Civil rights groups say plan will make people ‘afraid to vote’ and violates the Voting Rights Act

• US politics live – latest updates

A coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against Trump administration officials on Friday, seeking to stop them from threatening to deploy federal law enforcement officers to polling stations in the US midterm elections.

The suit, led by the NAACP, alleges that by threatening to deploy law enforcement to survey elections and initiating new voter roll oversight, the Trump administration has violated a section of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits voter intimidation.

Local communities are fighting back against the influence of conservative groups like Moms for Liberty in education

Jimmy Glover’s youngest children were in high school when he noticed their Florida school district taking an unsettling turn. Beloved books were being pulled from shelves. Teachers were scared of being targeted.

“There was this culture of fear that was permeating throughout the district,” Glover said of Sarasota county.

The party needs to thread the needle between college-educated and working-class voters. Our survey offers a way

Resisting authoritarianism is the second-highest priority for Democrats’ college-educated base. But for working-class Americans, it’s only the 19th priority (out of 20), we found in a new survey. The gap between these two groups was larger than on any other issues: elites prioritized resisting authoritarianism an astonishing 33 percentage points more than non-elites did.

Democrats’ dilemma is that their college-educated base insists they stand up to Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, but they also need to win working-class votes. The way to thread that needle is to recognize that what’s needed to defend democracy in the short term is different from what’s needed to defend it in the long term.

The extraordinary danger is that a president who believes he is the law, and the law is him, remains intent on disrupting the electoral process

• This was originally published in The Stakes 2026, a newsletter about the midterm elections. Sign up to get it in your inbox

For the millions of Americans who vote by mail – almost a third of the country – the week began with significant uncertainty that they would be able to easily submit their ballot this fall, thanks to a March executive order from Donald Trump that aimed to restrict mail-in ballots. By Monday night, the supreme court restored a measure of order by rebuking the president and rejecting his plan – but Trump’s frothing response portends more danger for the rapidly approaching midterms.

Trump’s March order forbade the US Postal Service from delivering mailed ballots to anyone the administration deemed ineligible. The Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, would have devised that list of supposedly ineligible, noncitizen voters. On its face, the move appeared plainly illegal. One expert told the Guardian’s Sam Levine, “This is a wholly unconstitutional EO,” because ultimately the federal government cannot set election rules; only states can.

This live blog is now closed.

• Trump bans CNN, MS Now and Politico from White House

• Sign up for the US Breaking News email

Shapiro and Newsom aren’t the only governors making moves on AI lately.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, announced at a news conference today plans for tighter rules on data center development in order to address transparency, energy use and environmental concerns. And Nevada’s governor, Joe Lombardo, a Republican, signed an executive order aimed at tackling similar issues.