Mail Order

This Week in Democracy

• President Trump said that he would sign an executive order aiming to ban voting by mail and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Any such executive order would be illegal. Voting by mail is secure, trusted, and popular across the country.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About the President’s Threat to Ban Vote-By-Mail

• Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C. continued this week, with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia sending National Guard troops. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott declined to deploy his state’s troops. (This is the second time he’s done so.) A spokesperson for Scott said that the governor “does not view the enforcement of domestic law as a proper use of the National Guard.”

  After D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued last week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded her order that sought to replace the head of D.C.’s police department. Bondi issued a new order afterwards that directed Mayor Muriel Bowser to order the police department to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Domestic Military Deployment and State Authority

• The Texas House passed its plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts after lawmakers who left the state to block the plan returned. The plan fulfills Trump’s request to give Republicans an advantage in five districts currently represented by Democrats. The plan now heads to the state Senate, and then to Gov. Greg Abbott.

  Republican members of the state House required the Democratic lawmakers who left the state to agree to constant surveillance to prevent them from leaving the state again.

• Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to settle a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting equipment manufacturer. Dominion sued Newsmax for $1.6 billion in 2021, alleging that the network knowingly aired false claims that Dominion machines were involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election.

  Earlier this year, Newsmax settled a similar case brought by Smartmatic, another voting equipment manufacturer, for $40 million. Fox News also agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million in a similar settlement in 2023.

• A federal judge ruled that Alina Habba, Trump’s choice for New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney, is unlawfully holding her position. Habba’s actions since July “may be declared void,” the judge wrote.

  Habba responded in an interview, calling the judge “rogue” and saying that his job is “respecting the president.” (It’s not.) The judge paused the effect of his decision to give Habba time to appeal.

  Last month, the Trump administration used unusual tactics to appoint Habba and two other U.S. Attorneys over the objections of federal judges.

• Twenty-one state attorneys general sued the Trump administration over new conditions it added to federal grants that support victims of crime. The administration is requiring that states cooperate with federal immigration officials in order to receive the funds.

  “These are not just dollars,” said Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, who co-led the case. “They are shelters, they are hotlines, they are funding for rape kits, they are funding for new locks on broken doors, and they are medical expenses.”

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Coercive Funding Demands

State of the States

In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion that voters affected by a database error should maintain full voting rights, unless county officials have evidence that they are ineligible. The error was first flagged to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes last year by then-Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who worked with Gov. Katie Hobbs to resolve it.

In California, Illinois, and Maine, state election officials received follow-up letters from the U.S. Department of Justice, demanding more information about voters. In response to the department’s initial requests, each state said that they would follow their state’s laws. For some, that meant providing already-public information; for others, that meant refusing the requests altogether.

In letters this week, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon demanded that the states provide voters’ full names, birth dates, addresses, and driver’s license or Social Security numbers. Dhillon threatened the states with legal action if they didn’t cooperate.

Secretaries Cisco Aguilar of Nevada, Tobias Read of Oregon, and Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania also responded to the Justice Department’s demands this week. Each refused to provide information, in accordance with state laws.

“We are not going to be intimidated,” Aguilar said. “We are going to follow the law. We are going to protect voters’ information.”

“Oregon allows for public access to certain voter-registration data, including a voter’s residence address and birth year, for a fee,” Read wrote in his response to the department. “There is no exception for the federal government.”

“This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process,” Schmidt wrote in his response.

In Colorado, Attorney General Phil Weiser asked a court to dismiss Tina Peters’ request to be released on bond. Peters is a former county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting equipment in an effort to prove that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Last year, she was sentenced to nine years behind bars.

Trump called for Peters to be released following Weiser’s filing, threatening “harsh measures.”

Recommended Reading

Rick Hasen, a law professor and democracy expert, writes about how “states, the courts and ultimately the American people” can stand up to Trump’s latest threat to elections in a column in The New York Times.