The pro-Donald Trump legal group, America First Legal (AFL), has taken over the Maricopa County Recorder's office, and it's illegal, one Arizona reporter Brahm Resnik wrote, citing a new court case.

County Recorder Justin Heap hired American First Legal to counsel them in a lawsuit, court documents show. County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sued over the matter and revealed a slew of concerning details in the process.

Mitchell asked for a temporary restraining order and injunction at the Superior Court of the State of Arizona in and for the County of Maricopa, but the court ruled that she lacked standing.

However, a new filing alleges that the "AFL has abused that limited ruling and used it as a launching pad for [an] unprecedented power grab. In the past three-and-a-half weeks alone, AFL, a partisan non-profit organization funded by private donors, and the Recorder have: 1. Proclaimed that AFL will serve as the Recorder's counsel on 'all' matters 'covering the administration of early voting or any election statute that contains the phrase "recorder or other officer in charge of elections," based on self-declared global conflict of interest with the County Attorney.'"

The suit also claims that the AFL has "instructed County elections staff to disregard legal advice from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office (MCAO) about voter instructions at polling locations."

The AFL allegedly told staff they couldn't seek any legal advice from the county attorney and tried to prevent the county attorney from attending a Board of Supervisors executive session about the election, the suit says.

AFL then "threatened to pursue criminal charges against the Board for establishing drop boxes — forcing Attorney General Kris Mayes to write a letter to AFL warning it against making 'unfounded threats of criminal liability.'" The pro-Trump legal group then allegedly sent a letter to the Board threatening to sue them under a criminal statute and demanding public records.

Mitchell's filing makes it clear that AFL was never hired to provide "in-house" counsel for the Recorder's office.

The filing goes on to allege that the AFL is "acting as de facto deputy county attorneys is ultra vires and illegal. The Recorder lacks any explicit or implicit statutory authority to hire outside counsel — let alone a partisan organization — to serve as in-house counsel on 'all' matters under his 'purview.'"

The uploaded filing only contains excerpts from the full document and doesn't cite any specifics about dates for hearings or details about where the case stands.

President Donald Trump is apparently tampering so thoroughly in elections that even a staunchly MAGA official is raising alarms about it.

“[Maricopa County Attorney Rachel] Mitchell garnered national attention after Senate Republicans tapped her to question Christine Blasey Ford during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process after Ford alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager,” wrote MS NOW’s Ja'han Jones on Wednesday. “Kavanaugh has flatly denied the allegation.”

Yet despite Mitchell’s impeccable MAGA credentials, including endorsing Trump’s 2024 campaign, Jones reported that she has filed a lawsuit against America First Legal, White House adviser Stephen Miller’s right-wing activist group that is trying to make sure Trump does not lose control of Congress during the 2026 midterm elections.

“The office is led by Justin Heap, who has egged on the Trump administration’s push to acquire sensitive voter data in Arizona,” Jones reported. “And the disturbing context to all this is Trump has openly declared that Republicans should nationalize voting processes and ‘take over the voting’ in several cities — like Phoenix, perhaps.”

Jones added, “In a June 8 legal filing, Mitchell’s lawyers asked Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney to rein in Recorder Justin Heap’s politically connected firm, the America First Legal Foundation, which it said has undertaken ‘an unprecedented power grab.’” Her lawyers argued that “the Recorder lacks any explicit or implicit statutory authority to hire outside counsel — let alone a partisan organization — to serve as in-house counsel on ‘all’ matters under his ‘purview.’”

Overall Jones concluded, “The fact that even conservative officials are sounding the alarm here shows how extreme, unprecedented and potentially threatening to democracy this situation could prove to be.”

Speaking with AlterNet earlier this month, Common Cause Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation Dan Vicuña said that Trump’s various voter repression policies — including trying to stop mail-in voting, demanding voter files, gerrymandering, supporting voter ID laws and stating he will deploy law enforcement to voting places — are all part of a larger plan to steal the midterms. Common Cause is a nonprofit good government group with a distinguished pedigree tracing back to 1970.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, but that does not mean his draconian anti-immigrant agenda will wind down. According to a recent report, the architect of that agenda remains as entrenched in power as ever.

"Far from acknowledging defeat, Mr. Miller appears to have simply adjusted his strategy in an effort to minimize political fallout," wrote Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Hamed Aleaziz, Christopher Flavelle, Emily Cochrane and Glenn Thrush of The New York Times in a Sunday report.

The report elaborated that, even as Trump’s “crackdown” has become unpopular in pretty much every American political group outside of the president’s own base, Miller has adjusted to the challenges by treating it as a personal test rather than a sign he should reevaluate his course.

"Mr. Miller, one of the most influential presidential advisers in recent memory and an unabashed champion of Mr. Trump's hard-line immigrant crackdown is at a crossroads,” the Times elaborated. Because of his performance up to this point, “he faces questions about how aggressively he can continue to drive the deportation campaign, and how much appetite his party and the country have for tactics that proved successful in helping to boost arrests of immigrants but reignited a polarizing debate."

Overall the report observed that “rather than Mr. Miller seeing his power recede, he has moved to apply it in other ways, seeking policies that would pressure undocumented immigrants to leave on their own.” As a result “Mr. Miller's influence has also extended beyond Washington."

Like many other figures in Trump’s orbit, Miller is widely considered to be extremely racist. Last month New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote that by ending public education funding for undocumented children in red states, Trump is deliberately attempting to keep underprivileged racial minorities less educated than theirs. For this reason, Bouie argued that the administration's efforts to repeal civil rights protections and other legislation from that era must be understood in an explicitly white supremacist context.

“Both Miller and the MAGA right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears,” Bouie wrote. “It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.”

Miller is so influential, he is even believed to have been responsible for the Trump administration’s decision to reverse its previous withdrawal of political lawsuits against progressive law firms and lawyers. His America First Legal has also targeted law firms and corporations for diversity initiatives.

The surprising decision by the Trump administration to reverse course and continue battling progressive law firms and lawyers has been attributed to the ire of Donald Trump and his senior advisor, Stephen Miller.

But given that Trump is somewhat preoccupied by a certain Middle East conflict, a CNN story and speculation attributed to “a source familiar with the situation" hint that Miller’s fingerprints appear to be likely the ones gripping the renewed legal throttle.

Miller’s America First Legal has previously targeted law firms and corporations for diversity initiatives and challenged Biden-era policies to pressure compliance with conservative goals.

Thus, The Wall Street Journal story that the Trump administration was abandoning its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms and individuals indicates at the least some Justice Department missed communications.

Trump’s executive orders would have prevented firms and individual lawyers from entering federal buildings, eliminated federal contracts with the firms and their clients, and removed any security clearances.

Law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey were among those affected. Chilled by those lawsuits, several other large law firms cut deals with the president, providing more than $1 billion in pro bono work on causes Trump favored.

Trump cited the sanctioned parties for their connections to his political rivals. He also noted their diversity initiatives and pro bono work for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections in his executive orders.

Now, the administration’s bite at the legal apple continues.

Late Thursday morning, December 18, the news broke that federal Judge Trevor McFadden —an appointee of President Donald Trump — had rejected a lawsuit brought by major Trump allies: the America First Legal Foundation, a far-right MAGA legal group.

According to Politico's Josh Gerstein, America First Legal was "trying to demand records" using the Freedom of Information Act. But Gerstein notes that McFadden, in his America First Legal Foundation v. John G. Roberts ruling, "says Congress 'excused' itself [and] judiciary."

McFadden, in a 21-page court document, wrote, "The Freedom of Information Act announced a policy of broad disclosure of government documents. Broad disclosure, however, does not mean unlimited disclosure. While FOIA promises access to many Executive Branch records, Congress excused itself and the courts from FOIA’s reach. In 2024, America First Legal Foundation ('America First') requested various documents from the Judicial Conference of the United States and Administrative Office of the United States under FOIA. Both entities rejected the request on the basis that they are part of the Judiciary, so FOIA does not apply to them. America First disagreed."

The Trump-appointed federal judge continued, "Taking a narrower view of FOIA's court-documents carve out, America First sees the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office as agencies subject to FOIA. So America First sued and asks the Court to compel the heads of the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office to comply with its FOIA request. See Am. Compl., ECF No. 2."

McFadden noted that the "defendants moved to dismiss America First's Complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim."

The judge wrote, "Under Rule 12(b)(1), this Court presumes it lacks subject matter jurisdiction. See Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). Federal courts have limited jurisdiction and 'possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.' Id. And when a defendant brings a challenge under Rule 12(b)(1), the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that the court has jurisdiction. See id."

WASHINGTON — A slew of conservative groups will lead a new coalition to spur civics education and push the subject in a more patriotic direction, the U.S. Education Department announced last month, raising alarms for some traditional civics and education groups that were not included in the initiative.

The America First Policy Institute, a think tank with close ties to the president, is organizing and coordinating the America 250 Civics Education Coalition made up of more than 40 national and state-based groups, including prominent conservative advocacy organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA.

The vast majority of the groups in the coalition promote a vision of U.S. identity that downplays historical wrongs associated with race and gender and projects the country as an exceptional force for good. Many are well-known conservative groups that have promoted President Donald Trump’s political agenda.

The coalition lacks many of the more traditional civics education groups who say their nonpartisanship is a fundamental element of civics education, leading to concerns from those groups.

“Our organization serves students in every state and over 80% of counties,” said Shawn Healy, the chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a group that promotes public support for civics education. “You can’t do that if your curriculum is shaded red or blue — it has to be fiercely nonpartisan.”

The coalition will have nothing to do with school curricula, a department official said last month, acknowledging that the agency legally cannot dictate what schools teach. And it will not receive any federal funding from the department, the official added.

But the agency has taken other steps that appear designed to steer curricula in a more partisan direction.

The same day the coalition launched, the department announced it would be prioritizing “patriotic education” when it comes to discretionary grants. The agency said patriotic education “presents American history in a way that is accurate, honest, and inspiring.”

Earlier in September, the department said it would invest more than $160 million in American history and civics grants — a $137 million increase in the funds Congress previously approved.

Civics as cultural battleground

Civics — a branch of social studies that focuses on rights and obligations of citizenship and the basic mechanics of government — has been a bipartisan priority, though it’s become a hot-button issue within education culture wars regarding how and what is taught as America grapples with its complicated history.

Many on the political right, including Trump, have long bristled at how that history is taught. Going back to his first presidency, Trump has sought to exert control over the subject.

After retaking office in January, he reestablished the 1776 Commission — an advisory committee meant “to promote patriotic education.”

“Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains,” notes the executive order first establishing the commission during his first term.

The commission released a 41-page report in January 2021 that drew criticism from historians and educators, including the American Historical Association.

In a statement signed by 47 other organizations, the association wrote that the report makes “an apparent attempt to reject recent efforts to understand the multiple ways the institution of slavery shaped our nation’s history.”

Trump formed the commission after The New York Times published the 1619 Project, which aimed to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA sign up

In its September announcement, the department said the coalition “is dedicated to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.”

The coalition will include more than 100 events and programs across the country over the next year as part of the administration’s celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary.

The coalition is set to feature a 50-state “Trail to Independence Tour,” a “Fundamental Liberties College Speaker Series” as well as “Patriotic K-12 Teacher Summits and Toolboxes” aimed at supporting “patriotic teaching nationwide.”

The America 250 Civics Education Coalition includes right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation — the architect of the sweeping conservative policy agenda known as Project 2025 — as is America First Legal, a conservative advocacy group founded by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff.

Turning Point USA, co-founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September, is also part of the initiative. PragerU, a conservative nonprofit that has drawn questions among researchers and scholars regarding the accuracy of its content, was also listed as a member of the coalition.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon was the chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute between her roles in the first and second Trump administrations. She had to sign an ethics waiver to participate in the coalition, according to the department official, who did not provide further details on what exactly this entailed.

‘News to us’

While conservative political organizations were made part of the coalition, leading civics education groups were not even aware of it before its public launch.

“Certainly, it was news to us about this coalition being formed,” Healy, of iCivics, said.

Healy added that his group encourages the America 250 Civics Education Coalition “to be more pluralistic in orientation” and that the organization is “eager” to have a conversation with the coalition about what they’re doing.

iCivics, a nonpartisan organization founded in 2009 by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, launched CivxNow. The latter group describes itself as the country’s “largest cross-partisan coalition working to prioritize civic education in the United States.”

CivxNow’s nearly 400 members comprise a broad swath of mainstream civics education groups.

“It’s our fundamental belief, both as an organization and as a coalition, that civic education has to be fiercely nonpartisan and nonideological,” Healy said.

But only one group — Constituting America — is a member of both CivxNow and the America 250 Civics Education Coalition.

Momentum for civics

iCivics and others in the civics education field said the added attention the initiative brings to the subject will be positive.

The coalition “provides an opportunity for everyone interested in civic education and patriotic education to do something right now,” said Donna Phillips, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Civic Education, pointing to “decades where there hasn’t been enough, or any, attention to civic education.”

Phillips, whose organization is a member of CivxNow, said she hopes “the civic education field more widely can benefit from the momentum behind the need for this and that we can all find a place within this momentum and this moment.”

Hans Zeiger, president of the nonpartisan Jack Miller Center, described the administration’s initiative as the “latest development in what we take to be a growing movement for civics in the country.”

Zeiger, whose organization aims to empower college professors to work on civics education and is a member of CivxNow, said his group is “very interested in growing the national civics movement, and glad that there are people all across the political spectrum getting involved in the push for civic education.”

“It is always a good thing to have national dialogue on civics education,” the National Council for the Social Studies said in a statement.

The council, part of CivxNow, added that they “strive for balanced conversations that will continue to elevate high quality social studies standards.”

Teachers unions criticize coalition

The two major teachers unions, which are politically aligned with Democrats, blasted the coalition as unserious, and noted the lack of traditional civics groups.

“We have decades of research on what works in civic education,” Mary Kusler, senior director at the National Education Association’s Center for Advocacy, said in a statement to States Newsroom. “The proposal they are peddling lacks the rigor and respect our students deserve — which is evident by the lack of any respected civics or civil rights organizations as signers.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement the 250th anniversary of the nation should have been “an opportunity for parents, teachers, historians and students to learn, celebrate, critique and think critically about our democracy.”

“Instead, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the America 250 Civics Education Coalition rushed to create programming based on a single Trump-approved, ideological narrative, excluding the very people who know our history best: civics teachers and historians,” she said.

Sounding the alarm about "unchecked power... increasingly wreaking havoc" across the U.S., a pair of Harvard legal scholars wrote in a new piece for The Hill about their surprising suggestion to save the country and begin "speaking law to power."

Alexandra Natapoff and Guy-Uriel Charles are professors at Harvard Law School, who also co-edited a recent book featuring essays from the school's faculty about the state of the country and its legal systems. In a Monday morning piece for The Hill, they warned of the seismic changes occurring under President Donald Trump, though they avoided mentioning him by name, calling out the Supreme Court as they lamented the "ordinary people" getting hurt by the current system.

"Unchecked power is increasingly wreaking havoc. As its campaign and voting rights decisions make clear, the Supreme Court is unconcerned with the unequal deployment of economic and political power," the pair wrote. "As a result, our electoral process is dominated by concentrated wealth and private influence. The fearsome power of the criminal system has always been at best tenuously restrained by law. Today, it has openly muscled its way into political waters as the executive branch flaunts its authority to prosecute and pardon. As we have both argued for years, it is ordinary people who ultimately pay the costs of such governance failures, losing their political voices, autonomy, money, safety, and even ultimately their freedom."

They continued: "The problems with unchecked power in America are on the rise across the board. From the executive branch to Congress, in finance, media, and the technology sector, concentrated power has increasingly been let off the democratic leash. Public actors ignore the interests of millions of Americans. Private interests make public-facing decisions of national import. Ordinary people are getting thrown under the political bus."

The idea of the "rule of law," they argued, means a "commitment to resolve differences and disagreements through open legal discourse and process," and not what those like Trump and his allies have treated it like, "raw assertions of power, coercion, or violence."

To reverse this course, they urged for the creation of "an inclusive, community-wide public conversation about those laws, and how we would actually like to run our polity together," and preemptively tried to counter the most likely arguments against such an idea from those who would prefer more overt action.

"Calling for more discourse or better conversation can sound like weak medicine against abusive power," the pair wrote. "But law is one of those places where words and ideas matter. In the voting sphere, words define rights that enable ordinary people to exercise extraordinary influence. In the criminal system, we can get people out of jail by using our words, no crowbar required. It matters to people of every faith and of no faith how we construe freedom of religion under the First Amendment. The definition of the word 'citizen' affects millions of families. Coming together to talk about these matters is not weak medicine; it is figuring out how we want to handle them together."

President Donald Trump’s obsession with unfounded claims of election fraud has defined his second term in office. But in recent months his fixation has moved from executive nominee litmus tests and executive orders reinforcing proof of citizenship to vote into legislation – dragging Congress into the fray.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, featured heavily in Trump’s primetime speech on July 16, 2026.

It’s become the focus of the administration in recent months, eclipsing prior legislative efforts by proposing stringent and widespread voting changes. The proposed law, which would federalize elections, require additional documentation in order to vote and curtail mail-in registration and ballots in all states, faces major logistical, legal and political hurdles.

The act, which is stuck in limbo between the U.S. House and Senate, has dominated and derailed the summer’s legislative calendar. In the House, Republican members delayed votes on major legislation in an effort to pressure the Senate to take the bill up for a vote, and it has become a sticking point in other unrelated legislation.

The controversial act has also soured the relationship between Trump and members of his party, leading him to refuse to sign a bipartisan housing bill passed by Congress. Although the bill became law without his signature, Trump’s preoccupation with the SAVE America Act ultimately denied congressional Republicans an opportunity to tout a bipartisan, popular policy win.

Yet, despite mounting political pressure, Congress hasn’t budged.

This tension between Trump’s priorities and congressional inaction is noteworthy because Republicans control both chambers. But as a political scientist who studies the evolving power of congressional leadership, I find inaction on the SAVE America Act to be more than a reflection of Trump’s waning popularity among Republican lawmakers. Rather, congressional hesitation on what would be the largest election reform in decades reflects an awareness of constituent needs and lawmakers’ own reelection risks.

What’s the latest?

House Republicans have been quick to blame the Senate – and the 60-vote filibuster threshold the legislation must overcome to receive a vote on the Senate floor – for the inaction.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has brought the legislation to the floor for at least three votes in an effort to pressure the Senate to take up the legislation. In July 2026, Johnson took a more creative approach, relenting to conservative lawmakers by including portions of the SAVE America Act in a House-passed bill to fund the State Department.

These actions are largely theatrical. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said since February 2026 that there aren’t enough votes to move the SAVE America Act through the Senate, telling Fox News in June that “the votes currently aren’t there.” Although Senate Republicans could vote to remove the filibuster, which Trump has also requested, they have not.

Even in the House, the slim margins of Republican control have made it challenging for Johnson to keep the party together on the controversial issue. And Johnson’s gambit to attach the SAVE America Act to important legislation risks not only derailing bipartisan policy but another government shutdown, too.

If Republicans were serious about electoral reform, including moderate reforms that the majority of Americans do support, their approach would be like that used for other major legislation: bipartisan. Instead, partisan passage of a controversial bill, with a known Senate blockade, presents half-hearted strategy that avoids true responsibility.

Legal and logistical hurdles

The SAVE America Act would be confusing, time-consuming and expensive, and it would not provide funding to help states implement changes.

Changing election processes warrants precision and time, too. As Republican Sen. Thom Tillis noted, “Do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions.”

Beyond logistics, the legality of federalizing election processes is murky.

Congress does have the power to mandate election requirements. But under Article 1, Section 4, of the Constitution, while Congress can outline parameters, states are responsible for election administration.

For example, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 reinforced citizenship as a requirement, but states maintained responsibility for creating their own form and enrollment process. The SAVE America Act attempts to circumvent this by requiring federal possession of voter rolls.

Uncertainty for American citizens

Beyond legal challenges, the SAVE America Act introduces very real implications for American voters – and the members of Congress who represent them.

While the act’s stated goal is to ensure only citizens vote, citizenship requirements for voting are already federal law. In practice, many scholars believe the bill would make it more difficult for eligible voters to engage in the democratic process.

For rural Americans, most of whom are represented by Republican members of Congress, the act would sharply restrict mail-in registration and mail-in voting. More than 5 million Americans would need to drive an hour or more to register to vote, with some voters facing drives as long as eight hours.

For women who changed their name after marriage, a trait more likely to be associated with Republican women, voting would require marriage certificates in addition to birth certificates.

First-time voters, young voters on college campuses and voters who have recently moved could also face the hurdle of finding and presenting this documentation in person.

Members of Congress, particularly those who represent rural areas, are likely aware of this reality. Disenfranchising or, at best, confusing their voters risks their own electoral success, too.

Safety and security of upcoming elections

One of Trump’s first acts following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Slaughter in June 2026, which allowed the president to remove executive branch officials without cause, was to fire the remaining members of the bipartisan, Senate-confirmed Election Assistance Commission.

The agency is the point of contact for states regarding election administration processes, offering resources, guidance and expertise on voting logistics. If the SAVE America Act were to pass, this office would be integral to ensuring changes are unbiased and fair across all 50 states.

Coupled with warnings that Trump may invoke emergency powers over election administration, aggressive actions by the Department of Justice to control voter rolls, partisan redistricting, and now a vacated election commission, the SAVE America Act risks further disrupting elections. All while these elections have already been secure and overwhelmingly free of fraud.

As Tillis noted to reporters, “They’re being disingenuous to suggest to the American people they could possibly be operational by this election. And so then it begins to make me wonder … if we’re just beginning to undermine the underlying integrity of any of our elections. And I think that’s dangerous, and I think it’s wrong.”

Trump’s grip on Republicans

Does Congress’ hesitation to pass the SAVE America Act reflect a weakened Trump grip on the Republican party? Possibly. The president is more unpopular than he has been at any point during his second term. Ignoring Trump on the SAVE America Act may be a risk worth taking to some members.

But for most Republican members of Congress, appeasing Trump remains key to primary and electoral success. The president’s record on primary endorsements – even for Senate incumbents – remains strong, as he continues to define the party. Among constituents, some provisions of the SAVE America Act are popular among MAGA-aligned voters, making it an important electoral issue for members representing deep-red districts.

By publicly supporting the act, but relying on the Senate to serve as a doorstop to House-passed legislation, Congress falls into a familiar pattern that allows conservative members to appeal to the president while using procedure to block legislation that would make major changes to voting, mere months from Election Day.

Congress’ hesitance to pass the SAVE America Act is more than a test of its relationship with Trump. It’s an example of Congress doing what it was intended to do: represent its constituents.

SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Politics, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

President Donald Trump was dealt another bruising loss from the Supreme Court on one of his biggest political goals, and as one GOP strategist argued for MS NOW, the typical backlash from his MAGA supporters was "especially galling" this time around, and called into question the movement's treatment of the "moderate conservative woman."

As their term for the year came to an end, the court issued its hotly anticipated ruling in a case that would decide whether or not Trump had the authority to alter the definition of birthright citizenship, an idea that legal experts across the spectrum dismissed as beyond blatantly unconstitutional, given that Trump essentially attempted to invalidate the 14th Amendment without Congress. The justices ultimately ruled against him, but by a much slimmer margin than anticipated — 5-4 on the constitutional argument — raising alarms that conservatives may be encouraged to continue pursuing changes to birthright citizenship through different methods.

One of the justices in the majority for that ruling was Amy Coney Barrett, one of the three conservatives that Trump appointed to the court in his first term. Barrett has recently emerged as a conservative SCOTUS justice willing to break with the president on certain rulings, drawing considerable ire from his MAGA army as a result. This latest vote was no different, with various far-right voices calling for her to be removed from the court for her part in the birthright citizenship ruling, with some even going so far as to tar her as a "DEI" hire.

Writing MS NOW on Sunday, Republican strategist Susan Del Percio wrote that while "Misogyny in Trump world is nothing new," there was "something especially galling about" the reactions to Barrett this time around, especially from voices in the conservative movement that one might have expected to do better.

"Misogyny in Trump world is nothing new. But there’s something especially galling about watching a once trailblazing woman like former Rep. Nancy Mace call for Barrett to be removed from the bench in what feels like a desperate attempt to stay relevant," Del Percio wrote. "I didn’t see Mace, the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel in South Carolina, calling for the chief justice to be removed."

Del Percio further highlighted comments from far-right commentator Matt Walsh, who said in the wake of the ruling that "The worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women" and encouraged future Republican presidents to avoid nominating women to the bench in the future. She summed up this comment as "ragebait, pure and simple," but also stressed that Walsh's obvious motivations do not "make it any less gross," and chastised Barrett's critics for not calling out the male justices who vote the same way as she does, and for exhibiting the same behaviors they have spent decades claiming to hate when coming from liberals.

"As transparent as his motivations might be, they still do come at a cost," Del Percio continued. "Barrett’s occasionally centrist legal opinions merely confirm the fact that she is, in fact, a principled and thoughtful jurist. But conservatives, who have spent the past decade heckling liberals about purity tests and cancel culture, are now demanding ideological subservience and judicial groupthink. And they are singling her out in a way they don’t seem to be doing with other conservatives on the court who sometimes side with liberals. Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, joined Barrett and the liberal majority to strike down Trump’s international tariffs earlier this year."

She concluded: "When Barrett is demeaned by self-serving ideologues, every conservative, liberal and moderate member of the Supreme Court is diminished. America’s judicial system is one of our most treasured principles, and it is all of our jobs to defend it – not just when it is convenient, but even when we disagree with its conclusions."

Comedian and podcaster John Fugelsang says 228 years ago this week, President John Adams signed one of the great constitutional embarrassments in American history; the Alien and Sedition Acts. And today, President Donald Trump is “dumpster diving” through the Constitution to attack comedians and people who dare to laugh at him or disagree.

“You always know an authoritarian is terrified when they willfully confuse dissent with danger. But they’re not the same, folks,” said Fugelsang on his substack. “A peaceful protest isn’t America hate, a critical editorial isn’t assisting our enemies, and a comedian making fun of politicians isn’t the collapse of civilization.”

The Alien and Sedition Acts did four things. In addition to making it harder for immigrants to become citizens and letting the president deport non-citizens he calls “dangerous,” it also expanded wartime detention powers.

“And — this is the incredible one — they made it a crime to publish ‘false, scandalous and malicious’ criticism of the government,” added Fugelsang. “… Adams helped give us independence; then attempted to give himself independence from criticism. Imagine creating a law that says criticizing politicians is illegal. I mean, that could get the Stephen Colbert show cancelled.”

“It won’t shock you to know that the Sedition Act wasn’t applied equally,” Fugelsand said. “It overwhelmingly targeted editors and political opponents aligned with Thomas Jefferson; because ‘protecting democracy’ now meant persecuting the administration’s critics.”

This, said Fugelsang, was the first generation of Americans wasting “absolutely no time disappointing the second.”

It’s difficult to square Adams being one of America’s indispensable founders with the fact that he also signed one of the greatest assaults on free political speech in our early history, Fugelsang noted. But patriotism isn’t pretending great leaders never made terrible decisions. It’s learning from them.

“Of course, history is less of a teacher in the Age of Trump, and more like a deeply embarrassed parent,” he said. “… then Combover Caligula used your tax dollars to argue, in court, that street gangs operating within the U.S. are literally acting as extensions of a foreign government. … And so Trump used John Adams’ 200-year-old law as vulgar pretense to deport thousands, including legal asylum seekers, often violently, without the standard immigration court reviews. But the law was written for wartime spies. Not nannies and Uber drivers.”

But the good news is that more than two centuries later, nobody bought Adam’s argument, said Fugelsang.

“The public wasn’t fooled. Jefferson and Madison fought back, journalists kept publishing, and voters in the young Republic remembered,” said Fugelsang. “And in 1800, John Adams lost, having been handed a very clear performance review. And the lesson is true today. If you’re trying to keep power by attacking, suing or trying to silence people who criticize you, you probably shouldn’t keep power.”

“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Fugelsang said, “but bad politicians tend to plagiarize it.”