Trump uses Lindsey Graham’s death to push stalled anti-voter bill

• Trump can’t seem to stop using Graham’s death as an opportunity to promote his SAVE America Act, the sweeping anti-voting bill that’s currently stalled in the Senate.
  
  
• On Sunday, Trump acknowledged that the bill now faces an even steeper hurdle given Graham’s unexpected death.
  
  
• But he wasn’t done. Today, Trump was asked on “Fox & Friends” about Graham — but immediately pivoted to pitching the bill.
  
  
• That makes three times in the last 24 hours that Trump has tried to use the senator’s death to promote his languishing voter suppression bill.

➤ How Trump is trying to push his agenda

Trump’s DOJ can’t stop losing: It was hit with its 13th straight loss in its sweeping voter roll push

• A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit seeking access to West Virginia's unredacted voter registration list.
  
  
• The department is now 0-13 in its sweeping legal hunt for states' private voter data. They lost another lawsuit in New York late last week.

➤ What to know on Trump’s latest loss

DHS relaunches voter purge database in 4 red states

• In a paradoxical situation, DHS told a judge in Washington, D.C., that it was shuttering a controversial citizenship database but would also make it available to four Republican-led states based on a different judge’s orders.
  
  
• The contradictory rulings by judges are just the latest in the legal fight over Trump’s anti-voting executive order that directed DHS to use its database to run registration records through it in bulk.

➤ Learn more about the tangled legal situation

‘Stop threatening your friends’: Idaho fires back against Trump DOJ's threats over noncitizen voting

• In a sharply worded letter, the office of Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador (R) told DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon to stop contacting Secretary of State Phil McGrane (R) directly and urged the department to dismiss its lawsuit seeking Idaho’s unredacted statewide voter registration list.

➤ Read what they wrote to Trump’s DOJ

Judge slams Trump’s IRS lawsuit as ‘improper’

• In a blistering ruling today, a federal judge in Florida said the $10-billion lawsuit Trump and his two eldest sons filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was brought up for an “improper purpose.”
  
  
• The lawsuit was “settled” by establishing a massive slush fund — blocked in court — to pay the president’s allies. The ruling is the strongest rebuke of the lawsuit from the judiciary yet.

➤ What did the judge have to say?

Why we should expand voting rights, according to Marc and Brian Tyler Cohen

• If you missed the conversation, be sure to check out one of the highlights: Their discussion about voting rights and why Democrats need to be ready to tackle the issue on “Day One.”

➤ Watch a compelling part of their chat

Here we share noteworthy briefs on all things voting rights and democracy. Have a footnote for us? Send it to newsletters@democracydocket.com.

• It took a while longer than we expected, but Trump decided to take a victory lap over the U.S. Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision, calling it a “BIG WIN.”
  
  
• In what should come as no shock to anyone, given the rampant and unchecked rise of AI in the U.S., the logo for the newly renamed Donald Trump International Airport in Palm Beach, Florida, appears to be AI-generated slop.
  
  
• Yikessss. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) decided to tease her interest in running to replace Graham in the Senate by quoting Al Pacino’s character from “The Godfather: Part III.” You all probably know the quote: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Even members of her own party called the post “grotesque.”
  
  
• Trump is scheduled to give a speech on Thursday night that will address “newly declassified intelligence reports that the White House asserts reveal plans by foreign nations to interfere in the 2020 election,” according to MS NOW. Stay tuned to Democracy Docket this week, as we’ll have the latest.