1. In Shasta County, California, they passed something called Measure B to get rid of voting by mail—and erase the county’s voter list, forcing all 116,000 people to re-register three months before Election Day. The state sued, and a judge blocked it. Nobody has to re-register. Nobody loses their ballot.
2. Trump tried to use the Postal Service to destroy mail-in voting. Judge Indira Talwani had already blocked it in twenty-three states and DC, and this week she blocked it nationwide. She wrote that with less than 90 days to the election, voters need to know how they can vote.
3. A federal court issued preliminary orders blocking the Trump-Vance administration from enforcing sweeping ideological restrictions on health, housing, and safety grants administered by agencies like HHS, HUD, and the Department of Justice. The ruling protects federal funding for organizations serving domestic violence survivors, LGBTQI+ youth, and unhoused communities.
1. On Monday, a federal judge blocked the administration’s ban on nonpartisan groups helping newly naturalized U.S. citizens register to vote. – finding the ban was likely driven by intentional discrimination against new citizens. Among the plaintiffs were the League of Women Voters and the National Council of Jewish Women.
2. The U.S. Dept of Justice was 0 for 20 on Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer, a President George W. Bush appointee, dismissed the administration’s attempt to garner the state’s voter rolls. Of the 20 voter roll rulings to go against DOJ, 12 have come from judges appointed by Republican presidents; 8 of those 12 judges were appointed by the current president.
3. On Thursday, the DOJ went to 0-21, as a federal judge dismissed the administration’s request for Washington, D.C. voter rolls.
4. A Washington Post analysis found that, so far, in 2026, turnout has been rising in Democratic primaries even when they are not hotly contested.
5. About 1.5 million voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary for governor in Michigan, compared with 930,000 in the Republican primary as of midday Wednesday. The Democratic senatorial primary was similarly “huge,” according to The Detroit Free Press, with more than 1.5.million ballots cast, a record high for a state summer primary election.
6. Justin J. Pearson, who rose to prominence as one of the “Tennessee Three” after being expelled and then reinstated to the Tennessee General Assembly for a gun control protest in 2023, won the primary to become the Democratic nominee for Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District in the U.S. House.
7. Also in Tennessee, Knox County Democrats flipped the make-up of the school board, securing a 5-4 majority.
8. After being erroneously deported to Honduras, 21-year-old Jose Martinez-Andino awaits clearance at a U.S.Embassy to board an ICE return flight.
9. The so-called Clarity Act – which moves regulation authority over the crypto industry from the SEC, the strongest financial regulatory agency on the planet, to a much weaker agency – stalled on Friday as Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that Republicans don’t have the votes to pass it before the Senate recess.
1. Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition of 11 other attorneys general secured a months long halt to Paramount Skydance Corp.'s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. James said, from the workers and artists who bring stories to life to the families who buy tickets at the box office, Paramounts illegal takeover of Warner Bros. is a bad deal for all those who count on a competitive
entertainment industry.
2. In another win for our democracy, a federal court shut down the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to seize Kentucky voters' sensitive information. The DOJ is now 0 for 17 in voter file grab attempts across the country.
3. Trump appointed Eric Tostrud to the federal bench. On Monday, Tostrud dismissed the Administration's lawsuit against Minnesota and several local governments seeking to force them to enforce its immigration policies. The ruling leaves Attorney General Keith Ellison's limits on state police cooperation with ICE in place, affirming that those officers answer to the state, not the White House.
4. Peter Navarro defied a Jan 6 subpoena and served four months in federal prison for it. The DOJ refused to defend the conviction, so Navarro's lawyer argued the appeal with nobody on the other side. Three judges upheld it Tuesday. The privilege he hid behind was never his to take.
5. Seventeen people were supposed to walk out of immigration detention in Nevada, but ICE kept the doors shut for months. Judge Richard Boulware wrote that the government was rebelling against the basic rule that courts get obeyed. He put sanctions on the table. Fifteen of those detainees are now free.
6. For years, Kansas gave mail ballots a few extra days to arrive, so votes stuck in the mail still counted. Last year, Republicans took those days away. This month, weeks before the August primary, Judge Carl Folsom put them back. Without this ruling thousands of ballots would be thrown out.
7. Ohio's environmental agency wanted to let data centers dump wastewater into rivers, streams, and Lake Erie. That water can carry PFAS, forever chemicals that never break down. Seven thousand people wrote in against it, and the agency backed off. Those every day people did the job lobbyists get paid to do.
8. Arizona Republican Jeff Weninger already represented Chandler and the state capitol, so winning it's mayor's race should have been easy. Instead he lost by 17 points to Matt Orlando, a retired Air Force colonel backed by local Democrats. Weninger had given up his statehouse seat to run. Now he has neither.
1) Strong resistance against redistricting which would dilute Black voters’ power has succeeded in Georgia. Republican state leadership told Gov. Kemp that they will not consider redistricting without further study.
2) A federal judge in Massachusetts said Democratic state attorneys general and pro-voting organizations can continue their bid to block Trump's anti-voting executive order before the midterms. The judge said that if the order is implemented, it will directly harm states’ ability to carry out elections this November.
3) MAGA Rep. Mike Collins won The Republican runoff for Senate in Georgia last week. The total republican vote was 10% less than the vote for Jon Ossoff in the Democratic primary.
4) Melinda French Gates is pledging $215 million to women’s health--specifically, expanding contraceptive access, maternal care, and menopause research globally, pushing her total investment in women’s health past $600 million over the past two years.
5) An experimental personalized skin cancer vaccine lowered the risk of melanoma returning or causing death by 49% after five years when used in combination with immunotherapy. The vaccine still has a while to go through clinical trials, but this is welcome news given the increasing skin cancer rates.
6) The FDA approved inhaled insulin (Afrezza) for children ages 6 and older with diabetes. This is the first needle-free insulin option for pediatric patients in over 100 years.
1. Thanks to the ruling of a federal judge, and despite a last-minute attempt to appeal the ruling, the current U.S. president’s name has been removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This includes signage, the website, and all center materials.
2. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday blocked in no uncertain terms the $1.8 billion fund to compensate January 6th rioters, by requiring a written declaration within one week’s time, signed under penalty of perjury, by both acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, that there would be no fund going forward.
3. A 2-stage clinical trial testing a new HIV-prevention drug administered via injections, has shown unimaginably positive results, with a 99.9% reduction in infection rates. The drug, Lenacapavir, was administered to 5,000 participants over a wide geographical area.
4. The California Department of Justice has launched the Affordability Response Team, a group of legal experts dedicated to investigating and going after the unlawful practices that are bringing up costs. As California Attorney General Rob Bonta put it, “Our goal is to put more money back in [Californians’] pockets.”
5. According to a study conducted by Circle/When We All Vote, and reported by Field Team 6, 56% of youth (ages 18 – 29) said they are “extremely likely” to vote in the upcoming midterms. In the 2018 “Blue Wave” midterms, the number was 34%! 68% of those extremely likely voters identified as Democrats, compared to 49% who identified as Republicans.
6. Yesterday, June 14th, we celebrated Flag Day, commemorating the adoption of the flag on that date in 1777 with the passage of the first Flag Act by the Continental Congress. Any coincidence of that date with someone’s birthday who represents everything counter to the freedom, justice, and opportunity symbolized by our flag is strictly an unfortunate twist of fate.
1. In California election results— Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the general election for Governor. Dems avoided being shut out, phew! Nithya Raman overtakes Spencer Pratt for second place in the LA mayoral race.
2. Federal Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island ruled that Trump officials must restart asylum and immigration processing.
3. Trump's 1.8 Billion dollar anti-weaponization fund is dead
4. Billionaire Connie Ballmer (wife of Steve Ballmer former Microsoft CEO and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers) donated 80 million dollars to NPR following Trump cutting 1.1 Billion dollars from public broadcasting.
5. The South Carolina Senate effectively killed an effort to redraw the state’s congressional lines to eliminate longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn’s seat in Congress, stalling out an effort by President Donald Trump’s White House to redraw the state’s seven seats to benefit Republicans. One dozen Republicans, including several staunch conservative members of the conference, joined ten of their Democratic colleagues on a procedural motion to kill the bill.
6. Senate blocks GOP push to sneak the SAVE Act into the Immigration Funding Bill. Republicans who joined Democrats were: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Thom Tillis.
1. Two Federal Judges delivered blows to the President on Friday. Judge Christopher Cooper determined that the decision to add Trump's name to the Kennedy Center was illegal, and ordered the administration to remove his name within two weeks. Judge Kathleen Williams will review the Trump administration $1.8 Billion "weaponization fund" in a response to a motion brought by 35 former federal judges. The former Federal Judges urged Williams to dig into the details of the original lawsuit brought for $10 Billion which Trump filed against the IRS.
2. Republicans in South Carolina rejected Trump's efforts to gerrymander districts before the November elections.
3. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a ban on assault weapons and ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.
4. Brazil's Atlantic Forest, the country's most threatened biome recorded it's lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago.
5. South Korea just deployed a new ferry that purifies the water while people ride. Eco-Bot is a solar powered boat that uses AI to clean floating pollutants.