Nominees in Trump’s second term have largely skirted questions from Democrats regarding the election, saying uniformly that Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 vote and that it would be improper to comment on a matter of political debate.
>The memo claimed the department has the legal authority to demand sensitive voter data not because of some federal law, but because the DOJ said so.
>Judges in the Michigan case last week didn’t get much of a chance to discuss the OLC memo filing during oral argument, since DOJ filed it the night before. But the memo was a major point of contention in DOJ’s argument Tuesday before a panel of three judges for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
>Judge Lucy Koh, a Biden appointee, used DOJ’s own words in the OLC memo against itself. The memo claimed that DOJ is only seeking state voter rolls to comply with President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order on elections that directs the Department of Homeland Security to use federal databases to check state voter rolls.
>“The executive order only says the Department of Homeland Security shall review each state’s publicly available voter registration list — it doesn’t say the unredacted,” Koh said. “So if you are basically trying to implement this executive order, why are you now seeking the unredacted [voter rolls]?”
>The DOJ also argued states have to hand over their full voter rolls — which include sensitive personal information of every voter like social security numbers and dates of birth — hinged on a vague statute in the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) that requires local and state election officials to “retain and preserve” documents related to registration that “come into [their] possession,” and hand them over to the government upon request.
Courtlistener: United States of America v. Weber, et al. (9th Cir. 2026)
DOJ recently announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of a settlement agreement in Trump’s lawsuit against his own IRS.
>The Settlement Agreement in Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, No. 1:26-cv-20609 (S.D. Fla.). has created the Anti-Weaponization Fund (the “Fund"). The Settlement Agreement directed the Attorney General to issue an order establishing funding and any other relevant requirements for the Fund.
...
Within 60 days of the Effective Date, the United States shall provide the U.S. Department of the Treasury with all necessary forms and documentation to direct a payment of $1,776,000,000 to an account for the sole use by the Anti-Weaponization Fund ("Designated Account").
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the fund is intended to compensate “victims of lawfare and weaponization” under the Biden administration, so that presumably includes participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, who were prosecuted for their involvement.
The problem is that any compensation for involvement in Jan. 6 is in tension with Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, in relevant part, states:
>[N]either the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
The Supreme Court in Perry v. United States stated that Section 4’s “language indicates a broader connotation” beyond its Civil War context.
The main issue that remains unaddressed is whether the events of January 6 qualify as an “insurrection” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Mark Graber, the author of Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, persuasively summarizes the historical arguments supporting that position in this article: Treason, Insurrection, and Disqualification: From the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to Jan. 6, 2021.
According to Graber, leading legal treatises and federal judges, including some Supreme Court justices, defined “insurrection” as “organized resistance to any federal law” motivated by a “public purpose.” Blackman and Tillman take a more limited view, but they do not offer any contemporaneous historical evidence or refute the sources cited by Graber. By contrast, during the Anderson litigation, they directly engaged with many of Graber’s arguments on the officer issue.
There is also a middle-of-the-road definition of the term by Ilya Somin that calls Graber’s definition overly broad but still classifies Jan. 6 as an insurrection.
>I am not convinced that courts should actually adopt such a broad definition. It could set a dangerous precedent. As Graber notes, on that theory people who violently resisted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act would qualify as insurrectionists, too.
>But January 6 was an insurrection even under a narrow definition that covers only violent attempts to illegally seize control of the powers of government. After all, the attackers were using force to try to keep the loser of the 2020 election in power, blocking the transfer of authority to the rightful winner. If that isn’t a violent attempt to seize government power, it’s hard to know what is
EDIT (in response to comments):
The Reconstruction-era Congress passed a law that mandated:
>No money on account of pension shall be paid to any person, or to the widow, children, or heirs of any deceased person, who in any manner voluntarily engaged in or aided or abetted the late rebellion against the authority of the United States.
There is no evidence that a conviction was required to make this enforceable. In fact, one former Confederate veteran, who tried to claim a pension by falsely informing the Pension Bureau that “I was not in the Confederate army,” was prosecuted for perjury (United States v. Hampton)
The Department of the Interior considered many factors in applying this provision, but conviction was not one of them. See, for example, the case of Hustwell. Additionally, when intent was unclear, mere involvement in an insurrection raised an “adverse presumption,” and the burden of proof was on the claimant to demonstrate his participation was involuntary.
>Where there is a record of service in the Confederate army, either by conscription or otherwise, and it does not appear from the face of said record whether the service rendered was voluntary or involuntary within the meaning of section 4716, such record raises an adverse presumption and the burden of proof is on the claimant to establish that by such service he did not voluntarily engage in, aid, or abet the late rebellion against the authority of the United States. He should be required in such cases to furnish the next best evidence on the point where the record is silent, and what would constitute such evidence, as well as its sufficiency, must depend upon each particular case. Source
Even payment of taxes to confederate government created a "presumption of disloyalty."
>Paying taxes to Confederate government held to be a disloyal act, and forfeits pension. [Source]
>Presumption of disloyalty raised by the fact of payment of taxes to the Confederate Government and furnishing food and clothing to sons in the Confederate army, from motives of "love, affection, and the dictates of humanity," may be rebutted by showing distinctly and positively that the taxes were paid under duress, that claimant opposed the enlistment of said sons, and that he was opposed to the rebellion and distinctly in favor of its suppression. [Source]
I previously made a post on this issue, and since then Justice Thomas has provided three additional data points supporting the proposition that he applies inconsistent reasoning depending on which side he favors:
More craziness from the en banc Fifth Circuit. This time, they want to declare laws passed by Congress unconstitutional on the grounds that proxy voting during COVID violated the quorum clause of the Constitution.
>Texas claims that the proxy voting led to the improper passage of a $1.7 trillion spending law in 2023 — and particularly the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a piece of legislation requiring accommodations for pregnant employees approved as part of the spending law.
Link to previous thread on the 2-1 panel decision: Texas v. Bondi: CA5 panel holds that Quorum Clause does not include a physical presence requirement, and so a federal law enacted via proxy voting during COVID is valid. Injunction reversed.
Justice Samuel Alito opens up about oral arguments, judicial security, and his writing process
Link to the complaint.
Here’s their excuse after successfully arguing against a universal injunction:
>To implement the permanent injunction, CBP must first ascertain the importer of record (IOR) numbers for the affected importers, and will then need to reprogram the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), CBP’s official system of record for imported merchandise, to allow the affected importers to submit entry summaries without declaring a provision of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States imposing Section 122 duties and depositing the associated Section 122 duties.
>...
Once ACE has been reprogrammed, CBP will need to manually extend liquidation for each of the affected importers’ entries so that the Section 122 duties may be re-assessed if the permanent injunction is overturned on appeal.
>...
Absent a stay of this Court’s order pending appeal in this case, CBP will be required to divert resources from the IEEPA tariff refund processing effort to develop, test, monitor, and administer new functionality in ACE. [...] After the initial deployment of the new ACE programming to implement the injunction with respect to the affected importers, the agency’s continued compliance would require it to constantly update the ACE programming to maintain a potentially expanding list of importers for whom estimated duty deposits for the contested Section 122 duties would not be due, pending appeal.
Majority opinion by Judge Clay (Clinton), joined by Judge Cole (Clinton). Dissenting opinion by Judge Murphy (Trump).
No, this is not about Callais; it is about Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (2024), where Alito acknowledged (contrary to his false assertion in Callais) that “non-white voters turn out at a much lower rate than white voters,” but used that fact to conclude that a staffer who admitted looking at racial data did not have a racial motive, because the large turnout gap supposedly made that data useless. Kevin Morris, in the linked article, explains why that is wrong.
Here is what Alito’s majority opinion said (the analysis cited in the footnote cites national data):
>the District Court placed too much weight on the fact that several legislative staffers, including Roberts, viewed racial data at some point during the redistricting process. [...] Here, Roberts testified without contradiction that he considered the relevant racial data only after he had drawn the Enacted Map and that he generated that data solely for a lawful purpose, namely, to check that the maps he produced complied with our Voting Rights Act precedent.
>...
The District Court discredited this testimony, but it cited no evidence that could not also support the inference that politics drove the mapmaking process. And the court provided no explanation why a mapmaker who wanted to produce a version of District 1 that would be safely Republican would use data about voters’ race rather than their political preferences. Why would Roberts have used racial data— with the associated legal risks—as a proxy for partisan data when he had access to refined, sub-precinct-level political data that accounted for voter turnout and electoral preferences? The District Court provided no answer to this obvious question. ^(7)
>---
>^(7) The dissent argues that racial data is superior because black Democrats are more loyal to the party than white Democrats. Post, at 21–22. But whether or not this is true (and the dissent relies solely on the sayso of one witness), studies show that non-white voters turn out at a much lower rate than white voters. See Brennan Center for Justice, K. Morris & C. Grange, Large Racial Turnout Gap Persisted in 2020 Election (Aug. 6, 2021), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/large-racial-turnout-gap-persisted-2020-election
How did he immediately flip in Callais to claim that “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate” is a reason to gut the VRA (see previous thread)? At minimum, this should be sufficient to prove that he knowingly LIED in Callais. Also noteworthy is that Alexander was decided after Kavanaugh's time's up concurrence in Allen v. Milligan, so it seems they do not even care that arguments they make will weaken the reasoning of their future decisions.
>Alabama is highly likely to succeed in its pending motion that this Court vacate the injunctions and remand the cases in light of Callais. See Mot. to Expedite, No. 25-274 (Apr. 30, 2026). So that the State has an opportunity to return to its lawfully enacted 2023 Plan this election cycle, and because the Court is not scheduled to issues orders from its next conference until May 18—one day before the May 19 primary—the State respectfully requests a stay by May 14 at 10 a.m. ET if the Court is unable to expedite consideration of these cases in light of Callais.
EDIT: Justice Thomas has called for a response to the application by May 11. (Docket)
[This might belong in the In-Chambers thread, but this subreddit has previously allowed rulings by three-judge district court panels to be posted in the main thread, including the previous CIT ruling on IEEPA itself.]
Majority opinion by Chief Judge Barnett (Obama) and Judge Kelly (Obama). Dissenting opinion by Judge Stanceu (Bush).
The court treats the meaning of “balance of payments” in Section 122 as a question of statutory interpretation and concludes that the President’s factual findings are not consistent with its interpretation.
>Accepting as true every factual statement in Proclamation No. 11012, the surcharge imposed by the Proclamation rests on the existence of a large trade deficit, a current account deficit, a negative net international investment position, and a deficit on the balance on primary and secondary income (which are part of the current account). Proclamation No. 11012 ¶¶ 7–11. The Proclamation asserts that “the United States runs a trade deficit, does not currently make a net income from the capital and labor that it deploys abroad, and experiences more transfer payments, on net, flowing out of the country than into the country.” Id. ¶ 7. Nowhere does Proclamation No. 11012 identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122 as it was enacted in 1974. See generally Proclamation No. 11012.
Case: Mark Kelly v. Pete Hegseth (D.C. Cir. 2026)
Panel: Judges Henderson, Pillard, and Pan
Oral Argument Recordings
This article provides a thorough critique of the assumptions many in this sub are making about the role of Rucho in Callais, including Justice Alito’s conflation of nonjusticiability with constitutionality. Even Justice Kavanaugh has observed that the Supreme Court has never applied the Political Questions Doctrine in a statutory interpretation case. So whether VRA standards implicate issues the Court considers non-justiciable should be irrelevant.
>The main reason why the Rucho Court found political gerrymandering claims nonjusticiable was its conclusion that there were no "judicially discoverable and manageable standards" for saying how much consideration of politics in districting is too much. I disagreed with Rucho, but accepting it doesn't necessitate validating all uses of politics in districting. In particular, it doesn't validate subordinating racial equality to political gerrymandering. Yet that's what the Court did in Callais when it said that plaintiffs bringing a VRA challenge must show that the state rejected options for creating majority-minority districts if those options failed to satisfy the state's political goals, "including partisan advantage."
>That requirement is doubly problematic. First, it doesn't follow from Rucho. One need not identify any standard for measuring how much politics is "too much" in order to say that a VRA plaintiff complaining that minority voters have had their voting strength undercut by race must present a map satisfying traditional distracting criteria such as compactness, contiguity, and preservation of political units but need not include in that map the state's political goals. One can assess whether VRA plaintiffs have satisfied their burden without taking account of politics at all. Thus, there's no occasion for a court to judge whether there was "too much" politics and therefore no contradiction of Rucho.
He also criticizes the court for ignoring the link between race and politics.
>Second, Justice Alito and the Callais Court treat racially polarized voting as a kind of exogenous fact of nature, when it is quite clearly an endogenous feature of the racism of the contemporary Republican Party. In places where the VRA has proved most necessary, the modern Republican Party gained ascendancy over the last couple of generations as the fulfillment of President Nixon's Southern Strategy. Donald Trump ratcheted that strategy up to 11. That's not to say that the Democratic Party represents the interests of Black voters especially well or that the Republican Party represents the interests of (disproportionately male, older, and poorly educated) white voters especially well. It is to say that, given the Republican Party's appeal for white racists, it's more than a bit rich for Justice Alito and the rest of the conservatives to deny a VRA remedy because plaintiffs cannot produce a map containing compact, continuous majority-minority districts that also maximize the partisan advantage for Republicans. Asking them to do so asks the impossible and rewards the contemporary Republican Party for fostering and then exploiting racial polarized voting.
Even if you do not agree with this conclusion, I will point to some practical problems that the Court ignores and that underlie many of these criticisms.
First, we have empirical evidence that racial resentment drives opposition to the VRA. Morris (2023) provides evidence that lawmakers from high-resentment districts (“the whitest districts in the least-white states”) are most likely to sponsor restrictive voting bills. Ferrer & Palmisano (2025) find that making the “racial implications of voting reforms explicit increases support for voting restrictions and reduces support for voting expansions." This is consistent with Justice Scalia calling the VRA a “perpetuation of racial entitlement” that makes Congress’s judgment irrelevant and necessitates heightened scrutiny from the Court.
Second, it is incredibly easy to hide these attitudes behind the rhetoric of colorblindness. Morris (2023) explains that sponsors of restrictive voting legislation utilize the rhetoric of "voter fraud" as a pretext to obscure underlying motivations. This explains why the Court effectively converted Rucho’s holding on non-justiciability into a quasi-constitutional right that dictates how other federal laws are interpreted. This is not to say that every person who prefers colorblindness is motivated by racial resentment, but rather that it makes bad faith harder to detect. See alsoAdam Serwer’s article, which notes segregationist James Kilpatrick’s conversion to colorblind egalitarianism.
Third, even if the evidence of discriminatory intent were clear, it might not matter in the long run. Election law scholar Rick Hansen notes in this article how the Supreme Court has allowed “animus laundering” to let the government reenact explicitly discriminatory policies using facially race-neutral justifications. The result is that we end up in a system in which it is easy to discriminate without getting caught but very difficult to remedy that discrimination, and it all depends on the Court’s declaration that “racism is over” (a conclusion it has been reaching since 1883).
This article explores the role of Justice Powell, based on Justice Stewart’s papers, in influencing the Court’s decision in Mobile v. Bolden (1980), which adopted an intent test for proving voting discrimination. Congress responded to this ruling in 1982 by amending the VRA to incorporate an effects test, which a Reagan DOJ lawyer named John Roberts condemned as “unacceptable.”