Supreme Court Victory!
Supreme Court Blocks Race-Based Gerrymandering
Court Victory: D.C. Blocked from Hiding January 6 Bodycam Footage
Oregon Settlement Targets 800,000 Ineligible Voter Registrations
Nevada Attorney General Coordinated with Leftists on Election Issues
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Trump Golf Club Security Breach
Supreme Court Blocks Race-Based Gerrymandering
Big news out of the courts this week—U.S. Supreme Court has issued a major 6-3 decision that could reshape how congressional districts are drawn across the country.
This is a great decision for democracy. It affirms that the U.S. Constitution requires the government to be colorblind in its decision making. The decision effectively ends the egregious racial segregation of voters. We are prepared to enforce this decision and end any racial gerrymandering that treats voters as cogs in a racial spoils system.
Most Americans would agree with the court’s conclusion that “allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”
In January 2025, Judicial Watch and AEF filed an initial amici brief (friends of the court) in this case, asking the court to affirm a lower court ruling that Louisiana violated the constitution when it crowded minority voters into congressional districts. Judicial Watch and AEF filed a supplemental amici curiae brief in September 2025.
We argued:
This Court has compared race-based districting to segregation of “public parks, … buses, … and schools,” and warned that we “should not be carving electorates into racial blocs.” … That is because “[c]lassifications of citizens solely on the basis of race ‘are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.’” … Racial gerrymandering, like all “[r]acial classifications of any sort” cause “lasting harm to our society” because “[t]hey reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin.” …
There should be no question that race-based division of citizens for purposes of compliance with § 2 and Ginglesis a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, the “central purpose” of which “is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race.”… The same may be said of the Voting Rights Act.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas agreed, denouncing the practice where:
“Blacks [were] drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black representatives’; Hispanics [were] drawn into Hispanic districts and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” . . . That interpretation is “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” . . . Today’s decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence.
AEF is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life through education. In furtherance of that goal, the Foundation has engaged in a number of projects, which include, but are not limited to, educational and health conferences domestically and abroad. AEF has partnered frequently with Judicial Watch to fight government and judicial corruption and to promote a return to ethics and morality in the nation’s public life.
We are a national leader in election integrity and voting rights litigation, with a record of successful lawsuits enforcing constitutional redistricting standards and cleaning voter rolls nationwide.
We pointed out earlier this year that Maryland’s Democrat-proposed 2026 congressional redistricting plan is in key respects identical to the unconstitutional gerrymander struck down in a prior Judicial Watch lawsuit—but is even more partisan and less compact than the invalidated 2021 map.
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide.
In March 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States held oral argument in a landmark election integrity case over whether the federal Election Day laws prohibit the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. We brought the underlying lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi.
In January 2026, in a historic case we filed, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors who were before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.
Court Victory: D.C. Blocked from Hiding January 6 Bodycam Footage
In a major victory for Judicial Watch and the rule of law, a Washington, D.C. court ruled that Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) cannot broadly blur and censor body-worn camera (BWC) footage from January 6, 2021.
The MPD had previously claimed that such redactions were necessary to protect personal privacy and asserted that complying with the request would cost more than $1.5 million due to the volume of footage, which reportedly exceeds one thousand hours.
The ruling follows a January 8, 2026, hearing before Judge Veronica Sanchez in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for all bodycam footage recorded by Metropolitan Police officers who responded to the U.S. Capitol on January 6 (Judicial Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)).
In its order, the court rejected the District’s argument that it could justify redacting, under D.C. FOIA exemptions, the faces and voices of all non-law enforcement individuals captured in the footage.
The court found that while individuals appearing in the footage may have a limited privacy interest, that interest is minimal and does not outweigh the strong public interest in disclosure. The court emphasized that the events of January 6 occurred largely in public settings, were widely recorded, and remain a matter of significant national concern.
Concerning the individuals’ privacy interests, the court explained that the individuals present could not reasonably expect that their appearances would remain private:
The circumstances leading up to the events at the U.S. Capitol Complex included a large, public, televised event on the National Mall. Individuals were gathered in a public arena. The crowd then marched to the U.S. Capitol Complex where members of congress were partaking in the certification of the Presidential election results live on television.
***
The individuals on the [body-worn cameras] could not “reasonably expect that their appearances on the [BWC] would remain private.” … A person’s privacy interest is greater in the release of images and video footage that were taken without their “knowing consent.” … Even though the individuals recorded on the subject BWCs may not have consented to their images being recorded, they certainly had reason to believe that the many law enforcement officers, as well as the surveillance cameras at the government owned property, were recording them. Additionally, during the events of January 6, simultaneous media images from both inside the U.S. Capitol and around the U.S. Capitol Complex were being broadcast, streamed, and uploaded. While the individuals may have not all “knowingly consented” to the images being recorded, they had reason to know they were.
Concerning the public interest, the court stated:
The events of January 6, 2021, have been the topic of much debate, discussion, and scrutiny in the public consciousness by not just the residents of the District of Columbia but also the nation. BWC footage of the events at the Capitol on January 6 could “contribute significantly” to the public’s understanding of the events on that day and the MPD’s actions.
The court concluded, “In balancing the privacy interests which are little more than de minimis with the public interest, the public interest outweighs the privacy interests. … [T]he faces and voices of individuals captured by MPD’s BWCs on January 6, 2021, are not exempt from disclosure.”
This a major victory for transparency and the rule of law. As the court found, the American people have a right to see this secret D.C. police January 6 footage. We will now push for the immediate release of the videos.
We have extensively investigated the events of January 6.
In April 2026, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to obtain records related to possible improper targeting of January 6, 2021, Capitol protesters, their supporters, and related nonprofits
In August 2025, we announced that the U.S. Air Force would finally provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. Babbitt was the only official January 6 homicide victim. The Biden administration had previously denied Babbitt and her family these honors in retaliation for being at the U.S. Capitol that day. This decision came on the heels of a massive, nearly $5 million Trump administration settlement to her family for wrongful death and other claims against the U.S. Government.
In July 2025, we sued the U.S. Department of Justice for records on accelerated January 6 prosecutions after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2024. The Biden administration, anticipating President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to issue pardons for January 6, 2021, defendants, is believed to have accelerated prosecutions in the final months of Biden’s term.
In March 2024, we received Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.
In October 2023, we received the declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.
Oregon Settlement Targets 800,000 Ineligible Voter Registrations
Election victory in Oregon! We have a settlement in our federal lawsuit against Oregon election officials, which confirms 800,000 ineligible voter names are slated for review and removal from voter registration lists. The settlement requires state officials to produce detailed data and enforce federal voter roll clean-up procedures under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
We filed the lawsuit in October 2024, alleging Oregon failed to remove ineligible voters and seeking to enforce Section 8 of the NVRA after identifying widespread voter roll maintenance failures across dozens of counties (Judicial Watch, et al. v. The State of Oregon et al. (No. 6:24-cv-01783)).
In our complaint, we argued that Oregon’s voter rolls contain large numbers of old, inactive registrations; and that 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by federal election law. We asserted that Oregon and 35 of its counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100%; and that Oregon had the highest known inactive registration rate of any state in the nation. In combination, all of these facts showed that Oregon was failing to remove inactive registrations as required by federal law.
In August 2025, a federal court in Oregon denied a motion to dismiss by Oregon and ruled the lawsuit could proceed.
In response to the lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations, which are kept separately from the active voter rolls and do not receive ballots. Of those, roughly 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal—having received confirmation notices, failed to respond, and not voted in two federal elections—and are slated for cancellation. The remaining approximately 640,000 inactive records do not yet qualify for removal and will be processed through future list maintenance efforts.
In its press release, Oregon acknowledged that routine removal of outdated records effectively stalled in 2017, leaving a large pool of long-dormant registrations on the rolls without being fully processed for removal. The scale of the backlog underscores a gap in routine list maintenance that is only now being addressed. “These directives are about cleaning up old data that’s no longer in use so Oregonians can be confident that our voter records are up to date,” said Read.
This is another historic election integrity success. Our lawsuit caused Oregon to finally cleanup 800,000 outdated voter names, adding to the more than six million ineligible voters removed by Judicial Watch lawsuits and legal action nationwide. Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections. Oregon’s Secretary of State, Tobias Read, is to be commended for responding to our lawsuit with a massive voter roll clean-up and commitment to continued voter list maintenance, which will only increase voter confidence.”
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide.
Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), states must take reasonable steps to remove ineligible voters—such as those who have died, moved, or become otherwise inactive.
The settlement with Oregon remains in effect for more than five years, with a federal court retaining jurisdiction to enforce its terms. While the settlement resolves the litigation, it explicitly allows future legal action if Oregon fails to comply with voter list clean-up requirements going forward.
The settlement requires Oregon to open its voter roll maintenance processes to unprecedented scrutiny. State officials must now regularly provide detailed, county-level data on voter registrations, removals, confirmation notices, and inactive voters—including those eligible for removal under federal law. This includes data reported to the Election Assistance Commission, as well as additional datasets that will allow ongoing monitoring of compliance. The agreement ensures that this information will not be hidden behind bureaucratic barriers, requiring timely disclosure and identification of data sources.
Oregon will also provide annual reports on inactive voters and those eligible for removal under federal law, as well as provide free access to the state’s voter registration list upon request to Judicial Watch.
Oregon committed to implementing Read’s new list maintenance directives, which were issued in response to our lawsuit.
The agreement also gives us the authority to request detailed records and monitor Oregon’s compliance, including documentation related to county performance and voter list maintenance procedures.
We are a national leader in election integrity and voting rights litigation, with a record of successful lawsuits enforcing constitutional redistricting standards and cleaning voter rolls nationwide.
Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads our election law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.
We are assisted by Stephen Joncus of Joncus Law PC in Happy Valley, Oregon.
Colorado recently removed 372,000 ineligible voter names thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit and settlement addressing the state’s compliance with federal voter list maintenance requirements.
In Kentucky, state election board officials reported that “roughly 735,000 ineligible voter registrations” have been removed from voter rolls, as part of a 2018 consent decree settling a Judicial Watch lawsuit.
As part of its 2022 settlement, New York City alone has removed 918,139 ineligible names from its rolls: data show 477,056 removals between March 2023 and February 2025, which is in addition to the 441,083 previously reported removals.
In Los Angeles, county officials confirmed the removal of more than 1.2 million names from voter rolls as part of a settlement. Judicial Watch legal pressure also resulted in election roll clean-ups in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.
A federal court in Illinois has ruled that our lawsuit to force the cleaning of voter rolls may proceed in that state. We have sent a notice-of-violation letter to election officials in California, and legal action over the state’s voter rolls is imminent.
In March 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States held oral argument in a landmark election integrity case over whether the federal Election Day laws prohibit the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. We brought the underlying lawsuit on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi.
In January 2026, in a historic case we filed, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors who were before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.
Nevada Attorney General Coordinated with Leftists on Election Issues
Judicial Watch received 238 pages of records from the State of Nevada Office of Attorney General in a Nevada Public Records Act lawsuit that show the state’s close coordination with the nonprofit States United Democracy Center, which has pushed indictments of President Donald Trump’s supporters, lawyers, activists, and Republican Party officials who challenged the results of the 2020 election.
We sued the state of Nevada attorney general’s office after it failed to respond to a February 2025 records request for documents and communications involving the States United Democracy Center (SUDC) and the Voter Protection Project (VPP) (Judicial Watch Inc. v. State of Nevada ex. rel. Office of the Attorney General (No. A-26-941044)).
The States United Democracy Center was accused of helping to develop legal theories and materials related to the prosecution of alternate slates of Republican electors in the 2020 election. The Voter Protection Project is a left-wing political action committee that donates to far-left candidates who support eliminating many U.S. election security laws.
The records include a January 2021 internal email from States United Democracy Center’s Fiona Dwyer-McNultyreferencing a one-hour “AG Briefing” featuring outside participants, including Mary McCord; representatives from 21CP Solutions; Jared Holt of DFR Labs; Shannon Hiller of the Bridging Divides Initiative; and Norman Eisen.
In an April 15, 2021, email chain labeled “Bipartisan Sign-on Letter re Corporate Leadership,” Joanna Lydgate, president and CEO of Voter Protection Program/States United Democracy Center, writes to Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford:
As you know, I’m the CEO of the Voter Protection Program … As of Monday, VPP will become a project of our new umbrella 501(c)(3) organization, the States United Democracy Center, but our mission will remain the same. We are looking forward to continuing our work with you under our new name.
One of the first projects of the States United Democracy Center is organizing an open letter to the business community from a bipartisan coalition of current and former state officials — governors, lieutenant governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state — urging businesses to continue to speak out in support of voting rights and applauding those who have done so already. [Emphasis in original] I have attached a PDF of the letter, which is co-sponsored by current Governors Roy Cooper (NC) and Gretchen Whitmer (MI) and former Governors Arne Carlson (MN), Bill Weld (MA), and Christine Todd Whitman (NJ).
I’m writing to ask you to join these governors in expressing your support for the freedom to vote and your concern about the voting restrictions being proposed across the country.
Lydgate welcomes Nevada General Counsel Leslie M. Nino Piro to the email chain and Piro responds: “It’s great to meet you, Joanna! I look forward to working with you as well.” Later, Attorney General Aaron Ford writes that Piro will “be attending with and/or for me going forward.”
Renee D. Carreau, executive assistant to the solicitor general, writes to Lydgate and others: “Nevada would like to sign on to this letter. Please see our signature block attached. Please let me know if you need anything further & send us the final letter after it has been sent.” She later writes:
Ms. Lydgate & Dwyer-McNulty, I would like to request to add our Solicitor General, Heidi Parry Stern, cc’d above, and me to any of these types of communications. We handle all multistate litigation and sign-ons to Amici briefs and letters. Either Ms. Stern or I will be responding to the below request, before COB tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any questions.
The letter, addressed to “Dear Business Leaders,” opposes a “a wave of voter restrictions sweeping the country.”
In a February 2025 email to Dwyer-McNulty, Nevada Chief Deputy Attorney General Greg D. Ott asks to have Deputy Attorney General Devin Oliver added to States United Democracy Center’s monthly conference calls as “He’s coordinating much of the multistate litigation here and I think it would be beneficial for him to hear the litigation summaries that your team provides.” Dwyer-McNulty responds that Oliver was added to the list.
These records further expose a coordinated leftist lawfare machine—leftist state attorneys general working hand-in-glove with allied activist groups to target political opponents and undermine our election system.
In November 2025, we received 5,789 pages of records from the Michigan Department of Attorney General in a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request that shows the state’s coordination with States United Democracy Center.
We continue to work to obtain records from Arizona, and Wisconsin, which appear to have been part of the same coordinated efforts led by States United Democracy Center.
In July 2025, we filed a Georgia Public Records lawsuit against Fani Willis in her capacity as district attorney for the Atlanta Circuit for communications and agreements with the States United Democracy Center and/or the Voter Protection Project regarding the investigation and prosecution of Republican state electors for the 2020 presidential election and/or anti-racketeering for conspiring to nullify the election.
Judicial Watch Sues for Records on Trump Golf Club Security Breach
President Trump has survived multiple assassination attempts, including the Butler, Pennsylvania Rally – July 13, 2024; West Palm Beach, Florida – September 15, 2024; and most recently at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Washington, D.C. – April 25, 2026.
We are suing for records on a serious security breach at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, VA.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for U.S. Secret Service (USSS) records related to an August 31, 2025, incident in which a club member allegedly carried a loaded semi-automatic handgun past screening checkpoints at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia while President Donald Trump was on site (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:26-cv-01447)).
According to reports, a club member was able to bring a loaded semi-automatic handgun onto the premises while Trump was present, after passing through Secret Service screening checkpoints. A Secret Service spokesperson said that handheld magnetometers were used instead of walkthrough devices when screening guests at the president’s golf resort, located about 25 miles northwest of the White House.
It’s very disturbing that a security lapse of this magnitude could occur, particularly given recent threats against the president. The public has a right to know how this happened and what is being done to prevent it from happening again.
The agent in charge of searching the guest’s bag at the golf facility was placed on administrative leave amid an ongoing review by the Secret Service.
We filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Secret Service failed to respond to a November 18, 2025, FOIA request for:
All records related to the internal investigation of the August 31, 2025, incident at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, in which a club member was able to get a semi-automatic hand gun into the club premises while the President was present without initial detection, including but not limited to investigative reports, agents’ notes, witness interview, audio-video recordings and other records.
All emails and text messages sent between members of the Presidential protective detail regarding the August 31, 2025, incident at the golf club.
In April 2026, our FOIA lawsuit forced the release of records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that show that would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was reportedly involved in an altercation with a group of people and making “hateful comments” directed at President Trump at the Butler, PA, rally site before the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt.
In February 2026, our lawsuit forced the release of the first FBI records about the Butler assassination attempt.
In December 2025, we sued the U.S. Secret Service for communications records related to Code Pink protesters who disrupted a dinner held by President Trump at a restaurant in Washington, DC, on September 9, 2025 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-04408)).
In September 2025, we filed a FOIA lawsuit for messages among top leaders of the FBI referencing social media posts of Special Agent Jeffrey Veltri, head of the Miami Field Office, which is investigating the September 15 assassination attempt against Donald Trump (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02740)).
In March 2025, we sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for records related to security provided for the July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, PA (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-00704)).
In August 2024, we uncovered documents from the district attorney’s office in Butler County, PA, detailing the extensive preparation of local police for the rally at which former President Trump was shot. The preparation included sniper teams, counter assault teams and a quick response force.
In August 2024, in response to a separate open records request, we obtained bodycam footage of the July 13 assassination events from the Butler Township Police Department.
In August 2024, following up on reports that the Biden Secret Service denied Trump’s requests for additional Secret Service protection, we filed a FOIA lawsuit for Secret Service and other records regarding potential increased protective services to Trump’s security detail prior to the attempt on his life at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, PA (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:24-cv-02495)).
Until next week,
Top News
