Building Blocks

This Week in Democracy

• The Justice Department reached an agreement with lawyers representing FBI agents that prevents it from publicly releasing the names of agents who worked on investigations into the Jan. 6 attack or President Trump. The FBI Agents Association and a group of FBI agents sued the Justice Department to block it from doing so, citing concerns over agents’ safety and potential retaliation against them. “If this information were released, I think there’s no question it would put a number of FBI agents at significant and immediate danger,” a judge said.
• Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission, said Trump sent her a letter claiming to immediately remove her from her position. Weintraub is refusing to accept her firing as legal or valid and is refusing to step down. FEC commissioners can only be replaced once their replacement is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. “There’s a perfectly legal way for him to replace me,” Weintraub said. “But just flat-out firing me, that is not it.”
• On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a plan to attempt to block the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing federal payment systems that contain Americans’ sensitive personal information. James has said she will lead a coalition of states in a lawsuit against DOGE’s work.

  In a separate case, the Trump administration agreed to limit DOGE’s access to Treasury Department systems. The plaintiffs in the case alleged that providing DOGE access to the systems violated federal privacy laws.

• Pam Bondi was sworn in as U.S. Attorney General on Wednesday. Bondi began making changes to the Justice Department’s priorities on her first day in office. She issued multiple directives, including plans to investigate the baseless claims that the department had been “weaponized” under the Biden administration.
• Two federal judges blocked Trump’s executive order to deny citizenship to some people born on U.S. soil. Both judges ruled that the order violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, and that the president does not have the power to singlehandedly change the Constitution. “The Constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games,” one of the judges said.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Birthright Citizenship

• A federal judge in Rhode Island extended his order blocking the Trump administration from freezing federal funding. Judge John McConnell issued a temporary restraining order last week after 22 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration to block the freeze. However, states have continued to report difficulties accessing federal funds, affecting some critical programs.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Trump’s Attempt to Pause Federal Financial Assistance

State of the States

In Michigan, state Rep. Rachelle Smit was appointed as chair of the House Election Integrity Committee. The former local elections clerk has publicly expressed beliefs that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. After Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges against Michigan’s 2020 “fake electors”, Smit said that their plot to overturn the state’s 2020 election results was “completely legal, completely valid.”

In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court unanimously decided that Meagan Wolfe, chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, can keep her job. Members of the state Senate voted in 2023 to remove Wolfe, but later admitted that their vote was “symbolic” and had no legal effect. The effort to remove Wolfe stemmed from lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Those lies have led to threats against Wolfe.

Recommended Reading

The New York Times’ Ezra Klein offers his thoughts on how to make sense of the barrage of actions taken by the Trump administration in just three weeks — and how to manage the sense of overwhelm that may come with it.