Democracy Docket

The Trump administration carried out a sprawling months-long surveillance operation in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota as it sought to crack down on resistance to its aggressive immigration raids across the state, defense attorneys alleged in an alarming court filing Thursday.

Only a fraction of Alabama voters turned out this week to vote in an unusual second primary election, though more than half of the state’s congressional districts were on the ballot. The combination of few competitive races, confusion over the rescheduled primary, the unusual timing of the second vote and things like schools reopening all collided to depress turnout, observers said. “It’s a mix of things.

A federal appeals court Wednesday overturned a ruling that had blocked key parts of Texas’ sweeping voter suppression law, allowing those provisions to remain in effect despite a lower court’s finding that they violated federal protections for voters with disabilities. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision in full, delivering another win for anti-voting Texas Republicans in the yearslong legal fight over Senate Bill 1 (SB 1).

A Nebraska court Wednesday rejected the Republican National Committee’s lawsuit seeking to block certain U.S. citizens abroad from voting in the state, handing the national GOP another major loss in its escalating legal campaign against overseas voters. Lancaster County District Court Judge Ryan Post denied the RNC’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the complaint with prejudice.

A pro-voting lawsuit challenging a state law and Republican directive prohibiting students from presenting school-issued identification to register to vote or cast a ballot. Background Coalition for Open Democracy filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a new state law prohibiting students from using school-issued identification cards to vote.

In a victory for voters, a Michigan judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) that sought to make it easier for partisan poll challengers to dispute voter eligibility and interrupt the state’s ballot-counting process.

Minnesota’s Supreme Court upheld a state requirement that mail voters have a witness sign their ballot, an additional step pro-voting groups argued could disenfranchise some voters. The decision means Minnesota remains one of only eight states with the restrictive condition, according to data from the U.S. Vote Foundation. Nearby Wisconsin upheld a similar law in 2024. Missing witness signatures were one of the reasons the state rejected around 6,000 ballots in the 2022 election.

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hurry up and let it implement sweeping restrictions on mail voting that President Donald Trump is attempting to impose by executive order. In a supplemental brief Wednesday, the Department of Justice urged the Court to overturn two separate orders issued by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani that prevent the administration from implementing the order nationwide.

A voting rights group sued New Hampshire officials Tuesday over the state’s new ban on student IDs for voting, arguing the GOP-backed law illegally discriminates against young voters and that the Republican secretary of state exceeded his authority by extending the restriction to voter registration.

Pillow magnate and election conspiracist Mike Lindell is refusing to concede after losing his race to be the GOP’s candidate for Minnesota governor. Instead, he alleges that people on his election team found “a couple anomalies” in the vote tally, calling the results into question. Lindell — a towering figure in the election denial movement and founder of the company MyPillow — to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth (R) by more than 10 percentage points.