SCOTUS skeptical of right-wing push for flood of election law challenges

• The Supreme Court seemed wary of making it easier for candidates to challenge election laws during oral arguments today in a case challenging Illinois' mail-in voting law. A GOP congressman is urging the justices to let him sue after his case was tossed for lack of standing by a lower court. Some leading anti-voting groups are supporting the lawsuit, in the hope that it could make it easier to challenge election laws they don’t like.
  
  
• If the justices grant the representative standing, it could lead to more election-related lawsuits being filed. But not nearly as many as it would if they adopted his broader argument: That all federal candidates, and even other elected officials, should have standing to challenge election laws.

GOP could lock in House control for a generation if SCOTUS ends key VRA protection, new report warns

• Next week, SCOTUS will rehear a case whose outcome would effectively end one of the last remaining protections against racially discriminatory voting maps. At stake is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal law’s central safeguard against racial gerrymanders.
  
  
• A new report from pro-voting groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter paints a stark picture of what could happen if the court sides with plaintiffs seeking to weaken the core provision.

Ninth Circuit lifts block on National Guard deployment in Portland

• The 9th Circuit granted the Trump administration's request to halt a temporary restraining order, which blocked the deployment of the Oregon National Guard.
  
  
• However, this doesn't change the current situation, because a second, broader temporary restraining order — which the Trump administration has not appealed — still blocks any National Guard deployments in Portland.

Groups push back against DOJ’s grab for California voter data

• Pro-voting groups filed a motion to intervene in the DOJ’s lawsuit against California seeking the state’s full, unredacted voter registration list.* They argue handing over sensitive voter data would violate state privacy laws and chill voter participation, particularly among Black and immigrant voters.
  
  
• With this latest filing, voters and pro-voting groups have now moved to intervene in all eight of the DOJ’s current lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter registration lists.

Right wing group asks SCOTUS to require states purge more voters

• The right-wing Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) asked SCOTUS to review whether Michigan violated the National Voter Registration Act by failing to make "reasonable efforts" to remove deceased voters from its registration rolls. The group also asked the court to consider whether PILF has standing to challenge the state’s refusal to release related voter records.
  
  
• This marks the second Supreme Court petition filed by PILF in the past two weeks concerning the denial of voter record requests.​​

Sen. Chris Murphy: The GOP’s dangerous game with Trump’s corruption 

• Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) exposed how Republicans are enabling Trump’s corruption — and the dangerous consequences for American democracy. From Trump’s shady power grabs to GOP complicity, this conversation reveals what’s really at stake in the fight for accountability.

Coming up tomorrow

• A judge will hear oral arguments in Illinois and Chicago’s lawsuit against Trump’s latest deployment. A potential court-ordered block in that case could come later tomorrow or Friday.
  
  
• A Ninth Circuit panel is hearing the Trump administration’s appeal of the court order freezing the Portland deployment.

*The pro-voting groups are represented by the Elias Law Group, whose chair, Marc Elias, is the founder of Democracy Docket.