Friday, December 19

THIS WEEK

Utah GOP lawmakers won’t give up on their gerrymander plan
DOJ replaces voting section chief with lawyer tied to election conspiracists
Harmeet Dhillon has flipped her stances since joining Trump’s DOJ

REDISTRICTING

Utah GOP lawmakers won’t give up on their gerrymander plan

Thanks to President Donald Trump, 2025 turned into the year of unusual, mid-decade redistricting battles across the country. And Utah has emerged as one of the most disturbing fronts, showing us just how far the GOP is willing to go – and how relentlessly they’re willing to fight – to stop voters from holding fair elections.

A Utah judge made national headlines last month when she struck down the GOP-controlled legislature’s congressional map that violated a voter-approved state constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. Her decision cleared the way for Democrats to potentially pick up one of the state’s four congressional seats, which are currently all held by Republicans.

Utah Republican lawmakers could have simply accepted the court’s rebuke and tried to honor the will of their voters. But instead, they’re moving on to even more extreme measures – rejecting the court-ordered congressional map and extending the filing deadline for candidates running for those seats, signaling that they’re likely planning to appeal the ruling to the Utah Supreme Court, and possibly even the U.S. Supreme Court.

They’re also taking steps to repeal that voter-approved amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. And they passed a bill giving the Utah Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction over future redistricting cases.

Republicans aren’t giving up on gerrymandering Utah – but the good news is voting advocates aren’t giving up on fair elections, either.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Missouri, where advocates turned in over 300,000 petition signatures this month to halt another gerrymander from going into effect. That should pause the GOP-controlled legislature’s new map until after Missourians hold a referendum vote. But so far, Republican state officials appear to be breaking with precedent and refusing to suspend the map while the referendum process plays out. This week, advocates said they still see a path forward for their plan. Read more about redistricting here.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

DOJ replaces voting section chief with lawyer tied to election conspiracists

As Democracy Docket readers know, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s voting section – the office charged with enforcing the nation’s voting laws – has been turned on its head under Trump, morphing from a defender of voting rights into a voter fraud attack dog. (Let’s give a quick shoutout to Democracy Docket’s excellent ongoing timeline documenting this overhaul.)

We reported in May that the department had installed Maureen Riordan – formerly litigation counsel at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a leading anti-voting firm – as acting chief of the section.

Now, it appears she’s been replaced by Eric Neff, a Republican attorney with ties to election conspiracy theorists. A recent legal filing identified Riordan as only a “senior counsel” in the voting section. We’re not quite sure which of them is worse. Regardless, we continue to monitor the situation. Read more about the DOJ moves here.

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DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Harmeet Dhillon has flipped her stances since joining Trump’s DOJ

Harmeet Dhillon may not be a household name (despite her best efforts to become a knitting influencer on social media), but as the powerful head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, she certainly has our full attention.

Dhillon is at the center of an unprecedented effort to force states to turn over millions of voters’ personal information, insisting that the attorney general has near-limitless authority to seize election records and that the courts’ only role is to enforce those demands.

But before joining the DOJ, Dhillon was the founder and director of a right-wing law firm (which is now challenging the new California congressional map in federal court). And, fortunately, she’s always been very vocal, so we happen to know that she’s reversed many of her stances since taking the new job.

Democracy Docket reporter Yunior Rivas has done the Lord’s work, sifting through her previous statements on democracy and the power of states for a deep dive into how sharply she’s changed her tune. Read more about Dhillon here.

OPINION

The greatest threat to democracy

This year was relentlessly overwhelming for anybody trying to keep up with the fallout of having a madman in the White House. Every single day, another part of American life was on fire.

“Over the last 11 months, however, one crisis has been ongoing. I have repeatedly warned that the Republican voter suppression and election-subversion machine continues to grind on,” Marc writes. “It rarely breaks into national headlines, but its persistent attacks on free and fair elections serve as a constant hum in the background. It remains, in my opinion, the greatest threat to democracy because it is the gravest threat to free and fair elections.” Read more here.

NEW EPISODE

Trump's plan to steal the election: What's beneath the surface?

Marc explains the Voter Suppression Iceberg — a breakdown of the tactics, laws, and strategies that Republicans are using to restrict voting access in the United States. Marc breaks down everything from surface-level policies most voters recognize, down to the lesser-known, deep-cut mechanisms that influence elections behind the scenes. Watch on YouTube here.

What we’re doing

Paying attention to the many, many grave threats to democracy in 2025 wasn’t for the faint of heart. But it also rewarded us with so much to be grateful for. Yes, we’re very worried about the DOJ demanding private voter information from states – but on the other hand, we’ve had the pleasure of watching state officials like Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who literally told the DOJ to go jump in the Gulf of Maine.

There were miserable court opinions (i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Texas redistricting), but (apologies for being corny) even SCOTUS couldn’t really overturn the elation we felt getting certain fair rulings from brave federal judges under tremendous pressure (i.e., Judge Jeffrey Brown, also on Texas redistricting). So what we’re doing at the end of this year is thinking about everyone who gave us some hope along the way.

Like the one and only member of the public who sat through the entire Texas redistricting hearing – an El Paso local who initially attended out of curiosity, but came back for all nine days because she just got so invested in the fight against racial gerrymandering. And we didn’t even know how much we needed a truly joyful leader in the redistricting battle until we saw Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, a Democrat whose unapologetic social media posts became a rallying cry for fighting back in dark times.