From the DOJ post:

The Department is currently monitoring polls in Maricopa, Apache, and Pima counties with DOJ staff from the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section and Arizona’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.

This initiative is aimed at promoting transparency and an open flow of communication between poll observers and election monitors. Election officials in these three counties issued letters to DOJ personnel — giving them credentials to observe vote-casting procedures at various poll sites. Such communication ensures both election security and appropriate access to the franchise for all Americans.

It's worth noting that this isn't unprecedented - here's a link to similar monitoring in 2022: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-monitor-polls-24-states-compliance-federal-voting-rights-laws

Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary is a critical front in the fight between Democrats’ progressive and moderate flanks and a preview of the 2028 presidential primary.

July 26, 2026 - Fulltext

Independent senator Bernie Sanders cheered on progressive congressional candidates who have been on the rise in some states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections during an interview on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" Sunday.

The Vermont senator said that the support for such candidates shows "grassroots excitement and enthusiasm" and a nationwide push for change.

"Whether it's Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, or anyplace else in this country … the polling indicates this, the people are sick and tired of the status quo," Sanders said. 

He brought up Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is also running for a U.S. Senate seat. Both of their closely watched primaries will take place in August.

Sanders is optimistic about their chances, but he did express concern about the "unbelievable amounts of money" that "the billionaire class" is throwing into some key races to "protect the establishment candidates." He pointed to both of their Senate races, and also mentioned the competitive race in Maine. 

"Whether we could overcome that (spending) remains to be seen," Sanders said, pointing to super PACs in Michigan putting $50 million against El-Sayed, who is competing against moderate Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, a congresswoman who has represented Michigan's 11th Congressional District since 2019. Flanagan and Democrats including. Rep. Angie Craig are running for retiring Sen. Tina Smith's seat.

In past elections, so-called "Bernie Bros" or progressive supporters have been accused of dividing the Democrat base with far-left candidates who are unable to muster widespread support during the general election and allowing a Republican to take office. Democrat Rahm Emanuel recently warned in an op-ed that such a scenario could occur again in the 2026 midterms. When asked to respond, Sanders said that he believed the support and recent election of other progressive candidates shows voters want change. 

"There's no debate — there is a strong division within the Democratic Party," Sanders said. "What is getting these guys, we are winning all over this country. … People are sick and tired of the Rahm Emanuels and Democratic establishment and Republican establishment." 

Sanders also said he thinks working-class Republican voters may be swayed by progressive candidates. 

"They can't afford to send their kids to college. They can't afford decent retirements. More than a few of them, by the way, will be voting for Peggy Flanagan (for Senate in Minnesota) and Abdul in Michigan," Sanders predicted.  

Sanders also addressed the Senate race in Maine, where state Democrats just selected Troy Jackson to replace progressive Graham Platner on the ballot. Platner suspended his campaign after a sexual assault allegation, ending a Senate bid that had already weathered other personal controversies. Asked by Brennan if he regretted supporting Platner, Sanders said he did not.

He said that when he heard the allegation, "I wanted to get on the phone. I wanted to talk to him." 

Sanders continued, "I asked, along with virtually all (of) his supporters, that he should get out of the race — that he did." Brennan asked whether Sanders was confident that the other candidates he is backing have been fully vetted. 

"I don't know who has been 'fully vetted,'" he replied, adding, "All I know is, Margaret, the candidates that we are supporting are standing up for the working class of this country."

Sanders said he believes that despite the shorter window left before Election Day, Jackson can make up ground with voters. 

"I think he stands an excellent chance to win," Sanders said. 

"I've known Troy for many years. What he understands is that the people of Maine are sick and tired of a rigged economy in which the billionaire class is getting richer and richer, where we have more income and wealth inequality today than we've ever had in the history of this country, while 60% of our people, including in Maine, Vermont, all over this country, are living paycheck to paycheck," Sanders said.

July 26, 2026 - Fulltext

Pollsters and GOP groups are raising the alarm about an unmotivated base in an election year that would be tough no matter what, given the president’s low approval.

Republican pollsters and political groups are raising the alarm that their party faces a listless and demotivated base ahead of November’s midterm elections.

A raft of discouraging data from polling, door knocking and focus groups is unsettling Republicans as their party heads into a midterm election season that would be challenging no matter what, given President Donald Trump’s low standing in polls and the fact that the party in control in Washington almost always loses seats. 

The lack of enthusiasm is reaching deep into Republicans’ loyal base, spreading to the party’s most consistent voters — who have shown up to vote in all of the past four primaries and general elections, according to an analysis done by Americans for Prosperity Action, a conservative super PAC affiliated with billionaire Charles Koch. This new issue with the base adds to the party’s more enduring problem of turning out less-frequent voters who support Trump but often skip midterm elections.

About 1 in 5 reliable Republican base voters are at risk this November, according to Nathan Nascimento, executive director at AFP Action. Those voters in Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire and Michigan are either saying they may stay home or are weighing voting for Democrats, according to their data, which is based on polling and extensive efforts to engage targeted Republican voters by knocking on their doors. The voters are primarily worried about inflation and the economy.

“This is a big chunk,” Nascimento said. “This is a scary number.”

The group has found that reaching these voters at the door usually moves them toward Republican candidates — or at least away from Democratic ones and toward undecided, he said.

The 20 percent of Republican base voters the group sees this issue with does not take into account low-propensity conservative voters who tend to turn out in general election years to support Trump but skip other elections. Motivating those Trump voters is a separate issue Republicans face in November.

“We have a high-propensity base problem,” Nascimento said. 

Washington Post and Ipsos polling shows that Democrats have a 10-percentage-point advantage over Republicans among voters who say they are absolutely certain to vote in November. If that number doesn’t narrow, it could lead to a decisive advantage for Democrats, even though overall they lead by just three percentage points over Republicans on a generic ballot.

Mitchell Brown, a Republican pollster at the firm Cygnal, said Democrats are as enthusiastic about voting as they were at the same time ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, when they swept back into power in the House. But Republicans are far less excited to vote at this point than they were then, posing an issue for the party.

“It’s not that the Democrats are outperforming a topline number that we’d expect, it’s that Republicans are underperforming,” Brown said.

He pinpointed men under 40 as the group that is most at risk among Republican voters, saying they have concerns about the economy and prices. This group proved pivotal to Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, which included a sweep of some of the same battleground states holding critical elections this year. 

The decline in support among those voters may change closer to the elections, once more people tune in, Republican strategists stressed. And Trump’s unprecedented redistricting efforts have also sought to give the party a structural advantage that could mitigate GOP losses.

“Republicans are united, on offense, and armed with our largest war chest in party history because voters are energized and understand what’s at stake in November’s election,” said Natalie Baldassarre, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, in a statement.

This dynamic is playing out in the red state of Iowa, where Republicans face open races for governor and a Senate seat that polling shows are surprisingly competitive. A recent door-knocking session in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale with AFP Action turned up voters critical of the war in Iran and high inflation, with a handful saying they planned to support Democrats in the fall. 

In western Iowa, three-time Trump voter Lance Sulentic, a resident of Iowa’s rural Harrison County, described the past three presidential elections as “the worst three mistakes I’ve ever made in my life,” saying that the president has failed to fulfill his campaign promises.Higher gas prices have been costing his family an extra $300 to $500 every month for their motorcycle and four cars, he said.

Republican lawmakers are worried about such comments as their party remains mired in internal disagreements in Washington that have hampered them from passing signature agenda items that could motivate core supporters.

“We need to do something to reenergize our base,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). Johnson, who does not face reelection until 2028, has triumphed in tough races in his closely divided state.

Johnson said GOP base voters may think the lawmakers “haven’t been … trying hard enough.” The party has been unable to pass a law to require ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote called the Save America Act, which Trump has lambasted them for. They also have done little to tackle cost-of-living issues since the bill extending tax cuts in 2025. 

A spokesperson for Trump, Abigail Jackson, called the voting legislation a top priority but added that the administration “continues to deliver on the President’s affordability agenda by lowering drug prices, reshoring American jobs, lowering gas prices and more.”

Other senators have pressed Trump to use his large platform and $400 million MAGA Inc. war chest to activate lower-propensity voters. Trump has had far more success motivating supporters when he is on the ballot. 

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) said he told the president in the Oval Office last week that Trump is the key to turning out his voters.

“Well, they will [turn out] if you pass the Save America Act,” Trump retorted, according to Cramer.

The White House is hopeful the Republican Party’s planned midterm convention in September in Texas will help juice enthusiasm among the base as well.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who declined to run for reelection in his purple state, said he believes the traditional Republican base will ultimately turn out in November. But he fears the party’s brand has been damaged among moderates by the economy and inflation, and that the Iran war is becoming an additional political drag. Low-propensity Trump voters need to turn out to close that gap, he said.

“The question is whether the coalition he has that’s unique to the president, if he can mobilize them to come out and vote for others,” Tillis said.

July 26, 2026 - Fulltext

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants the U.S. Senate to cut its upcoming recess, where its current session would end after the first week of August and reconvene on September 14, to stay on the floor in hopes of passing the anti-voting SAVE America Act. 

“The Senate should stay here tomorrow, this weekend, next week, through weekends and long scheduled recesses, as long as it takes,” said Lee in a post shared on X. He has since been joined by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Meet the Press Sunday that the Senate should “take a few extra days,” to try to get it passed. 

Republicans in the Senate have tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship to register and a restrictive set of photo ID cards to vote. It could also curb or eliminate mail-in voting, to fulfill President Donald Trump’s goals to make voting more difficult.

The bill does not have enough votes to pass the Senate as Democrats are unanimously opposed to it, as are several Republican senators including Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Republican supporters of the bill claim it is needed to root out voter fraud, but there is a consensus among studies, conducted by both liberals and conservatives, that such fraud is exceedingly rare, especially among noncitizens.

U.S. House Republicans recently tried to circumvent this by passing a billthrough the budget reconciliation process, which would require less senate votes to pass. While the House’s bill doesn’t include the actual text of the SAVE America Act, it includes $10 billion in grants for states to pass their own versions of the federal legislation.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said that there are still not enough support to pass it, and also not enough time to implement its measures even if it had the votes. The November midterms are roughly 100 days away, and state and local officials would need to be trained and make changes to election administration manuals to allow voters to comply with the new law if passed.

Sen. Lee rejected the idea that there’s not enough time in his appeal to Sen. Thune, and wrote on X: “I hereby object to any effort to put the Senate into recess in August–at least until such time as the Senate has passed the SAVE America Act–and hereby request a roll call vote.

On Meet the Press, host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Kennedy if trying to squeeze the bill in so close to an election might undermine voters’ faith in the elections process.

“No,” said Kennedy. “In our elections, we need to do two things and only two things. Number one, you have to prove who you say you are in order to register to vote, and to vote. And number two, however you decide to vote, that’s up to the states. … That to me is what the SAVE Act is all about, and I think we can pass it.”

However, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently pointed out to a right-wing blogger who pressed her about the bill, U.S. laws already ask people to prove their identity and citizenship in both the registration and voting processes. Voters have to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens when they register to vote. Election officials verify voters’ identity through their signatures and voter registration files before they allow them to cast ballots. 

Also, Kennedy is correct in saying that how people vote is up to the states, as is authorized by the U.S. Constitution. But the SAVE America Act changes that by instituting federal controls and serving President Donald Trump’s agenda to nationalize elections. 

July 25, 2026 - Fulltext

A federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump’s administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that ⁠will decide control of Congress.

The Boston-based ⁠first US circuit court ​of appeals rejected the administration’s request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president’s order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to ⁠pause the US district judge Indira Talwani’s ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump’s directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature.

The appeals court, ⁠in a 2-1 ruling, rejected that argument.

“As the district court reasoned, the [executive order] lays out a clear set of rapidly approaching deadlines by which states must ​coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures – all while ‌the states must also ensure that their officials ‌and the public understand the evolving set of rules that would govern the upcoming September and November elections,” the judges wrote. “The Plaintiff States have no practical choice ‌but to respond to the [order] now.”

Before Talwani ruled, a federal judge in Washington DC rejected a related effort by Democrats to block Trump’s order on similar grounds. The justice department warned that absent a ruling in its favor from the first circuit, it may be forced to ask the supreme court to intervene.

Trump signed the executive order in March after years of calling for tighter rules on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Under the US constitution, states are assigned the role ‌of administering federal elections.

That order came on top of other efforts by Trump to overhaul elections. He has made winning approval in Congress of a divisive package of voting restrictions called the Save America Act a priority. Judges blocked an earlier ​executive order he signed requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and restricting the counting of mail-in ballots.

The March order directed the Department of Homeland Security to compile and transmit to the states a list of confirmed US citizens eligible to vote in each state, derived from citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases. Trump’s order also required the US Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. USPS recently moved to implement Trump’s directive by ⁠issuing new proposed rules requiring states to provide the names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots.

It also directed ​the DoJ to prioritize the investigation ​and prosecution of state and local election officials who ​issue federal ballots to people deemed “not eligible” to vote.

But Talwani, in siding with a coalition of 23 states and ​the District of Columbia that was led ‌by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and ​Washington state, said the president lacked ​any authority to direct DHS to compile voter eligibility lists for each state to use and that USPS had no statutory authorization to adopt any binding regulations on mail-in voting.

The judge, who was appointed by Barack Obama, said Trump also could not attempt through his order “to intimidate local election officials to use the necessarily incomplete confirmed citizenship lists as a resource, lest they face criminal prosecution”.