Crucial court battle could decide whether the GOP’s attempt to game the congressional maps to win an extra five seats in the midterm elections might work.
Friday, October 3
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THIS WEEK
- Texas gerrymander driven by race, advocates argue, as high-stakes hearing kicks off
- Reagan-appointed judge blasts Trump’s ‘full-throated assault on the First Amendment’
- Lawsuit challenges Trump’s massive centralized citizen database
REDISTRICTING
Texas gerrymander driven by race, advocates argue, as high-stakes hearing kicks off
Democracy Docket’s Jen Rice is in El Paso ([link removed] ) to cover what might be the most important court proceeding in the 2026 midterm election cycle: the challenge ([link removed] ) to Texas’ mid-decade gerrymander.
Jen has tracked every beat of this story since President Donald Trump first began pressuring ([link removed] ) Republicans to rig the Lone Star State’s congressional map to net the GOP five additional seats next year. Now she’s flown down to her native Texas to cover the lengthy hearing that kicked off Wednesday in person. In addition to her evening dispatches from the courtroom, Jen will be posting updates on Democracy Docket’s social media accounts — follow ([link removed] ) along ([link removed] ) .
Texas claims it redrew the congressional map only to help Republicans win — partisan gerrymandering has been de facto legal since a 2019 Supreme Court decision ([link removed] ) . But lawyers for the plaintiffs* noted that, to justify the effort ahead of time, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) cited a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) urging the state to eliminate coalition districts, i.e. places where multiple minority groups combine to make up a majority. That’s evidence, they allege, that the process was driven by racial concerns from the outset.
Read Jen’s first dispatch from El Paso here. ([link removed] ) Read more about the Texas lawsuit here. ([link removed] )
*Some Texas voters are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.
Jen's real-time reporting from the front lines is only possible because of support from readers like you. Become a member today ([link removed] ) to power fearless, pro-democracy journalism.
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TRUMP ACCOUNTABILITY
Reagan-appointed judge blasts Trump’s ‘full-throated assault on the First Amendment’
It can feel like we’re drowning under the incessant torrent of outrages launched by this administration, but every now and then, some true patriot throws us a lifeline.
This week, it was U.S. District Judge Bill Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, who published an extraordinary 161-page cri de coeur, ruling that the administration violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian college students for deportation.
Everyone should read the decision ([link removed] ) in its entirety, which Young framed as a response to the anonymous sender of an ominous postcard to his chambers, which read, “Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?”
“Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution,” Young wrote in response, above the opinion itself. “Here’s how that works out in a specific case.”
But if you just want the highlights (and some useful context), our Jacob Knutson has you covered ([link removed] ) . As Jacob noted, Young included a highly unusual 12-page assessment of the president himself in the opinion that detailed how Trump routinely ignores the Constitution, laws, and regulations while governing but aggressively deploys the legal system against those who stand in his way.
“Now that he is our duly elected President after a full and fair election, he not only enjoys broad immunity from any personal liability, he is prepared to deploy all the resources of the nation against obstruction,” Young wrote. “Daunting prospect, isn’t it?”
Read Jacob’s coverage here ([link removed] ) . Or read the whole decision here ([link removed] ) .
ELECTION ADMINISTRATION
Lawsuit challenges Trump’s massive centralized citizen database
For decades, Republicans have envisioned the federal government one day creating a centralized citizenship database that would threaten every American’s privacy and liberty.
But what we thought was a dire forewarning turns out to have been a sneak-preview of the GOP’s authoritarian turn. At Trump’s behest ([link removed] ) , the federal government has been piecing together databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the DOJ into vast, centralized repositories of Americans' sensitive personal information.
Now a coalition of advocacy groups* is suing ([link removed] ) to block that Orwellian consolidation of data, which the Trump administration wants to use to purge noncitizens from voter rolls and launch criminal investigations. While these federal agencies have boasted in public ([link removed] ) about the development of this digital panopticon, they have failed to properly notify Congress ([link removed] ) or the public as required by federal law, the class action lawsuit ([link removed] ) alleges.
Read more about the lawsuit here ([link removed] ) .
*Marc Elias, the founder of Democracy Docket, serves as board chair of Democracy Forward, which represents plaintiffs in this case.
OPINION
“Constitutional” Sheriffs Have Already Shown Us How the Trump Administration Might Attempt To Overthrow Elections
Screenshot 2025-10-02 at 4.38.40 PM ([link removed] )
Jessica Pishko has spent a decade tracking “constitutional” sheriffs: MAGA diehards who believe that, as elected officials without direct oversight, they are the supreme legal authority in their county.
“These ‘constitutional’ sheriffs have used their political and policing powers to harass local officials, criminally investigate select individuals, and intimidate voters with displays of force. Their historical plans, however, provide a roadmap for what is ahead," Pishko warns ([link removed] ) Democracy Docket readers this week.
In the op-ed, Pishko, an independent journalist and lawyer, illustrates how Trump could attempt to deploy these rogue officials in an attempt to undermine the upcoming midterms. After all, “constitutional” sheriffs have already tried to thwart past elections.
“Thankfully, most of these efforts did not succeed,” Pishko notes hopefully. “Lawyers filed lawsuits ([link removed] ) to prevent election interference. And many of the theories around election interference — bamboo-laced ballots from China ([link removed] ) ! Venezuelan hackers ([link removed] ) ! — were too wacky for most people to purchase.”
Read the full essay here. ([link removed] )
NEW EPISODE
Can We Actually Save America?
Donald Trump’s second term isn’t just about bad policies — it’s about breaking America’s democratic institutions for good. Marc explains why we can’t simply “resist” Trump and wait things out, but must build a long-term pro-democracy opposition movement. Watch it on YouTube here. ([link removed] )
What We’re Doing
We here at Democracy Docket are big fans of independent media — it’s in our organizational DNA! And some of us, like reporter Jim Saksa, are also big sports fans. Jim combines those two passions by subscribing to Defector ([link removed] ) , a worker-owned sports website that just celebrated its fifth ([link removed] ) anniversary. After Jim’s beloved Philadelphia Phillies ([link removed] ) (hopefully) beat the LA Dodgers Saturday and the Eagles improve to 5-0, he’ll head over to Defector. The folks there don’t just stick to sports, though. You can get their incisive, witty, and often just plain silly takes on everything from Tom Brady’s all-white outfit ([link removed] ) , journalistic malpractice ([link removed] ) , right-wing hypocrisy ([link removed] ) , ponzi schemes ([link removed] ) , why everyone too-online was talking about the rapture ([link removed] ) a week ago, and ants ([link removed] ) that give birth to other species.
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