A Chill in the Air

This Week in Democracy

• In the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and other top administration officials threatened to target political opponents that they accused of fomenting political violence. The administration is threatening to bring criminal charges, designate certain groups as domestic terrorists, and remove tax-exempt statuses.

  First Amendment experts and a large coalition of philanthropies pushed back against the Trump administration’s threats, arguing they are a politically motivated attempt at suppressing free speech. Those groups also condemned political violence.

• Amid rising concerns about political violence, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, and Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss were each targeted by bomb threats. No one was injured. Each spoke out against political violence afterwards.

  States United research shows that while Americans have heightened concerns about political violence, a broad coalition across party lines continue to oppose it.

  ➡️ READ: Americans Widely Reject Political Violence

• The U.S. Department of Justice sued Maine and Oregon, demanding that their secretaries of state turn over personal information of their state’s registered voters. Maine’s Shenna Bellows and Oregon’s Tobias Read previously declined to share the information. Bellows said that the request raised privacy concerns, while Read said that he saw “no federal authority” for the department to make such a request.

  The Justice Department is requesting similar information from numerous states. Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas received a request last week and said she intends to reject it. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled this week that state election officials can share information with the department.

• A federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the president’s election-focused executive order. The lawsuit, filed in April by 19 state attorneys general, argues that Trump’s order is an attempt to take over election powers that the Constitution delegates to states and Congress.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Federal Overreach of States’ Authority to Administer Elections

• Trump ordered the Tennessee National Guard and other federal law enforcement agents to deploy to Memphis. The president said the effort would be similar to the deployment of federal forces in Washington, D.C.

  ➡️ READ: What’s Breaking Through About National Guard Deployments

State of the States

In Arizona, Cochise County officials voted to send a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, requesting that the Justice Department look into the accreditation and certifications of the voting systems used in 2022. Officials from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission previously confirmed that the systems were properly accredited.

The Justice Department also ordered Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to retain records dating back to the 2020 election, in preparation for a forthcoming lawsuit over alleged violations of federal election law.

In California, the Trump administration proposed a settlement to the University of California, Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles Times, the demands include changes to hiring and admissions practices, as well as a $1.2 billion fine. In exchange, the administration would reinstate more than $500 million in federal grants that it suspended last month.

➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About the Impact of Targeting Higher Education

In Georgia, the state Supreme Court declined to hear District Attorney Fani Willis’s appeal of a December ruling that disqualified her from prosecuting the state election interference case against Trump and his co-defendants. Willis said she wouldn’t challenge the decision.

Willis said she would make her files and evidence available to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which will appoint a new prosecutor.

“I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand,” Willis said in a statement.

In Texas, the Dallas County Republican Party approved a plan to hand count ballots cast on Election Day in the March 3, 2026 primary election. The plan makes Dallas County the largest jurisdiction in the country to implement hand counts, a practice that is significantly slower, more expensive, and less accurate than using ballot-counting machines.

➡️ EXPLORE: The Reality of Full Hand Counts: A Guide for Election Officials