The Guardin’ State
Plus: Election Deniers win big in Arizona’s primaries. 🗳️
This Week in Democracy
- New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that a state investigation found that a software error caused about 6,600 noncitizens to be registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, and that around 400 of them cast ballots. Sherrill tasked state officials with removing the erroneously registered voters from her state’s voter rolls and investigating how the error occurred. She noted that the voters were Democrats, Republicans, and independents, scattered across the state.
Sherrill contrasted the state investigation with President Trump’s efforts to unlawfully take power over elections. “The difference between my administration and this White House is stark,” she said at a press conference. “We don’t deflect, deny, or exploit problems for our own gain. We find them and we fix them, because that’s what a good, accountable government should do. And we will keep working every single day to make sure every eligible citizen can vote, every lawful vote is counted, and every step possible is taken to safeguard our elections.”
➡️ MORE: Americans Trust State and Local Officials the Most in Running Elections
- Arizona held primary elections on Tuesday, where Election Deniers moved on to the November general elections in the races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and some races for Congress.
As Sunday marks 100 days until the November election, States United Action is still tracking candidates running for office who have denied the results of the 2020 presidential election at ElectionDeniers.org.
➡️ EXPLORE: ElectionDeniers.org
- State officials representing 25 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over its threat to withhold federal funding unless the states adopt its desired election policies. The administration first sent notices to states last month, threatening funding used to prepare for natural disasters, guard against terrorism, and protect infrastructure.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who co-led the lawsuit, noted in a statement that the states won two similar lawsuits against the administration last year. Despite those wins, he said, “the Trump administration continues its wholly improper efforts to use federal public-safety funds as a means to push its political and policy priorities.”
- The Trump administration announced that it would withhold another $1 billion in federal funding for California and Minnesota’s Medicaid programs, once again citing unproven allegations of widespread fraud. Both states’ governors said that their states were being targeted for political reasons.
➡️ MORE: What’s Breaking Through About Politically Motivated Cuts to Social Services
The Justice Department is also reportedly recruiting prosecutors for a division focused on investigating and prosecuting state officials based on allegations of fraud, according to Bloomberg Law.
➡️ READ: How Politicized Prosecutions Undermine the Rule of Law
New from States United
This week, States United filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a group of university professors, urging an appeals court to uphold a ruling that prevented the Trump administration from withholding more than $2 billion in federal research funding from Harvard University.
We also published a new resource featuring research-backed messages for state leaders to use when talking about the public safety measures in place that make it safe to vote.
New States United research shows that Americans continue to oppose the Trump administration’s use of the Justice Department to target the president’s political rivals. Our surveys also show that Americans continue to believe the president should respect court rulings, even if they declare his administration’s actions illegal or unconstitutional.
Finally, we’re launching a new weekly newsletter, the States United Polling Roundup, that highlights the most important democracy-related polling from top public surveys. You can sign up here.
State of the States
In Connecticut and Kentucky, federal judges dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuits seeking voters’ private data, the 16th and 17th cases to be thrown out. The department brought 31 lawsuits in total seeking voter data; it has not yet won any of them.
➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Federal Efforts to Compile State Voter Data
In Minnesota, a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit targeting state and local policies that prevent local authorities from enforcing federal immigration law.
The administration argued that federal law preempts any state policies and asked a judge to declare the state policies unconstitutional. The judge rejected that argument, writing in his decision that such a view would violate the Constitution’s 10th Amendment.
“The court’s clear ruling today reaffirmed the longstanding principle that the federal government cannot force Minnesota or any state to participate in its misguided immigration-enforcement efforts or commandeer state resources for it,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement.
➡️ MORE: Survey: Americans Disapprove of Federal Agents’ Enforcement Tactics
In Washington state, the federal prosecutor whom Trump fired last week sued the administration, arguing that he should be allowed to serve in the position until a permanent replacement is nominated.
Roger Rogoff was appointed by a panel of federal judges to be the top U.S. attorney for the Seattle area. But less than an hour after he was sworn in, he received notice from the Trump administration that he had been fired—leaving the administration’s preferred prosecutor in charge of the office.
The Trump administration has attempted to use similar strategies to keep its preferred prosecutors leading U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. Federal judges have repeatedly disqualified those prosecutors, ruling that the administration’s strategy violates federal law and the Constitution.
Rogoff’s lawsuit is the first attempt by one of the fired prosecutors to regain his position.