As courts reject Trump’s voting restrictions, White House turns to threats and coercion

• The White House’s attempts to seize control over elections suffered a series of courtroom drubbings in recent weeks as judges — including many of Trump’s own appointees — consistently blocked the efforts for violating federal laws or the U.S. Constitution.
  
  
• So the Trump administration is adopting a new strategy.

➤ Why the new approach is to intimidate

Trump DOJ to target Democratic strongholds for election monitoring

• New comments by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, provide specifics after the DOJ announced it would deploy election monitors to six states. All of the states except one have Democratic governors and chief election officials.
  
  
• Monitors are not new in American elections, but they typically are deployed to safeguard access to the polls. This new monitoring mission serves the opposite purpose: investigating phony claims of election fraud to make it harder for Americans to vote.

➤ Where does the DOJ plan to target?

Meet the Trump ally who could run Texas elections

• It’s an “open secret” in the state that the White House is behind a push to name Nate Schatzline, a young Christian nationalist pastor who claimed the 2020 election was stolen, to replace Secretary of State Jane Nelson (R) next month.
  
  
• It raises the acute danger that — with Texas playing host to several key Congressional races — an election denier who may be willing to put a thumb on the scale for the GOP could help shape the rules for casting and counting ballots.

➤ Who is Nate Schatzline?

Arizona Supreme Court gives election denier more control over Maricopa County elections

• Justin Heap, an election skeptic who has pushed conspiracy theories about voting in the state, will have increased authority to shape elections in the county.
  
  
• In a unanimous ruling today, the state’s high court vacated a lower court order that barred Heap from taking greater control over county election operations before the state’s upcoming primaries and midterms.

➤ Here’s the latest in the long-simmering legal feud

Citing Callais, appeals court vacates Native American redistricting win in North Dakota

• The fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) continues to have cascading consequences across the country. The 8th Circuit ruled this week to reverse a legal victory that concluded North Dakota’s state legislative map unlawfully diluted Native American voting strength in violation of Section 2 of the VRA.

➤ How the SCOTUS decision altered the legal landscape for voting

Trump DOJ seeks to undo first appeals loss in voter roll crusade, asks for rehearing

• The DOJ asked the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that rejected its demand for Michigan’s unredacted voter rolls, seeking to erase the department’s first appellate defeat in its nationwide voter data crusade.

➤ The DOJ keeps losing, so they are appealing

Trump always escalates after every loss in court

• “There’s a particular pattern that Donald Trump follows, which is: He puts something out that is preposterous. He normalizes it through repetition. The legacy media goes along for that ride. Then he increases his rhetoric,” Marc says in a new video. “Eventually, we all wind up in court. He and his lawyers are humiliated. That is sort of the phase we are in right now.”

➤ Watch Marc describe how Trump “escalates even further”

Gavin Newsom wants to make seizing ballots a felony

• The Democratic governor of California plans to introduce new legislation seeking to criminalize the seizure of uncounted and uncertified ballots.
  
  
• The move comes on the heels of the state's notoriously slow primary count, which Trump capitalized on to push false election conspiracy theories.

➤ What did Newsom say?

Judge denies motion to stay order blocking creation of voter database

• A judge denied the Trump administration’s motion to stay an order that blocked it from implementing a “secretly consolidated” database housing Americans’ protected personal information to purge non-citizens from voter rolls.

➤ More on the case

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

• A content creator who satirizes Vice President JD Vance in viral videos is suing the Trump administration, alleging that it violated her First Amendment rights by not allowing her into an event and because it was an event “where those who hold opposing viewpoints may be excluded.”
  
  
• Whoops. Trump mistakenly referred to Japan as “the Islamic Republic of Japan” during a press conference today.
  
  
• Senator McDreamy? Actor Patrick Dempsey’s name has been raised as a possible replacement for Democrats as pressure continues to mount for Graham Platner to drop out of the Maine Senate race. (I know I made a Grey’s Anatomy joke, but he’ll always be a Scream star to me.)