https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/this-week-at-democracy-docket-a-shocking-fbi-raid-a-monster-voter-suppression-bill-and-trump-officials-run-scared/
Democracy Docket
This week at Democracy Docket: A shocking FBI raid, a monster voter suppression bill — and Trump officials run scared
By Zachary Roth
February 1, 2026
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard entering the Fulton County Election HUB as the FBI takes Fulton County 2020 Election ballots on Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
This week, President Donald Trump and the GOP kicked their intertwined anti-voting crusades — promoting lies about the 2020 election, and restricting voting in 2026 and beyond — into high gear. And we tracked them every step of the way.
The headline was the shocking seizure of ballots and other voting materials by federal agents Wednesday from a Fulton County, Ga. elections hub that has been at the center of Trump’s false claims about 2020. We covered it from every angle: Democracy Docket’s Yunior Rivas and Matt Cohen brought us the news, then Yunior followed up with Jim Saksa to cover the stunned reaction, with one constitutional expert calling it a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”
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We weren’t nearly done. Matt spoke to local Democrats who alleged that the raid — which was carried out despite a separate ongoing DOJ lawsuit over the materials at issue — was illegal. Jim dug deeper into the operation’s shaky legality, and underlined that, rather than being backward looking, it poses a clear and present threat to 2026. And finally, Democracy Docket’s Jacob Knutson delved into the curious role of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was on the scene in Georgia, and whose involvement suggests the federal probe is based on some of the most outlandish international conspiracy theories to have been floated about 2020.
Speaking of Gabbard, she’s reported to have been probing 2020 for months, and she was scheduled to address state election officials, alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, at a Washington, D.C. conference Friday. But Matt, who was on the scene, reported that all three bailed at the last minute, leading one Democratic secretary of state to label them “cowards.”
Matt also spoke with several other secretaries of state at the confab, and reported that some are already co-ordinating with each other, and with national allies, to prepare for Trump to interfere in the midterms. We’re hoping to have much more on that important story next week.
Of course, Republican lawmakers in Congress don’t want to be left out of plans to undermine this year’s vote. As Yunior reported, the House GOP’s point person on elections introduced a new voter suppression measure — the Make Elections Great Again Act (MEGA), of course — that goes much further even than the SAVE Act.
That was the bill passed by the House last year that historians told us at the time was the worst attack on voting rights in our history. And Jim covered ominous new comments from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who promised to hold a vote on SAVE “at some point.” There’s even talk that the party could scrap the filibuster to get it onto Trump’s desk.
Yunior also broke news on a potential blow to the Trump Department of Justice’s anti-voting crusade: the departure of Maureen Riordan, an experienced right-wing election lawyer whose hiring last year as acting voting section chief Yunior also was first to report.
Meanwhile, we never want to forget that GOP attacks on voting aren’t just happening at the national level — they’re also underway in the states. Democracy Docket’s Jen Rice took a break from keeping us up to date on the Trump-driven redistricting battle to report on a new North Carolina proposal to create a class of “presumptive noncitizens” who could be targeted for removal from the voter rolls.
But the week ended with some good news. As Jacob reported, a federal judge permanently blocked provisions of Trump’s anti-voting executive order that aimed to make registration more difficult. In doing so, the judge utterly destroyed the logic behind Trump’s bid to usurp power over elections from the states.
The Framers “assigned no role at all to the President” in setting election rules, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures.”
A high-ranking federal appeals judge has dismissed the Justice Department’s misconduct claim against James Boasberg, the chief district judge in Washington, D.C., who warned last year that Trump officials had disregarded his court orders.