This Week on Democracy Docket: Trump’s Crackdown Continues While DOJ Sues Blue States Over Voter Rolls

The campaign by President Donald Trump and his allies to use Charlie Kirk’s horrific killing to crack down on progressive political activity, and criticism of the president, intensified this week. And Democracy Docket’s Jacob Knutson stayed on top of it for us. 

As Jacob reported, Vice President JD Vance on Monday — speaking from the White House while hosting Kirk’s podcast — accused leading liberal foundations of paying “the salaries of terrorist sympathizers” and promoting “violence and terrorism.” On Wednesday, over 100 groups pushed back, warning that the administration’s threats to crack down on them “undermine our democracy and harm all Americans.” 

They’re right, including about the democracy part. Foundations like the ones Vance attacked don’t just fund philanthropic work. They also support the kind of progressive organizing and longer-term capacity-building that will be crucial to our hopes of defeating authoritarianism at the ballot box. That’s why Trump and his allies want to destroy these groups. And it’s why it makes sense to see the coming assault on progressive organizations as just another prong in the campaign to end fair elections — not so different, really, from restricting voting rights or drawing gerrymandered maps. 

Speaking of restricting voting: The Department of Justice sued Maine and Oregon this week, claiming that they’re violating federal voting law by declining to hand over their full voter rolls to the Trump administration, which says it needs to ensure they’re doing enough to remove voters.

Democracy Docket’s Matt Cohen has been tracking DOJ’s anti-voting shift, and Matt has been all over this story. On Friday he reported that the Democratic chief election officials in both states, as well as some leading voting experts, are pushing back by noting that their Republican counterparts in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have likewise told DOJ to pound sand, without drawing lawsuits.

“[O]nly Democrats are being targeted with lawsuits,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read told Matt in a statement. “That tells you everything you need to know.”

Meanwhile, Jim Saksa reported that anti-voting groups, including affiliates of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, are flooding the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) with comments in support of requiring proof of citizenship on the national voter registration form.

The barrage came in response to a request to add the requirement made by America First Legal, the right-wing legal organization founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller. It’s a workaround after a federal court blocked the provision in Trump’s anti-voting executive order that instructed the EAC to add the requirement.

Jim also dug into some recent illegal voting prosecutions launched by states aiming to gin up fear about the voting process. It’s no surprise that he found most involved the criminalization of honest mistakes, not anything remotely close to deliberate fraud. But some of the details will still shock you.