It’s only Tuesday, and already this week Donald Trump has said he doesn’t know if, as president, he must uphold the U.S. Constitution and has suggested imposing tariffs on movies. One reason it’s difficult to cover politics and the courts in this era is that Trump so frequently breaks the law and violates the Constitution that it is hard to keep track of everything else threatening democracy.

But every so often, we need to turn down the volume on Trump and pay attention to what his allies are doing to subvert democracy. When we do, we inevitably hear the low roar of the Republican voter suppression machine grinding away in the courts.

Even when the GOP is defeated in lower courts, Republicans routinely bring their fanciful claims and novel legal theories to the U.S. Supreme Court. We all remember how, in December 2020, Trump made a last-ditch attempt to have the Court overturn the election results. It failed.

So did the Republican effort to strip state courts of the power to enforce their own constitutions through the radical fringe “independent state legislature theory.” Most recently, Republicans failed to gut the Voting Rights Act in a case involving Alabama’s congressional districts.

But the fact that the GOP keeps losing doesn’t mean it has given up…

Want the latest news on which cases are heading to the Supreme Court and why they matter? Marc's weekly tip sheet lays out the trends and stories to watch in the week ahead, including major SCOTUS updates. In this tip sheet, Marc dives into:

• Ballot curing in Pennsylvania and the resurrection of a fringe theory
  
  
• Constitutional voting rights amendments challenged in Michigan
  
  
• Felony disenfranchisement in Virginia
  
  
• The GOP’s continued obsession with mail-in ballots — this time, in Illinois