Trump threatens Thune amid unwavering Senate resistance to SAVE America Act

• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) appears to be calling Trump’s bluff as the White House doubles down on political threats to get parts of Trump’s sweeping anti-voting agenda into law.
  
  
• Now, Trump is taking aim at Thune, who has consistently maintained that the proposal doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.

➤ The latest in Trump’s increasingly desperate SAVE America push

Legacy media’s embarrassing feeding frenzy on New Jersey voter registration error

• The legacy media has pounced on the story of New Jersey’s voter registration error, and each new Republican announcement of an investigation, or call for an even wider investigation, has given it new momentum.
  
  
• The volume and tone of the news coverage have been shamefully out of proportion to the scale of the issue.

➤ Inside the legacy media’s feeding frenzy

Election officials warn of the casino-ification of voting

• With the explosive growth of prediction market gambling, Americans are betting millions of dollars on 2026 election outcomes. Now, election officials are sounding the alarm about potential dangers that could come with the emerging “casino-ification” of voting.

➤ Why a new “startling finding” is worrying election officials

The GOP has a plan to undermine free and fair elections. We must stop them

• “The most significant legal fights this election cycle have been over Trump’s efforts to collect vast troves of sensitive voter data from the states,” Marc writes in a new op-ed. “He wants this highly personal information to build a nationwide database of registered voters that he controls. Once in possession of such a database, his administration would dictate to states which voters must be removed from their current rolls.” 
  
  

• He adds: “The threat to free and fair elections is existential. Indeed, there is no more important fight happening in the courts right now than this one.”
  
  

• This piece was originally written for Democracy Docket members. We’re sharing this one with everyone because the stakes for this election are too high not to.
  

➤ Read Marc’s latest

California, Pennsylvania, call for DHS to substantiate sweeping noncitizen voter roll claims

• Pennsylvania’s top election official, a Republican, rebuffed the Trump administration’s claim that nearly 15,000 noncitizens could be registered to vote in the commonwealth, demanding it explain how that estimate was calculated.
  
  
• California’s secretary of state was even blunter. "I have serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims," she wrote.

➤ How they went after Trump

Republicans want to make it easier to reject votes cast by mail in Iowa

• Republicans asked a state judge today to lift a 2019 court order blocking part of an Iowa voter-suppression law that restricts absentee voting.
  
  
• If the order is lifted, it would make it much easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots if they can’t match a voter’s signature with the one on their voter registration.

➤ What’s happening in Iowa?

Here we share noteworthy briefs on all things voting rights and democracy. Have a footnote for us? Send it to newsletters@democracydocket.com.

• A man sitting behind Trump during Lindsey Graham’s funeral has gone viral for his reaction to (seemingly) a smell around the president. You can imagine what many people think it is.
  
  
• Actor Mark Hamill was not happy with Trump saying “Star Wars” during recent remarks.
  
  
• Woof. The U.S. government apparently displayed an AI-generated map of Africa during an AIDS conference in Brazil this week where it erroneously marked every single country on it. Let’s make sure those data centers are funded, though!