Judge blocks Trump effort to pull election funding for states that don't adjust voting forms

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Politico

01/09/2026 09:04 PM ESTUpdated: 01/09/2026 11:38 PM EST


A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from threatening to withhold federal election funding for states that refuse to alter their voter registration forms or voting systems to President Donald Trump’s liking.

U.S. District Judge John Chun ruled Friday that Trump’s threat to pull Election Assistance Commission funds was an attempt to put unconstitutional pressure on states even though the president — by design — has no formal power to determine how states administer elections. “The President has no authority to unilaterally impose new conditions on federal funds,” Chun wrote in a 75-page ruling.

Chun, a Seattle-based Biden appointee, is the third federal judge to block large portions of Trump’s March 25 Executive Order purporting to require states to alter their election processes. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Washington, D.C.-based Obama appointee, in April blocked portions of the order forcing states to adopt new standards for voters’ proof of citizenship and a series of enforcement mechanisms. And U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, a Massachusetts-based Obama appointee, in June blocked provisions seeking to punish states that count ballots that arrive after Election Day.

The Trump administration has appealed Kollar-Kotelly’s and Casper’s rulings. Both appeals remain pending.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/09/election-trump-order-ruling-00721151

---

Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.346612/gov.uscourts.wawd.346612.126.0_1.pdf

REFERENCES

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143425716
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143428990
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143430483
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143430599
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143430770
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143437692
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143469053
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143446934
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143446855
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143477706
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143488775
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143496539
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143497545
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143527151
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143557140
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143591402

[OldBaldy1701E]

1. But, will that stop him from doing it? (n/t)

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. He's already been stopped

Unless the appeal gets overturned by SCOTUS, which is unlikely.

With only a handful of exceptions, this administration has obeyed court orders restraining their lawless impunity,

Not sure why they do, but they do.

[OldBaldy1701E]

3. Taken from Google.

The Trump administration was accused of defying or frustrating court oversight in 57 cases, which represented approximately 35 percent of the judicial rulings made against it, according to a July 2025 analysis by The Washington Post. The analysis examined 165 cases in which federal judges had ruled against the administration.
The actual number of individual court orders that were ignored is difficult to pinpoint precisely due to how lawsuits and appeals are tracked, but legal experts described the rate of noncompliance as unprecedented.

I am afraid that is a bit more than a 'handful'. Plus, as shown, we can't really know just how many times they have done it because reasons.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. What does "frustrating court oversight" mean

As we have seen and known for a long time, Trump is the master of courtroom manipulation, delay and stalling.

But delay, stalling and manipulation are not the same as open defiance of a specific order. AFAIK, there are only 2-3 instances of the Trump administration openly defying a judge’s order, the most famous of which was the deportee flight to El Salvador that refused to turn around when a judged ordered them to mid-flight.

Otherwise, the Trump administration always appeals rulings, and if they are successful in getting a stay pending appeal, continue to act with lawless impunity. But if they don’t get a stay, and the injunction remains in place pending the appeal, then they comply- most notably in the following instances :

No troops deployed to Chicago or Portland
Kilmer Garcia is free on US soil
Numerous Federal employees fired by DOGE had their jobs reinstated

These are the most well known, but there are numerous others, perhaps not captured accurately by your Google AI summary because they weren’t widely covered by the news media (not “sexy” enough), and so didn’t get “scraped” by the AI bot compiling the summary, although the bot acknowledged this in your bolded portion of your post.

In that gray area between defiance and compliance with a judge’s order are the myriad legal games Trump’s lawyers play in court, perhaps best exemplified by the cat and mouse contempt proceedings in Judge Boasberg’s court. Boasberg has not found Trump’s team in contempt yet, as they use procedural delays to stall their compliance with his orders.

Until/unless a stay is ordered pending appeal, it appears the administration is complying with the ruling reported in the OP, hence my post that he has already been stopped, at least for the moment.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Since there are well over 1000 cases that have been filed

(and I saw one stat recently regarding tariffs where supposedly over 1000 business alone filed suit against that), "JustSecurity" has a tracker of 572 cases related to 45's crap here - https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

HOWEVER - a clearer picture of a status where he is determined to pursue all avenues, comes from the SCOTUS "shadow docket" stats, a tracker that can be found here - Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker — Challenges to Trump Administration Actions

Per the above link, as of Dec. 23, 2025 -

Since January 20, 2025, the Supreme Court has issued 25 decisions on the shadow docket concerning administration actions.

20 ruled for the administration at least partially

5 ruled against the administration

7 were not accompanied by any written explanation (most other rulings included only brief analysis, sometimes as short as a sentence

Two shadow docket applications are currently pending.

I expect a number of those were filed after violating lower court orders where he went running to "Daddy Roberts".

Not all of the cases were run up to the "shadow docket" though (which suggests backing off - at least temporarily).

The WORST of the unreported violations would be related to the immigration and deportation issue, where I expect there are tens of thousands of violations (if you count single individuals) and this is why a number of immigrant groups and the ACLU, etc., have/had filed to have those impacted, considered a "class" for a "class action" suit (which would drop the number of "individual" cases).

The SECOND WORST would probably be First Amendment violations (again with organizations later filing for and obtaining "class action" status for this - e.g., protestors involved in the Palestinian issue, the Charlie Kirk issue, the immigration issue, and now more recently the National Guard presence and ICE issues, as well as the book bans, DEI purges, etc.).

The THIRD WORST would probably deal with the recent "funding cuts" for illegal, bogus, and nonsensical reasons, where in a number of cases, the funding was eventually restored after lower court hand-slaps.

The FOURTH WORST might relate to all those DOGeshit cuts (including fed firings and then re-hirings and then re-firings, etc, as well as the removals of heads of independent agencies - with some left alone but others booted pending resolutions of lower court cases and/or the SCOTUS).

So in the scheme of all the cases (and potential cases) out there, and based on all the LBN OPs I have done on the "intransigent" cases that "made the news" (like the Abrego Garcia case and more recently, the targeting of Comey and James), where judges have been threatening sanctions, there are so far only a "handful" of continued violations in the scheme of the thousands of cases (so far). In most cases, they backed down (like finally removing out-of-state NG from California and Oregon, etc).

[OldBaldy1701E]

7. I see.

I guess all of the injustice being continually perpetrated by this regime is 'legal', then.

Funny how that 'legal' stuff works, isn't it?

[BumRushDaShow]

8. When "Daddy Roberts" rules that it is.

It's how far we continue to fall.

[turbinetree]

6. And in the background is John Roberts fomenting from the mouth to completely eviscerate the Voting Right Act of 1965....