Hello, and welcome back to another bleak edition of The Franchise! (How’s that for an opening line?)
As the midterm primary season heats up, so do the attacks on election administration, which we will get into more below.
But first …
The distressing red state scramble to completely gut congressional district maps and gerrymander away Black electoral power in the South continues in the aftermath of Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruling that struck down Louisiana’s second Black-majority congressional district and has set off a depressing race to redraw majority-minority districts across the Old Confederacy.
Here’s the latest.
In Missouri, a citizen group, People Not Politicians, filed a lawsuit this week to force Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins to make a decision on whether a referendum vote on the state’s new gerrymandered map, known as HB1, qualifies for the November ballot.
In their filing, People Not Politicians accuses Hoskins and Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway of “attempting to bully and intimidate local election officials into implementing congressional districts that—per the Missouri Supreme Court’s opinion and the evidence—should be deemed suspended as of December 9, 2025.”
The new map, which is poised to give Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the U.S. House, specifically targets the district of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s (D), a Methodist pastor and longtime Democratic politician in the state who was the first Black mayor of Kansas City.
Meanwhile in South Carolina, lawmakers convened a special session on redistricting this month after some Republicans initially resisted the effort, and a new gerrymandered map passed the South Carolina House this week. The map now goes to the full Senate for a vote. The new map specifically targets Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-SC) district, and, if approved, will give Republicans all seven of the state’s congressional seats.
In Virginia, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from Democrats to try to resurrect the state’s Democratic-led redistricting proposal.
And finally, in Louisiana, a gerrymander proposal — that if approved will eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts — was heard by the House Committee on House and Governmental Affairs on Thursday.
As always, there’s a lot to unpack. Let’s dig in.
Todd Blanche Auditions for AG With ‘Rigged’ 2020 Election Remarks
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, like most in the Trump administration, is still talking about the “rigged” 2020 election. It’s an easy place to plant his flag as the acting attorney general actively auditions to make his post permanent by boosting all of Trump’s priorities, grievances and corruption publicly.
During an interview on Fox on Sunday, Blanche responded to a video clip of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles saying that Trump actually won a lot of the states that he very much lost in 2020, saying, “there is a ton of evidence that the [2020] election was rigged, that’s not something the DOJ needs to tell you about.”
“There’s been evidence about that for many many years,” Blanche added. “What I can tell you is that we have multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Fulton County, Georgia.”
He then went on to accuse the amorphous “them” of being “very good at hiding up misconduct,” which is why, he said, the DOJ is “very focused on finding out whether the right people voted, whether people who were supposed to vote voted, whether there was one vote cast per voter.”
For months now, the DOJ has been baselessly investigating past elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, Fulton County, Georgia and Wayne County, Michigan. It’s all part of a broader effort to bolster Trump’s belief that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that rampant fraud does, in fact, exist in the counties that tend to be purple or vote Democratic.
The FBI has demanded voter data and voting records in all of these counties, which were all hotbeds of 2020 election misinformation, seemingly in an effort to engineer evidence that Trump actually did not lose the 2020 election, and, in the case of Wayne County, the 2024 election.
“I assure the American people that as soon as we have something to say for it, whether it’s charges, whether it’s a report, whether it’s the results of an investigation,” Blanche continued, “the American people will learn about what we uncovered.”
Despite his confidence in asserting that the 2020 election was stolen, Blanche was dodgy when Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked him to say if there will soon be a “definitive answer to whether or not the 2020 election was stolen.”
“I’m not going to promise there’s going to be a definitive answer,” he answered. “That wouldn’t be fair to you or anybody else, but we are looking at it, and we’re hoping to get one.”
Right.
The FBI Expands its 2020 Wisconsin Investigation
Speaking of pointless investigations into the 2020 election, the DOJ appears to be expanding its Wisconsin probe.
As a reminder, earlier this month, sources confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the FBI questioned Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe about the 2020 election.
This comes against the backdrop of Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers specifically saying in March of this year that he would resist these exact types of efforts from the FBI.
Federal investigators are now reportedly trying to speak with at least two Milwaukee city employees who had a role in the administration of the 2020 election, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Let me state it clearly — Donald Trump won elections for president in Wisconsin for both 2016 and 2024. He lost the election for president in 2020 in Wisconsin to Joe Biden,” Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a statement last week, responding to the news that the DOJ is investigating the 2020 election there.
“Milwaukee elections are conducted with the highest level of integrity and accuracy,” he continued. “Multiple objective reviews of our elections confirm that.”
Trump is Now Going After Maryland
Trump announced this week that he is requesting that the DOJ head to Maryland to investigate mail-in voting after reports of a vendor error with some mail-in ballots in the state.
In a statement on Friday, the Maryland State Board of Elections said it was “made aware of an error by our mail-in ballot vendor resulting in some voters receiving the wrong party ballot for the Gubernatorial Primary Election.”
The Board acknowledged the error, and said it would be sending out new ballots to all voters who were impacted.
“While it is possible only a small number of voters received the wrong ballot, and most voters received the correct ballot, all voters must be issued a replacement ballot,” the statement said. “This action of resending ballots maintains the integrity and security of mail-in voting.”
Trump seized on this opportunity to accuse Maryland of being involved in some sort of elaborate election fraud scheme on behalf of Democrats.
“In Maryland, they sent out 500,000 Illegal Mail In Ballots, and they got caught! So now, they’re going to send out 500,000 more Mail In Ballots, but nobody knows what’s happening with the first 500,000 they sent,” Trump said on Truth Social on Monday.
“In addition, many of these Ballots went to Democrats, so any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance! This was done by the Corrupt Governor of the State, Wes Moore,” he added. “He allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win. It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why. I’m sure this has gone on for years. I’m going to ask the Attorney General of the United States, and the DOJ, to bring an immediate investigation into this situation.”
A spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told WBAL News Radio that Trump’s statement is “false and irresponsible.”
And in a post on X, Maryland State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis said that Trump’s statement “creates an environment of misinformation on a voting right.”
“Mail-in voting is not a partisan issue,” he added. “Mail-in voting is legal.”
In Other Election News
TPM: Election Denialists Claim They Are Laying the Groundwork for a DOJ Probe of Michigan
Brennan Center: State Voting Laws Roundup: May 2026 Voters across the country will face new voting restrictions in the upcoming midterms.
NBC News: DOJ official told GOP ally that big payouts were coming for Jan. 6 defendants
Frist!
Hang in there folks.
Serious mad king energy going on in this obsession over the 2020 election.
A lot of states wouldn’t be facing this crap if the Democratic party was a national party that promoted people running for school boards, city councils and state legislatures across the country including in red states.. We have allowed the notion that the minority will soon be the majority to control our thinking for far too long. Give Republicans in South Carolina a run for their money. Stop letting some states be uncontested red states. Then watch democracy bloom.
South Carolina has been trying to be an independent country since 1828.