The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has long worked to protect voting rights. But since President Donald Trump returned to office, the DOJ’s voting section has done a dramatic 180. Today, rather than standing up for voting access, it’s supporting and defending voter suppression laws and bringing new lawsuits to impose stricter voting rules.
Many of the individual moves that make up this shift haven’t made national headlines. A statement of interest submitted in a challenge to Wyoming’s proof of citizenship law. A letter threatening a lawsuit over voter records in Arizona. But taken together, they tell a deeply troubling story about the department’s deliberate decision not just to pull back on protecting voting rights, but to move full-steam in the opposite direction — putting its massive resources in the service of the Republican campaign to make voting more difficult.
The timeline below, which we’ll continue to update, tracks the key steps in the DOJ’s sharp anti-voting shift.
Anti-Voting Steps by the Trump Justice Department
