Votebeat’s August 24 report details the mechanics of the Supreme Court’s order lifting a stay on Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to restrict mail ballot handling for the 2026 midterms. Although a second injunction kept the order from taking immediate effect, the ruling narrowed the judicial constraints on the directive and left …
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly accused the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of injecting “chaos and uncertainty” into the 2026 midterm elections after the Court, on its emergency docket, lifted one of two injunctions blocking President Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting. Jackson’s central objection was procedural as much as substantive: the Court allowed the administration …
On August 26, Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent letters to the top federal prosecutors in five districts — the District of Columbia, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the Northern District of Illinois — opening an inquiry into what he characterized as a pattern of Justice Department attorneys misleading …
Justice Department lawyers filed notice on a Friday evening, “after the courts were closed,” that the U.S. Postal Service had transmitted a final rule to the Federal Register for August 26 publication with a retroactive effective date of August 21 — despite standing injunctions from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani barring implementation of Section 3 …
A divided Second Circuit panel held on August 21 that John Sarcone III was not lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, invalidating subpoenas he issued to New York Attorney General Letitia James. Judge Guido Calabresi wrote that delegating the office’s full duties …
Democracy Docket reported on August 21 that David Michael Levin — a Florida attorney who pleaded guilty after using SQL-injection attacks to breach the Lee County Supervisor of Elections and Florida Division of Elections websites in 2016 — appears to have joined the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Levin was photographed at Assistant Attorney General …
On August 20, 128 retired federal and state judges, joined by the Democracy Defenders Fund and Lawyers Defending American Democracy, filed a Florida Bar complaint against Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival, alleging that his social media posts “threaten the rule of law and increase the risk of violence against judges.” On July …
In an August 18 filing in the Eastern District of North Carolina opposing James Comey’s vindictive-prosecution motion, federal prosecutors argued that presidential direction of subordinates exercising executive functions is “a feature, not a bug” of the constitutional system, and characterized the tradition of Justice Department independence from the White House as a historical “myth.” The …
A former assistant U.S. attorney in Michigan has sued the Justice Department over her April dismissal, arguing she was let go without cause or notice because she had prosecuted anti-abortion activists under the FACE Act. Her complaint alleges violations of the Civil Service Reform Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the First and Fifth Amendments, …
In this NPR All Things Considered segment, host Sacha Pfeiffer interviews ProPublica reporter Aaron Davis about newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche’s appearance on Meet the Press, where Blanche declined to pledge that the Justice Department would operate independently of the White House and said no attorney general should make such a promise. Davis, coauthor …