In a victory for immigrants and advocacy groups, a federal judge has provisionally blocked enforcement of a Florida elections law that prohibited noncitizens from collecting signatures for citizen-led ballot initiatives.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, in a 28-page ruling, temporarily struck down part of a controversial measure Republicans pushed to passage this year (HB 1205) that empowered state officials to enforce citizenship requirements on ballot initiative collectors.
Walker’s decision, a preliminary injunction order, stops Florida’s 20 State Attorneys from prosecuting Smart & Safe Florida, the organization behind last year’s failed Amendment 3 effort to legalize recreational cannabis, and its non-resident petition circulators.
Essentially, Smart & Safe’s hundreds of non-resident workers can resume collecting signatures for its current cannabis legalization ballot initiative without fear of criminal charges.
The Thursday ruling also blocked enforcement of the citizenship ban against Washington-based nonprofit Poder Latinx, the organization’s noncitizen members and two lawful permanent residents, Yivian Lopez Garcia and Humberto Orjuela Prieto….
All posts by Rick Hasen
“DHS to states: Follow our voting rules or lose out on election security money”
The Trump administration has indicated it may withhold tens of millions of dollars in election security funding if states don’t comply with its voting policy goals.
The money comes from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program, and voting officials say new requirements from the administration will make the money inaccessible for most of the country.
NPR is the first news outlet to report on the changes.
About $28 million — or 3% of the overall Homeland Security Grant Program — is devoted to election security and now at risk, though some officials and experts worry that the new requirements could also endanger hundreds of millions of dollars in other grants for law enforcement.
Voting officials say the amount of money at risk won’t make or break the country’s election security. But the potential withholding of funds over policy differences — combined with other recent election security cuts — has many wondering whether the Trump administration is prioritizing election security the way it claims it is.
“Despite the rhetoric, there’s been [a] serious cutback to election security support that is being offered to the states,” said Larry Norden, an elections expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, which is broadly critical of President Trump’s policies. “And this is going to be one more cut for a lot of states because most states are not going to allow the president to decide [how their elections work].”…
“Trump seeks to ban the mail voting system that Republicans built in Arizona to boost turnout”
The vast majority of Arizonans who voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024 cast their ballot by mail — a system ushered into existence and expanded by Republican lawmakers in the Grand Canyon State. Trump says he wants to ban it nationwide.
Despite calls to ban it from far-right lawmakers, political candidates and their supporters, casting a ballot by mail is the most popular way to vote in Arizona — and has been for decades. In the 2024 presidential election, around 75% of voters in the state cast their ballot by mail, even after Trump urged them to head to the polls instead. The number of Trump voters in Arizona who mailed their ballots outstripped those who showed up to the polls on Election Day 2024 by more than 4.5 times, according to data from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.
On Monday, Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that he planned to rid the country of voting by mail and the machines that count ballots before the 2026 midterms. Later that day, he promised to issue an executive order banning no-excuse mail-in ballots, which he called “corrupt.”
“And it’s time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it,” Trump said. “It’s the only way they can get elected.”…
In 1991, it was Republicans who brought no-excuse vote by mail to Arizona, in part as a way to increase turnout when voter apathy was at an all-time high. And the move worked: turnout in the 1988 presidential election in Arizona was 67%, but in jumped to 77% in 1992.
Republican Gov. Fife Symington signed the bill into law in July 1991 that allowed voters to request an early ballot without having to provide an excuse. The Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives approved the bill 53-0 and the Senate, which had a rare Democratic majority, voted for it 21-9, with opposition from conservative Republicans.
Then-Republican National Committeeman Mike Hellon told the Pima County Rotary Club that their vote-by-mail outreach in the 1992 presidential election was so bad that he considered it “criminal negligence,” according to a Nov. 15, 1992 article in the Arizona Daily Star.
He said he particularly resented that Democrats “cleaned our clock” because “it’s our program.”
The state’s Republican-controlled legislature continued to vote to expand no-excuse vote by mail over the next two decades, including with the creation of the active early voting list in 2007.
The push to eliminate voting by mail is new, and It is only in the past 10 years that far-right Republicans began a true campaign to rid the state of no-excuse voting by mail. And while heading to the polls to cast a ballot in person has become more popular for Republicans during the past two election cycles, the effort to nix early voting by mail has failed to garner mainstream support due to its popularity among Democrat, Republican and independent voters.
The most extreme Republicans in the Arizona legislature have tried to pass laws banning no-excuse mail voting since 2020, after Trump falsely claimed that it was rife with fraud and blamed it for his loss that year to Joe Biden. So far those efforts, including a lawsuit from Arizona’s most infamous election deniers Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, and bills to change voting laws proposed by members of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, have failed.
Trump-backed candidates who lost their elections for statewide office in 2022 were quick to praise Trump’s demonization of voting-by-mail on Monday.
“This is the best news I’ve heard in years!” Lake, who lost her bid for governor in 2022 and was defeated in the U.S. Senate contest in 2024, posted on the social media site X, formerly Twitter. “The people demand honest elections.”
Lake spent the two years following her narrow 2022 loss to Katie Hobbs attempting to convince Arizona courts to overturn the results.
“President Trump is going to fix our broken election system and I will be there to help all the way,” U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh posted on X. Hamadeh lost the race for Arizona Attorney General in 2022 to Democrat Kris Mayes by fewer than 400 votes. He also attempted to overturn the results with a legal challenge.
Bryan Blehm, a Scottsdale divorce attorney who represented Lake in her court challenges, and Shelby Busch, an election conspiracy theorist who testified during them, heaped praise on Trump for his demonization of no-excuse voting by mail during a livestream on X Monday.
“We’ve been talking for years about the danger of mail-in ballots,” said Busch, the first vice chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee.
Blehm, who was suspended from practicing law for two months last year for lying to the Arizona Supreme Court on Lake’s behalf, went on to claim — without evidence — that COVID-19 was intentionally released prior to an election year to force more voting by mail. ….
“Advocates File Immediate Legal Challenge to Texas Gerrymander “
Hours after Texas lawmakers approved a new gerrymandered congressional map Saturday morning, Texans asked a court to block it.
The plaintiffs*, a group of Black and Latino Texans, filed an amended complaint in an ongoing challenge to the electoral districts Texas drew in 2021. The amended complaint alleges that the new map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment by diluting the voting power of Black and Latino communities.
It also argues that the redistricting violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause “because it unnecessarily and unjustifiably considers racial and partisan demographics as part of a voluntary, mid-cycle redistricting,” and because it is “malapportioned” in violation of the principle of one person, one vote.In addition, the plaintiffs argue that the new redistricting “intentionally destroy[ed] majority-minority districts and replac[ed] them with majority-Anglo districts.” This was done, the plaintiffs charge, “explicitly because of the racial composition of those districts.”
Lawyers’ Committee statement:
Robert Weiner, the voting rights project director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represents the Texas NAACP in the ongoing lawsuit against Texas for racial gerrymandering, issued the following statement regarding the new redistricting law:
“This map is illegal. The architects of this racially discriminatory plan clearly targeted minority voters. The legislators bulldozed important majority minority districts. It eliminates opportunities of Black and Brown people to elect their preferred candidates in multiple Congressional districts.
“We are still in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit against the state of Texas because the existing maps dilute the votes of people of color. This new map increases discrimination. The legislators supercharged their efforts to undercut the voting strength of minority voters after the Department of Justice–misstating the law and abusing its power–told Texas to do that. This plan cannot stand.”
“As part of the ongoing case that we and others are challenging the 2021 maps, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso will hold a hearing on Wednesday, August 27th, to consider the schedule for litigation concerning Texas’s redistricting efforts.
“Doggett won’t seek reelection to Congress if new district is upheld by courts, paving way for Casar”
“These states could redistrict before the 2026 midterms”
WaPo goes down the list.
“Red Envelopes With Cash Are Changing Hands at Adams Campaign Rallies”
NYT:
In July, New York Times reporters witnessed other Adams supporters handing out red envelopes with cash at three separate campaign events: one in Flushing, Queens; another in Manhattan’s Chinatown; and a third in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. At those events, Mr. Adams picked up support from leaders of influential Chinese community groups, including several with close ties to the Chinese government.
Ms. Greco, a top Adams fund-raiser whose homes were raided last year by federal investigators looking for evidence of Chinese interference in the 2021 mayor’s race, was present at all three of the rallies….
The Adams campaign said it was unaware of any payments to reporters and had not approved them.
“Mayor Adams had absolutely no knowledge of this and does not condone it,” Todd Shapiro, his spokesman, said. “He has never — and would never — authorize anyone to hand out cash or gifts to reporters. Any such behavior is inappropriate and unacceptable.”
At the event in Flushing on July 13, dozens of Chinese American leaders gathered outside a public library branch to offer their support for Mr. Adams, giving him a needed boost as he trailed badly in polls. Mr. Adams, a registered Democrat who took office in 2022, is running a long-shot bid for re-election as an independent in November as his mayoralty has been tarnished by federal investigations and scandals.
The event, organized by four influential community leaders, buzzed with dozens of fervent backers, proudly wearing shirts adorned with Mr. Adams’s face and energetically waving U.S. flags as they chanted and called for his re-election.
One of the organizers, Steven Tin, the director of Better Chinatown USA, which hosts the Lunar New Year parades in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was seen by The Times holding $50 bills and handing out red envelopes to reporters from Chinese-language news organizations.
At the event, Mr. Tin said that it is a common practice in Chinese culture to give cash to “reporters, YouTubers, photographers” as a “thank you for coming” gift.
Reached by phone on Thursday, Mr. Tin said that the payments to reporters were small and were made not to ensure coverage, but rather as a “courtesy.” He said he would ask the Adams campaign to cover the cost of water and banners for the event, but that he had not yet discussed whether it would reimburse him for the cash payments.
Mr. Shapiro, the Adams campaign spokesman, ruled that out.
“We do not provide it, we do not direct it and we do not authorize anyone to distribute it,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and misleading.”…
“California voters will decide redistricting in November, escalating battle with Trump and Texas”
Ratcheting up the pressure in the escalating national fight over control of Congress, the California Legislature on Thursday approved a November special election to ask voters to redraw the state’s electoral lines to favor Democrats and thwart President Trump’s far-right policy agenda.
The ballot measure, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and national Democratic leaders, is the latest volley in a national political brawl over electoral maps that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If voters approve the redrawn lines on Nov. 4, Democrats in the Golden State would see the odds tilted further in their favor, while the number of California Republicans in the House could be halved.
Newsom initially said that new electoral districts in California would only take effect if another state redrew its lines before 2031. But after Texas moved toward approving its own maps this week that could give the GOP five more House seats, Democrats stripped the so-called “trigger” language from the amendment — meaning that if voters approve the measure, the new lines would take effect no matter what.
The ballot measure language, which asks California voters to override the power of the independent redistricting commission, was approved by most Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate, where they hold supermajorities.
California lawmakers have the power to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without the approval of the governor. Newsom, however, is expected later Thursday to sign two separate bills that fund the special election and spell out the lines for the new congressional districts.,,,
Federal Government Files Supreme Court Brief in NRSC Case Arguing That an Aspect of Federal Campaign Finance Law Violates the First Amendment
You can find the government’s brief on the merits here. You can find the brief of the Republican Party making similar arguments here. Because the government has taken the unusual position in attacking the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress, the Court appointed an amicus to argue in favor of the law’s constitutionality. The Democratic Party also intervened to defend the law. Their briefs will be filed later.
The Republican Party brief cites a blog post by Rick Pildes and Bob Bauer, The Supreme Court, the Political Parties, and the SuperPACs, ELECTION LAW BLOG (June 24, 2025).
“Trump says Missouri will revise congressional districts to favor Republicans”
Missouri “is IN” for redrawing the state’s congressional districts in a special legislative session, President Donald Trump proclaimed Thursday on his social media platform.
With Texas moving quickly toward a mid-decade revision of its congressional map to tilt five districts toward the Republican Party, Missouri would now be expected to follow suit to help the GOP gain one more.
Missouri has eight congressional districts, and Democrats hold two. Any proposal is likely to split the 5th District, which is mainly in Kansas City, by adding Republican voters in sufficient numbers to take it away from incumbent Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
That would give Republicans seven of the state’s seats in the U.S. House.
For nearly a month, Trump has been pressuring Gov. Mike Kehoe and legislative leaders, with calls to at least one Republican lawmaker who expressed reluctance to go along.
“The Great State of Missouri is now IN,” Trump wrote. “I’m not surprised. It is a great State with fabulous people. I won it, all 3 times, in a landslide. We’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”
And Kehoe, in a statement responding to Trump, inched closer to saying he intended to call a special session. At a news conference in his office Tuesday, Kehoe said no decision had been made.
“Governor Kehoe continues to have conversations with House and Senate leadership to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians,” a statement sent by spokeswoman Gabby Picard read. “Governor Kehoe appreciates President Trump’s attention to this issue on behalf of Missourians.”..
Bob Bauer Sounds the Alarm: “Donald Trump’s Plan for ‘Honest’ Mid-Term Elections”
Bob Bauer writes, very much in line with what I wrote in the NYT yesterday:
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty….
Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.
There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.
In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”
It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.
Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways….
“Musk must face lawsuit brought by voters he convinced to sign petition in $1 million-a-day election giveaway, judge says”
A judge in Texas denied, on Wednesday, Elon Musk’s request to dismiss a class action lawsuit against him and his political action committee brought by a group of voters who participated in his $1-million-a-day “giveaway” leading up to the 2024 election.
Over the last few months, lawyers for Musk and America PAC have sought to get rid of the lawsuit brought by voters in battleground states who claim they were defrauded when the tech mogul and his PAC misled them to believe that if they signed a petition and gave away personal information, they could “randomly” win $1 million.
In reality, Musk and his PAC had pre-selected people to win the $1 million in exchange for a spokesperson contract – meaning those who signed the petition had no chance of winning.While lawyers for Musk and the PAC argued that there were “red flags” in their petition announcement that should have tipped people off that they were unlikely to win $1 million, the Texas judge disagreed.
“The Court finds it is plausible that [the plaintiff] would rely on Musk’s assertion that $1 million would be given out randomly notwithstanding his or America PAC’s later statements,” Judge Robert Pitman, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said in his order.
“Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump”
An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.
The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”
After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.
The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.
“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.
UPDATE: The 323 pages of multiple opinions are here. You can get a sense of the mess from the beginning of Justice Moulton’s opinion for himself and one other justice:
Defendants appeal from two decisions (and the resulting judgment) holding that defendants violated Executive Law § 63(12) by repeatedly submitting deceptive business records to banks, insurance companies, and the New York City Parks Department. Presiding Justice Renwick and I find that Supreme Court correctly found defendants liable. We agree with Supreme Court that the Attorney General acted well within her lawful power in bringing this action, and that she vindicated a public interest in doing so. We also find that Supreme Court properly ruled only on claims that are timely under the applicable statute of limitations. However, we would modify the remedy ordered by Supreme Court. While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
This decision is one of three issued by this Court today. Presiding Justice Renwick and I agree with our colleagues on certain points. Most importantly, we agree with Justice Higgitt, who is joined by Justice Rosado, that the Attorney General is empowered by Executive Law § 63(12) to bring this action. However, our remaining disagreements with our colleagues’ decisions are profound. In sum, Justice Friedman finds that Supreme Court’s rulings are infirm in almost every respect and would hold that the Attorney General had no power to bring this case under Executive Law § 63(12). He would dismiss the complaint outright. Justice Higgitt, while agreeing that the Attorney General had the power to bring this lawsuit, finds that errors made by Supreme Court require a new trial limited to only some of the transactions in question.Respectfully, Presiding Justice Renwick and I cannot harmonize our approach with that of our colleagues. Justice Friedman’s decision runs athwart our prior rulings in this case and misconstrues Executive Law § 63(12) and the case law that has interpreted that statute. While he justly criticizes comments made by the Attorney General about defendants when she was running for that office, he ignores that this issue has already been considered, and rejected, by this Court. Justice Higgitt’s decision contains cogent criticisms of aspects of Supreme Court’s two written decisions. However, this Court has the power to independently analyze the record made below in evaluating those decisions. That record amply justifies Supreme Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Returning this action to Supreme Court for a new trial as urged by Justice Higgitt is both unnecessary and likely terminal. It is difficult to imagine that a trial could proceed while one of the principal defendants, and a central witness, is President of the United States. The inevitable elapse of time and the attendant difficulties in recreating a vast record of testimony and documents – an exercise that is both Sisyphean and unneeded, because an extensive trial record already exists – would likely consign this meritorious case to oblivion.
Because none of the three decisions garners a majority, Justices Higgitt and Rosado join the decretal of this decision for the sole purpose of ensuring finality, thereby affording the parties a path for appeal to the Court of Appeals. Like Justice Friedman, we commend them for doing so. Unlike Justice Friedman, we do not find that this necessary measure is unfair to defendants. This Court previously imposed a stay on the judgment, a stay that defendants can seek to extend pursuant to CPLR 5519(e) until the Court of Appeals rules.
“Adams Adviser Suspended From Campaign After Giving Cash to Reporter”
NYT:
A close adviser to Mayor Eric Adams was suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag.
The adviser, Winnie Greco, who was the mayor’s former director of Asian affairs at City Hall and one of his best fund-raisers, had returned to the campaign trail as a volunteer during Mr. Adams’s run for a second term. She had been at the center of controversy after the F.B.I. raided her homes last year as part of a federal investigation into possible Chinese government interference in the 2021 mayor’s race.
On Wednesday, Ms. Greco attended an event with Mr. Adams in Harlem and gave more than $100 in a red envelope stashed inside the snack bag to a reporter for The City, according to an article in the online news outlet. The City promptly reported the incident to the city’s Department of Investigation, and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn contacted the newspaper’s lawyers, according to the newspaper’s account….