From redistricting to President Donald Trump’s executive power grab to the Justice Department’s war on voting and beyond, these top-visited stories highlight the issues that defined democracy in 2025.
Here is a list of Supreme Court cases we here at Democracy Docket will be keeping our gimlet eyes peeled for in 2026 — those with the greatest potential for reshaping American democracy and our nation’s constitutional order in the coming year, whether for good or for ill (mostly for ill).
Missourians filed a lawsuit Tuesday asking a court to stop the state from using its new congressional map until voters have the chance to approve or reject the measure in a referendum.
President Trump’s military takeover of Chicago will not go forward after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling halting his attempt to send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.
The Justice Department Monday appealed the dismissal of its criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, marking another attempt to resuscitate its political prosecutions against President Trump’s longtime foes.
Since Donald Trump took office this year, the DOJ has filed 25 lawsuits that would ultimately lead to valid voters being removed from registration rolls, putting their right to cast a ballot at risk. According to Democracy Docket’s litigation counts, there have been 43 anti-voting lawsuits filed this election cycle. The DOJ also dropped a number of cases launched during Joe Biden’s administration to protect the right to vote.
The Justice Department is demanding states surrender their private voter data in the name of election integrity. But its rapidly expanding crusade to seize that data has been riddled with sloppy filings and a growing list of self-inflicted embarrassments that undercut the department’s claim to competence.
The federal government has now filed lawsuits against 21 states, plus D.C., demanding registrants’ unredacted private information — including driver license numbers, social security numbers and dates of birth — in a campaign decried by local officials and legal experts as an unconstitutional attack on states’ authority to run elections and an illegal attempt to create an unprecedented national voter database.
When Republicans in Missouri claimed last week that a gerrymandered congressional map was already in effect, they dealt a major blow to voters who want the final word in the state’s redistricting battle. But pro-voter organizers say there’s still a path forward for voters to block the map — and they’re ready to keep fighting.
Republicans and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in federal court this week that California’s new redistricting plan constitutes an illegal racial gerrymander — and not a legal partisan one, like Democrats claim.