, but the politics around voter ID have always been really good for Republicans. “If you persuade people that you are the party trying to make sure elections are controlled by American citizens and that Democrats are doing everything they can to make sure that illegal immigrants can vote by the busload, that’s a good position to be in,” former Texas state Rep. Todd Smith, a Republican, told me back in 2016, after he was booted from office for not writing a strict enough voter ID bill. Read Article

National: Trump’s SAVE system checks citizenship of millions of voters | Jude Joffe-Block and Miles ParksNPR

Tens of millions of voters have had their citizenship status and other information checked using a revamped tool offered by the Trump administration, even as many states — led by both Democrats and Republicans — are refusing or hesitating to use it because of outstanding questions about the system. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says election officials have used the tool to check the information of more than 33 million voters — a striking portion of the American public, considering little information has been made public about the tool’s accuracy or data security. The latest update to the system, known as SAVE, took effect Aug. 15 and allows election officials to use just the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers — along with names and dates of birth — to check if the voters are U.S. citizens, or if they have died. Read Article

National: Deepfakes are rewriting the rules of geopolitics | Sinisa Markovic/Help Net Security

Deception and media manipulation have always been part of warfare, but AI has taken them to a new level. Entrust reports that deepfakes were created every five minutes in 2024, while the European Parliament estimates that 8 million will circulate across the EU this year. Technologies are capable of destabilizing a country without a single shot being fired. Humans respond faster to bad news and are more likely to spread it. On top of that, they are very bad at detecting fake information. The anti-immigrant riots in the UK show just how fast false claims on social media can spin out of control and turn into real-world violence. Fake videos of leaders making false statements, doctored audio instructions, and manipulated images can shake governments or shape public opinion. Businesses aren’t safe either. False announcements or fake board statements can affect stock prices and investor confidence. Read Article

National: The GOP Is Attacking the VRA From All Angles — and Could Soon Make it All But Useless | Jim Saksa/Democracy Docket

It took nearly a century for Congress to enact legislation to enforce the 15th Amendment. It may take conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court only a little more than a decade to fully eviscerate that law — the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). After a 2013 ruling neutered the strongest plank of the VRA, it now faces an unprecedented and multi-pronged legal attack that could leave the landmark civil rights law all but useless for stopping racial discrimination in voting. A raft of lawsuits aimed at narrowing the VRA, or gutting its most powerful remaining section completely, are either now before the court or waiting in the wings. Read Article

Election Officials Must Guard Their Systems — Including from Federal Overreach | Pamela Smith/Democracy Docket

September 5, 2025

State and local officials are the stewards of our democracy. Elections are run by these trusted professionals in our communities, not by the federal government. They register voters, count ballots and certify the results. And when it comes to safeguarding equipment, they simply cannot allow unauthorized access — even if that request comes directly from the White House.Right now, these barriers are being tested. In Colorado, the U.S. Department of Justice recently made a sweeping and unprecedented demand for access to state voter information. A political consultant, claiming to be working on behalf of the White House, also called several county clerks to gain access to their voting equipment. Read Article

Trump canceling elections? Democrats increasingly sound alarm bells. | Aaron Blake/CNN

September 5, 2025

When President Donald Trump sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month, the topic was the weighty issue of ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But at one point, Trump took a provocative diversion into domestic politics. Zelensky noted that, in his country, the law doesn’t allow for elections during periods of martial law. “So you say during the war, you can’t have elections,” Trump responded. “So let me just say, three and a half years from now – so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.” Laughter ensued. Trump wondered aloud what the “fake news” would do with his comment. Read Article

National: No, Trump Can’t Legally Federalize US Elections | Lily Hay Newman/WIRED

“It’s right there in the Constitution from the very beginning, Article One, that the states set the time, place, and manner of elections. The states run the elections; Congress can add rules, but the president has no role,” says Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law. “Trump makes all these pronouncements that he’s going to end mail voting, that voting machines can’t be trusted, but he can’t do that. He certainly has the bully pulpit, though, to mislead and confuse the public—and the power to intimidate.” Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes election system integrity, emphasizes that it is very difficult to unpack and disentangle the concerns the administration is raising from the inherently inappropriate use of the presidency as a vehicle for attempting to dictate election requirements. “It’s really hard to talk about all of this when the context is just wrong,” Smith says. “It’s not up to the White House to say to the Election Assistance Commission, ‘You should change how you do voting machine certification and decertification.’” Read Article

National: DHS to states: Follow our voting rules or lose out on election security money | Miles Parks and Stephen Fowler/NPR

The Trump administration has indicated it may withhold tens of millions of dollars in election security funding if states don’t comply with its voting policy goals. The money comes from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program, and voting officials say new requirements from the administration will make the money inaccessible for most of the country. About $28 million — or 3% of the overall Homeland Security Grant Program — is devoted to election security and now at risk, though some officials and experts worry that the new requirements could also endanger hundreds of millions of dollars in other grants for law enforcement. Voting officials say the amount of money at risk won’t make or break the country’s election security. But the potential withholding of funds over policy differences — combined with other recent election security cuts — has many wondering whether the Trump administration is prioritizing election security the way it claims it is. Read Article

National: Trump faces a hurdle in banning mail-in voting: His own party | Matt Dixon and Henry J. Gomez/NBC

“My view on vote-by-mail is that I think it should be permissible,” Michigan state House Majority Leader Bryan Posthumus, a Republican who endorsed Trump last year, said in an interview with NBC News. “But I also believe that currently, the way it exists, specifically in Michigan, it is the highest risk for fraud.” Posthumus’ perspective was echoed by nearly a dozen other GOP officials across the country who sympathized with Trump’s grievances and agreed that changes to mail-in balloting are necessary. But they question whether Trump could — or should — legally enact a ban. Some also worry a ban could create issues for members of the military who vote overseas and for Republican candidates in states where voting by mail is popular. “As Trump often does, sometimes he overstates his case,” said Paul Dame, chair of the Vermont Republican Party. “I don’t think anyone supports a complete elimination. That would disenfranchise men and women overseas. I’m sure that’s not his intention.” Read Article

National: Trump administration demands state voter data, including partial Social Security numbers | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

The Trump administration has stepped up efforts to obtain personal information about tens of millions of voters across the country, including seeking sensitive data such as partial Social Security numbers. The push, overseen by the Department of Justice, comes as President Donald Trump asserts a larger federal role in elections ahead of next year’s midterms, which are set to determine which party controls Congress during his last two years in the White House. In recent weeks, state election officials have received letters from Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, seeking unredacted copies of states’ voter registration databases. The information includes voters’ names, birthdates, addresses, and driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Read Article

National: Voter registration groups blocked from naturalization events | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Nongovernmental groups are now barred from registering new voters at naturalization ceremonies, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced. The policy, which was issued Friday, says “that only state and local election officials will be permitted to offer voter registration services at the end of administrative naturalization ceremonies.” Groups like the League of Women Voters criticized the decision. They often partner with local and state election officials or supplement their work to administer registration services — and that includes during naturalization ceremonies. Read Article

National: Understanding the debate over efforts to clean up ‘dirty’ voter rolls – Jen Fifield and Carter Walker/Votebeat

The federal government’s demands that states turn over their voter rolls and related information highlights longstanding conflicts over how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights. The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and plans to send many more — asking them for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize. It has already sued North Carolina, alleging that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity, and sued Orange County, California, for refusing to provide full records for 17 people who have been removed from the rolls in connection with a probe of potential noncitizen voting. And it has threatened to sue or withhold federal funding from other states if they do not comply with their requests for information. Read Article

National: House Republicans form new subcommittee to probe Jan. 6 | Kadia Goba and Paul Kane/The Washington Post

House Republicans voted on Wednesday to establish a new subcommittee to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, moving to reopen one of the most polarizing chapters in American politics. Lawmakers slipped a resolution into a rule on the House floor that would establish the subcommittee, which is likely to be headed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia). Republicans have complained that the original probe, which was led by Democrats, was biased against President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly denied he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Loudermilk has already helmed one inquiry into Jan. 6: He used a subcommittee of the House Administration Committee to conduct a follow-up to the Democratic-led investigation after Republicans retook control of the House in 2023. Read Article

Opinion: The Trump Administration’s Arguments About the National Guard Threaten the 2026 Elections | Richard Bernstein/Society for the Rule of Law

Yesterday, federal District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the Trump Administration’s federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles to assist in immigration law enforcement violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which is 18 U.S.C. section 1385. The Posse Comitatus Act bars use of the military for law enforcement, “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” The Trump Administration argued that the National Guard authorization statute on which it relied—10 U.S.C. section 12406(3)—is an express exception. Judge Breyer’s ruling to the contrary, at pages 26-32 of his decision, was his core holding. Although the Los Angeles deployment was not about elections, if an appellate court adopts certain arguments made by the Trump Administration in that case, such a decision could set our country on a path to military interference in the 2026 elections. Read Article

White House changes course after Trump vows executive order to ‘end’ mail-in voting | John T. Bennett/Roll Call

August 22, 2025

The White House has abruptly altered course on President Donald Trump’s vow to have an elite legal team craft an executive order that would end mail-in voting, with a top aide saying the administration would instead forge a legislative path. “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt,” he told reporters. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, just over 24 hours later, signaled that the administration had ditched the president’s approach. Asked what changed so quickly, and whether Trump had received a legal ruling from within the administration that his office lacked the authority to make such a dramatic election change, a White House spokesman merely lobbed accusations at Democrats and repeated Trump’s 2024 campaign platform on the issue. Read Article

National: Voting officials are leaving their jobs at the highest rate in decades | Miles Parks/NPR

August 22, 2025

Turnover among the country’s election officials has continued to increase — now nearly five years after Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 contest led to voting officials facing more pressure and harassment. Some 2 in 5 of all the local officials who administered the 2020 election left their jobs before the 2024 cycle, according to research out Tuesday from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The trend was especially pronounced in large jurisdictions, where the Trump campaign’s misinformation about voting often focused. “This is in alignment with the challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that election officials are facing,” said Rachel Orey, who oversees the center’s Elections Project. Read Article

National: Trump Doubles Down on Mail-In Ballot Broadside: GOP Will Do ‘Everything Possible to Get Rid’ of Them | im Saksa/Democracy Docket

Sitting in the Oval Office Monday afternoon, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looking on quietly, President Donald Trump launched into a tirade against mail-in voting. The outburst followed up on a social media post published earlier Monday morning in which Trump said he wanted to eliminate mail-in voting and promised a new executive order on the issue. Pamela Smith, CEO and president of Verified Voting, released a statement denouncing Trump’s rhetoric. “Elections in the United States are run by the states as an intentional protection in our Constitution to prevent concentrated executive power. No president has the authority to dictate how Americans vote. Most voters already vote with paper ballots,” Smith said. “Instead of undermining options like mail or early voting that already use paper ballots, the federal government should prioritize real solutions that would strengthen our elections, like expanding robust post-election audits, re-instating cybersecurity protections and ensuring the stable support and funding local election officials need to administer our democracy — a nonpartisan priority for everyone.” Trump himself voted by mail in 2020 during the COVID pandemic. Read Article

National: ‘Profound harm’: Veterans blast Trump threat to mail-in ballots that could disenfranchise thousands of troops | Alex Woodward/The Independent

Donald Trump’s blanket attempt to “get rid” of mail-in ballots could disenfranchise thousands of American troops inside and outside the United States, a threat that military veterans and advocacy groups have condemned as the president’s latest attack on service members. On his Truth Social account Monday, Trump promised to “lead a movement” and sign an executive order that he claims would target the “completely disproven Mail-In SCAM.” Nothing in Trump’s statements appeared remotely legal or constitutional but marked his administration’s latest attempts to restrict voting access and take federal control of election administration. Read Article

National: Trump vows to change how elections are run. The US Constitution doesn’t give him that power | Nicholas Riccardi and Ali Swenson/Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Monday vowed more changes to the way elections are conducted in the U.S., but based on the Constitution there is little to nothing he can do on his own. Relying on false information and conspiracy theories that he’s regularly used to explain away his 2020 election loss, Trump pledged on his social media site that he would do away with both mail voting — which remains popular and is used by about one-third of all voters — and voting machines — some form of which are used in almost all of the country’s thousands of election jurisdictions. These are the same systems that enabled Trump to win the 2024 election and Republicans to gain control of Congress. Trump’s post marks an escalation even in his normally overheated election rhetoric. He issued a wide-ranging executive order earlier this year that, among other changes, would have required documented proof-of-citizenship before registering to vote. Read Article

National: Trump’s proposed census changes could have lasting effects beyond elections | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Donald Trump wants to run a new census before next year’s midterms — and leave undocumented immigrants out of the count. That wouldn’t just reshape political maps. It would warp the data that governments, businesses, and researchers rely on for the work they do and the investments they make. An incomplete or rushed count means flawed decisions, with consequences that last far beyond one election. The census gives the government its most complete snapshot of the country. The federal government uses it to decide where to send billions of dollars for Medicaid, food assistance, school lunches, and disaster relief. States use it to plan hospitals and roads. Businesses choose store locations based on it. Public health officials track disease outbreaks with it, and emergency managers map evacuation routes using it. Even insurance companies rely on it to set rates. Read Article

National: Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over 2020 election claims | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday. The settlement comes after Fox News Channel paid $787.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit in 2023 and Newsmax paid what court papers describe as $40 million to settle a libel lawsuit from a different voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which also was a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories on the network. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had ruled earlier that Newsmax did indeed defame Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems by airing false information about the company and its equipment. But Davis left it to a jury to eventually decide whether that was done with malice, and, if so, how much Dominion deserved from Newsmax in damages. Newsmax and Dominion reached the settlement before the trial could take place. Read Article

National: Russia is quietly churning out fake content posing as US news | Dana Nickel/Politico

A pro-Russian propaganda group is taking advantage of high-profile news events to spread disinformation, and it’s spoofing reputable organizations — including news outlets, nonprofits and government agencies — to do so. According to misinformation tracker NewsGuard, the campaign — which has been tracked by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center as Storm-1679 since at least 2022 — takes advantage of high-profile events to pump out fabricated content from various publications, including ABC News, BBC and most recently POLITICO. This year, the group has focused on flooding the internet with fake content surrounding the German SNAP elections and the upcoming Moldovan parliamentary vote. The campaign also sought to plant false narratives around the war in Ukraine ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Read Article

National: Mail-in voting is nothing new, just ask Civil War soldiers | Claire Barrett/Air Force Times

“We cannot have free government without elections,” President Abraham Lincoln reflected outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1864. “And if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” By the fall of 1864, the United States had been engulfed in a civil war for nearly 44 months, with “the bones of thousands of Northern boys [lying] in Southern graves or decayed unburied in the thickets and swamps of Dixie,” writes historian Gerald Swick. For Lincoln — and for the Union — the outcome of the 1864 presidential election hung in the balance. If voters rejected Lincoln, the war to save the Union would almost certainly be lost. According to Swick, Peace Democrats, Lincoln’s chief political opposition, wanted an end to hostilities immediately, under almost any circumstances. Read Article

Opinion: Would You Trust This Man With Your Elections? | Richard L. Hasen/The New York Times