Friday, March 28

ON THE DOCKET THIS WEEK

• Trump’s new order could disenfranchise millions of voters
• SCOTUS considers the latest conservative attack on the VRA
• Federal court delivers major blow in Trump administration’s illegal deportation crusade

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Trump’s new order could disenfranchise millions of voters

President Donald Trump issued his latest sweeping executive order Tuesday that, if it stands, would vastly expand the executive branch’s power over federal elections and could potentially disenfranchise millions.

Chief among the directives in the order is a nationwide documentary proof of citizenship requirement, which would prevent Americans who lack easy access to documents, such as passports, from registering to vote through the national mail voter registration form — originally created to make registering to vote more accessible.

The order also effectively kills mail-in voting — something Trump has longed to do — by directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “take all necessary action” against any states that count absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day. Any state that accepts ballots that arrive after election day — a common practice used by states like California, Illinois and Nevada — would lose federal funds to support their election operations.

And the order charges Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with using federal databases to review state voter registration lists. As part of this effort, DOGE and DHS can subpoena state records to prove supposed voter registration fraud.

Immediately after Trump signed the order, it drew furious pushback from lawmakers, election officials and voting rights advocates.

“This is not a statute. This is an edict by fiat from the executive branch, and so every piece of it can be challenged through the regular judicial process,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said in an interview with Democracy Docket. “I genuinely believe that the Trump administration wants to cancel the 2026 elections so that he and his party can stay in power.”

Others — including California Sen. Alex Padilla (D), Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D), election law professor Rick Hasen, the Democratic Secretaries of State Association, and the pro-voting group Fair Fight issued similar statements condemning the order.

The ACLU and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias said that they’ll be suing over Trump’s anti-voting order. (Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.)

The directives in this order aren’t just meant to disenfranchise voters but to confuse people about how voting works, according to Barbara Smith Warner, former Oregon state representative and executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute.

“All of these efforts are all voter suppression. Because confusion is part of voter suppression too,” Warner told Democracy Docket. “Then people start to think, ‘My vote doesn’t matter.’ All of this is an attempt to make people believe that their voice doesn’t count, when the truth is none of these attacks would be going on if your votes didn’t matter so much.” Read more about Trump’s anti-voting executive order here.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

SUPREME COURT

SCOTUS considers the latest conservative attack on the VRA

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument Monday in a pivotal Louisiana redistricting case centered on the state’s newly minted second majority-Black congressional district.

The case is significant because should the nation’s highest court rule against the state of Louisiana, it wouldn’t just wreak havoc on the Pelican State — causing lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and, once again, come up with a new congressional map — but it could threaten the future of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) altogether, effectively striking down Section 2, which allows people to sue over racial discrimination in voting or redistricting.

At the heart of the legal issue: When Louisiana passed its new map with the majority-Black 6th Congressional district, did it create an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, as race was the predominant factor in drawing the district?

During oral argument, Louisiana’s lawyers laid out their chief stance. “We’re in the business of complying with federal court decisions, and when they told us that we needed to draw a second majority black district, that’s what we did,” Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga said shortly after opening statements.

To rebut the claims from the plaintiffs that Louisiana drew their map strictly to give the state a second majority-Black district, Aguiñaga leaned hard on the argument that lawmakers drew their map with politics in mind — specifically to protect the districts represented by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R), along with Reps. Steve Scalise (R) and Julia Letlow (R).

In other words, the case brought out how states, in redistricting cases, use political considerations like protecting an incumbent lawmaker to draw maps — and that’s seen as legitimate. The notion that lawmakers should be required to prioritize fair representation for voters, of course, is nowhere to be found.

The justices kept coming back to the question of court orders — and if following a court’s order is a good enough reason for a state to draw a new map. Though some of the conservative justices cast doubt on this, Justice Elena Kagan said that Louisiana was not really in a position to ignore two court rulings that ordered the state to draw a new map that complies with Section 2 and doesn’t dilute the votes of Black voters. Aguiñaga added that the state used its “breathing room” to draw a new map that served its political purposes — like protecting Johnson’s and Scalise’s seats.

Though the justices didn’t seem likely to order the state to draw another map, which would essentially invalidate Section 2 of the VRA, the possibility is always there. “I just don’t think this is the case to do that,” Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center, recently told Democracy Docket, citing a recent case in which the court found that “the legislature gets the presumption of good faith.” Read more about the oral argument here.

TRUMP ACCOUNTABILITY

Federal court delivers major blow in Trump administration’s illegal deportation crusade

In a significant setback for the Trump administration, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Department of Justice’s request to lift a lower-court order preventing the Trump administration from using an 18th century wartime law to deport people to a Salvadoran hard labor prison without due process.

In a 2-1 vote Wednesday, Judges Karen Henderson and Patricia Millett explained that they rejected the request because the government failed to give people it labeled as members of the gang a chance to challenge that designation and because Trump failed to show how illegal immigration could be considered an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” of the U.S.

As part of his cruel and aggressive immigration policy, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act earlier this month to deport to El Salvador hundreds of people that the government claims are members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization based in Venezuela. But the administration’s evidence that many of the deported individuals were members of Tren de Aragua were flimsy at best.

Among the alleged criteria for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents used to arrest and deport individuals was that they had gang-affiliated tattoos. But Mother Jones reported that ICE agents rounded up anyone with tattoos, regardless of their meaning. In one instance, an individual who was detained but ultimately released by ICE was told he was brought in because of his tattoos — one of which is an autism awareness ribbon tattoo.

“Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent told the individual. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”

With this latest ruling, the Trump administration now has two court orders blocking them from deporting individuals without due process. In issuing her ruling, Henderson, an appointee of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, wrote that lifting the previous district court injunction “risks exiling plaintiffs to a land that is not their country of origin.” She added that legal precedent holds “that an invasion is a military affair, not one of migration.” Read more about the federal court order here.

OPINION

Trump’s Latest Executive Order is a Sham — and a Warning

NEW VIDEO

Will Trump Impeach Judges?

What We’re Doing

Senior Reporter and noted cinephile Matt Cohen has been on a tear watching ’90s thrillers lately. And one recent watch felt particularly timely, if not utterly ridiculous. Who remembers the 1993 legal thriller The Pelican Brief, with Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts? The film follows the assassination of two Supreme Court justices and the conspiracy behind their deaths that goes all the way to the White House.

Of course its premise and all the plot twists are absurd in a way that only ’90s thrillers were (it is, after all, based on a John Grisham novel). But the central theme of a billionaire oil tycoon presidential megadonor pulling the strings of the federal government to ensure his wealth continues to accumulate still feels, unfortunately, as relevant as ever. And the heroine is a law student! It’s worth watching — or rewatching, if you’ve seen it before.