As Judges Reject Trump’s Quest to Control Elections, He Is Still Threatening States

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Trump Keeps Trying to Strong-Arm the States

In Washington, D.C. yesterday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan rejected an effort by the Trump administration to use a revised database of Social Security numbers and citizenship status to check the accuracy of state voter rolls.The database was created following a Trump executive order aimed at one of Trump’s phony “election fraud” obsessions: that massive numbers of non-citizens vote in our elections. Sooknanan found that the administration “had haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.” As a result, some states, after accessing the database, used its inaccurate information to remove U.S. citizens from voting rolls. “All in all,” the judge concluded, “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

In Maryland, Judge Stephanie Gallagher blocked the administration’s attempt to obtain state voter rolls — also for the purported reason of purging non-citizens from voting. The state records include dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. While some Republican states turned over their voter rolls to cooperate with Trump, the administration has sued 30 others and Washington, D.C. in an effort to force them to comply. Gallagher, who Trump nominated to the bench in his first term, became the ninth federal judge to reject this strong-arming, dismissing the case as built on “absurd” arguments. 

Meanwhile, CNN reported yesterday that the Trump administration is threatening to withhold $1 billion of homeland security funding to states unless they make his demanded voting changes, including phasing out electronic voting systems, reverting to using paper ballots, and, yes, running their voter rolls through the database Sooknanan struck down. Expect court challenges to these demands and threats, if actually carried out, as well.

DC Circuit Steps in on Boasberg’s Contempt Inquiry

As David reported here back in April, two Trump-appointed judges on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked District Court Judge James Boasberg from pursuing a contempt inquiry over the Trump administration’s violation of his March 2025 order to halt deportations of Venezuelan nationals to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, and return any flights that were en route. The case provided the country some of our earliest visibility into the lawless brutality of Trump’s mass deportation plans, and of the shocking devolution of the Department of Justice and its commitment to the rule of law. 

“The sneering tone toward Boasberg from Judge Neomi Rao in the majority opinion reinforced how much cover the Trump appointees have been giving the president as the administration seeks to cover up the details of its complicity in defying Boasberg’s orders,” David wrote about the opinion that aimed to put an end to Boasberg’s efforts to hold administration officials, possibly including DOJ attorneys, in contempt of court for flouting his orders and covering up their wrongdoing.

Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit vacated that April 2026 order and ordered a rehearing of the case en banc — that is, in front of all 11 judges on the court. Arguments are scheduled for September. 

Huckabee’s Christian Zionist Pitch to America

Amid the highly unusual tensions between the Trump administration and Israel over his capitulations to end the war he started in Iran, it is important to keep your eye on how his white evangelical base — largely highly committed to its Christian Zionism and very supportive of the Netanyahu government — is reacting. Things have been pretty muted publicly, likely because they are caught now between their dedication to Trump, who they have long hailed as a stalwart supporter of their vision for Israel, and Trump’s apparent heel-turn on Netanyahu, who he’s called “fucking crazy,” among other Trumpian outbursts. Trump’s evangelicals cheerleaded his war in Iran, and now they are forced to think of ways to cut his losses for him, or somehow spin them as not as bad as they seem.

Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, as an evangelical and ardent Christian Zionist, is deeply enmeshed in this world, and no doubt is intimately engaged with the squeeze they are feeling right now. He spoke this weekend to an international policy conference in Jerusalem, where he sought to reassure Israelis that America still had their back, despite Trump’s crash-out and Vance’s not-so-veiled threat that “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.” Huckabee’s remarks were not only aimed at Israelis; they were particularly targeted to evangelicals at home who entangle their Christian nationalism with their Christian Zionism.

In making his case for America’s “unbreakable bond” with the state of Israel, Huckabee emphasized not so much that Israel should be thankful for American support, but that Americans should feel indebted to Judaism and Israel for our political founding and freedoms — an incredibly odd thing for anyone to say, but especially for an ambassador, who is supposed to be representing America’s interests in Israel, not convincing Americans that they owe a debt of gratitude to Israel based on his revisionist history. “One of the reasons that our nations are tied together is because it is upon the Jewish foundation that Christianity was formed and upon the Jewish and Judeo-Christian foundation, Western civilization was formed. And without that there would not be an America. It is as simple as that,” he said. Americans, he went on, “need to be grateful to God for the Jewish people and the foundation upon which freedom and the sanctity of the individual was founded because that is what separates our values from the values of totalitarianism and dictatorship.”

Trump Is Still Hiding Kennedy Center Signage With His Name Removed

Thanks to intrepid photography by the group Hands Off the Arts, the Washington Post has confirmed that Trump’s name has indeed been removed from the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as required by a court order. The Trump-less signage remains covered by scaffolding and tarp, because Trump can never admit that he has lost, which he has been doing a lot of lately.

Speaking of Losing

In California, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, rejecting, like judges in Boston and Chicago before him, Trump’s arguments that ordinances barring use of city resources to aid in federal immigration enforcement are unconstitutional. In Minnesota, Judge Patrick Schiltz threw out grand jury subpoenas issued to Governor Tim Walz and other Democrats, part of Trump’s political revenge campaign against the state. 

Trump Is Also Losing Friends

Politico reports on how Trump has become a liability for far-right leaders in Europe, including Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the U.K.’s Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, and National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella in France.

Are Jared and Ivanka Triggering a Revolution in Albania?

Their investment in a planned 10,000-room luxury resort on the beloved, pristine Sazan Island off the coast of the Albanian Pishë Poro-Narta conservation reserve, has triggered an unprecedented uprising against the project — and against the Albanian officials who have supported it. “Not since the collapse of communism, more than three decades ago, has Albania been shaken by such collective fury,” the Guardian reports.

Speaking of Corruption

Casey Michel reports on an ongoing push by Trump allies to make the United States a safe haven for shell companies. “All of this is a staggering gift to cartels, Chinese money-laundering networks, Iranian proxies, and others who have relied on anonymous U.S. shells—all of whom Republicans supposedly stand against,” he writes.

Nepobaby Energy Drinks

What happens when the president’s son and granddaughter develop and market their own branded energy drinks? Nothing good.

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