This week at Democracy Docket: Trump is doing everything he can think of to control voting. But states aren’t backing down

President Donald Trump’s crusade to take over voting continues to falter in the courts. So he’s pulling out a range of dangerous new strategies to exert control. 

That makes this an especially perilous moment — and one that Democracy Docket will be tracking more closely than ever.

First, the latest string of anti-Trump, pro-voter court rulings: On Tuesday, Natalie Hausmann reported, a federal judge declined to pause a recent order that had blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing Trump’s sweeping March diktat cracking down on mail voting. Then, in what Jim Saksa described as a “blistering” opinion, another federal judge on Wednesday denied the administration’s request to restart the use of a flawed database aimed at finding noncitizens on the voter rolls. And finally, Jacob Knutson reported that on Friday night, yet another federal judge dismissed a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit seeking New York’s voter rolls — the twelfth loss out of 12 for DOJ in its sweeping state voter roll grab. 

But the legal failures appear to have only made Trump and his team more determined to interfere with states’ authority to run elections. 

Their most brazen and shocking move came Thursday night, when Trump, (with a crucial assist from the Roberts Court) abruptly fired all the remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan federal voting panel.

Matt Cohen covered the outraged response from Democratic lawmakers and election officials, one of whom called the move “dangerous … reckless … and desperate.” And Jim dug into what the result could be. Much will depend on what Trump tries to do from here, but the firings could make it easier for him to achieve a long-sought anti-voting goal: changing the federal voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship.

That wasn’t Trump’s only gambit. As Yunior Rivas reported, Trump’s DOJ this week announced it would send monitors to watch primary voting in six states — five of them Democratic-run. 

DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon describing the monitoring as a routine step undertaken by past administrations of both parties. But Jacob and I explained why that line won’t fly: Past programs have been aimed at protecting voters from intimidation. This one, it’s clear from Dhillon’s comments, aims to increase government control of the voting process. And separately, Jacob noted the irony that Trump’s effort could be hampered by a years-long conservative campaign, successful in part, to limit the reach of the federal monitoring program.

There was more: With its legal push for state voter rolls floundering, DOJ sent letters this week to the election chiefs of all 50 states, Yunior reported, warning that they could face prosecution if they don’t do enough to stop noncitizens from voting. 

That sounds alarming — and it is. But most states made clear they wouldn’t be intimidated. 

In an on-camera interview with Yunior, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) called it an attempt to frighten Latino voters. 

“The road to the White House runs through Nevada. It runs through Arizona,” Aguilar said. “And when you have two Latino secretaries of state in those two states, you better believe we’re going to stand up and push back against this bullshit.”