DOJ Threatens Charges Against State Officials Not Caving on Voter Data

The Justice Department sent letters demanding 30 states led by both Democrats and Republicans retain all 2024 election files, threatening their top election officials should they fail to do so. 

The letters order states not to destroy or dispose of any voting records from 2024, as the target states “are currently under investigation” and subject to “ongoing litigation.” 

“The purpose of this letter is to notify you of your obligations to take reasonable steps to conduct a litigation hold and preserve and retain all hard copy documents and electronically stored information … which may be relevant, or likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” the letter reads. “Your failure to preserve relevant data may constitute spoliation of evidence, which may subject you to civil and criminal sanctions.” 

The DOJ also told every target state—including red ones—that it is under investigation for not complying with the National Voter Registration and Help America Vote Acts. 

“‘As you are aware, you are currently under investigation…’ Um, no, I was not aware, but I guess I am now,” Utah’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson wrote Wednesday.  “It would be nice if the good folks at the DOJ would focus on actual problems instead of baselessly harassing election officials.” 

“It’s just one thing after another. Running elections is a lot of work, it’s very complicated, and it’s not something you can just pivot from all the time,” Henderson said in another video. “All of the things that have happened have been just way outside the scope of my imagination. Never expected to have the federal government insert themselves to this degree. 

The DOJ confirmed sending the letters, with a spokesperson telling The New York Times that the department targeted “the states we are in active litigation against regarding their failure to provide the full” statewide registered voter list. 

This is just the latest update in the DOJ’s brazen attempt to legitimize Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud ahead of the midterm elections. While the DOJ insists that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 grants them every right to seize states’ voter data, 23 judges have ruled otherwise. Even still, that hasn’t stopped the DOJ from issuing these vague demands. 

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says current Mayor Zohran Mamdani should skip the national 9/11 memorial service—but in light of recent revelations, it seems like Giuliani’s the one who should stay home.

Earlier this week, Giuliani publicly opposed plans for New York City’s first Muslim mayor to attend the national ceremony commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” Giuliani said.

You know what offends me? Putting New Yorkers in danger—and that’s exactly what Giuliani did in the aftermath of 9/11.

The New York City Mayor’s Office released a trove of city records Tuesday citing evidence that Giuliani and other city officials misled the city residents about air safety following the attacks. The documents include internal memos in which officials raised alarms regarding testing that revealed elevated levels of toxins, including asbestos, in the weeks and months following the attacks. Decades later, thousands have suffered from chronic health conditions linked to 9/11.

In one internal memo dated October 6, 2001, Kelly McKinney, associate commissioner for the Health Department, warned that “air quality [for asbestos] at those locations is not yet suitable for reoccupancy.” The same day, Giuliani announced that the air was safe.

In the past, the man once known as America’s mayor has been lauded for uniting New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11. But 25 years later, his blatant Islamophobia only serves to tear us apart.

Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, responded to the massive document release in a statement.

“Now would be a good time to remind Mayor Mamdani that cowardly terrorists acting in the name of Islam are 100 percent responsible for all of the death and destruction on September 11, 2001, and for all of the suffering and illness that have continued since that day,” Goodman said.

“The EPA, a federal agency, issued press releases and public statements declaring that air samples showed the air quality near Ground Zero was safe in September 2001. The agency later apologized for those statements, saying it did the best it could with the knowledge available at the time,” the spokesperson added. “It is a shame that Mayor Mamdani is now attempting to score cheap partisan political points by seeming to blame the local officials who rushed to the scene, rather than radical Islam, for September 11.”

If anyone is trying to gain cheap political points, it’s Giuliani. The former mayor is desperate to link the crimes of terrorists to Mamdani—who was only nine years old when the Twin Towers fell.

A federal appeals court on Thursday compared ICE’s detainment policies to the historical “stain” of Japanese internment during World War II, while rejecting the agency’s effort to detain people without bond.

A 2–1 majority on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals cited the 1892 Geary Act, which punished Chinese workers with hard labor if they did not carry their papers on them at all times.

“Fifty years later, with racial animus masquerading as national interest, the government ordered the mass detention of all individuals of Japanese descent present in the United States during World War II. Nearly 120,000 people were sent to internment camps within our borders,” wrote Judge Nicole Berner.

“The stain of these detentions on our nation—and the judiciary’s abdication of its obligation to protect basic freedoms—continues to haunt us,” she wrote. “Those shameful and abhorrent past detentions were limited in scope in comparison to the mandatory detention that the Government urges us today to find that Congress established thirty years ago in an ambiguously worded statutory provision. We decline to do so.”

The Trump administration has insisted upon arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants, even those who have been in the country for decades—a break from every single administration that preceded it, including Trump’s first one. Mandatory detention was previously only used for those who had just crossed the southern border.

This policy shift triggered nearly 20,000 lawsuits against the Trump administration, with 450 judges, many of whom Trump himself appointed, ruling against it. ICE has instead begun classifying longtime undocumented residents as admission-seekers. The Fourth Circuit Court rejected this, as well, the ninth consecutive time ICE’s policy has been struck down by an appeals court.

Republicans are celebrating Democratic Senator John Fetterman making a cameo at the midterm GOP convention Wednesday night.

Fetterman praised President Trump, as well as fellow Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, a Republican, in a video in which he called himself a “commonsense Democrat.”

“I’m always going to stand with America. I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and the anti-American way of life. Dave McCormick is the kind of senator that gets the job done, and he’s going to fight for Pennsylvania. I’m proud to count him as my friend,” Fetterman said.

Taking the stage in Dallas right after the video, McCormick told the convention crowd, “How great is John Fetterman, right?

“Thank you Senator Fetterman for your friendship, thank you for your courage and thank you for all you do for Pennsylvania,” McCormick said.

Personalities across MAGA and the right wing quickly began rejoicing. White House X account Rapid Response 47 immediately posted the video with the caption “Based John Fetterman.”

Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly said on NewsNation that Fetterman “is going to be a Republican.”

“He will. He’s going to be a Republican,” O’Reilly told the network’s Chris Cuomo and sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, adding that Fetterman spoke at McCormick’s behest because Trump’s steel tariffs have “injected a lot of money and hope into” Pennsylvania’s steel industry.

“So, McCormick asked Fetterman, ‘Hey, we owe it to the folks for you to get out there and say that,’ which Fetterman did,” O’Reilly told Cuomo and Smith.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called Fetterman “an example of common sense” on Fox News.

“He does not side with the radical left. It’s the insurgent left. It’s taken over that party. We make the case all the time. This is not your father’s Democratic Party!” Johnson told Laura Ingraham.

Far-right commentator Laura Loomer, a proud Islamophobe, told the British newspaper The Telegraph that if Fetterman joined the Republican Party, she would “absolutely” welcome him.

“He is the only Democrat outside of [Florida Representative] Jared Moskowitz right now who is actually really calling out this Islamic Communist takeover of the party,” Loomer said.

Fetterman voted with Republicans in the Senate to end last year’s government shutdown, supported multiple Trump appointees, and opposed efforts to end the war in Iran. He has taken a hard-line stance in support of Israel, fully supporting its war on Gaza and refusing to acknowledge any war crimes. Still, he refuses to commit to switching parties, despite massive criticism from Democrats and reports that his right turn is coming at the expense of his constituents.

“I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party—and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the fifty-first vote that I ran on,” Fetterman said in a statement Wednesday.

The Supreme Court has blocked a federal judge’s decision about Missouri’s voting map, further throwing the state’s election into chaos.

The nation’s highest judiciary issued an order in the pending case Thursday, directing the state to rely on the original congressional maps that were drawn after the 2020 census during the upcoming midterm cycle, rather than the 2025 map created at Donald Trump’s behest, which would have granted Republicans an extra seat in the House.

It’s possible that this won’t be the Supreme Court’s final say on the matter, however. The legal memo noted that the stay will remain in place unless the case (People Not Politicians v. Onder) receives a final ruling, either by being elevated to the court’s bench or by being referred back to a lower court.

The drama began last summer, when Trump ordered several Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps in a brazen attempt to create a GOP advantage in Washington.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, in accordance with the census cycle, allowing states to more accurately reflect changing local populations and meet their respective political needs. Yet Trump’s order arrived in the middle of the decade, raising alarms that the nationwide effort was an attempt to undermine U.S. democracy.

Republicans wasted no time implementing the directive in Missouri, where they shaved portions off a Democratic stronghold encompassing Kansas City, endangering Representative Emanuel Cleaver’s seat. The new map offered Republicans a 7–1 advantage, a one-seat gain over their previous 6–2 delegation.

A group called People Not Politicians collected more than 300,000 signatures in opposition to the new map—more than double the amount required—to force a statewide referendum on the matter, which is due to take place on November 3 on the statewide ballot.

Regardless, Missouri pushed ahead, opting to use the new maps during its August 4 primary. But this week, things got especially messy.

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the state should use the new maps during the November election, in light of the primary using the new districts. But that judge’s decision was in direct conflict with an order from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had decided moments earlier that another legal decision on the matter—the Missouri Supreme Court overturning the new map—should stand. In doing so, Kavanaugh effectively decided that Missouri should use its original maps, rather than the new one drafted last year.

The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision raises more questions about how the midterm election will be carried out, given how primary votes were conducted.

This story has been updated.