Department of Justice
US federal law enforcement agency; voter-data programme at appellate test after 6 district court dismissals.
By 23 July 2026 the Justice Department had lost all seventeen of its state voter-roll lawsuits and won none, after a court dismissed its Kentucky case; the Sixth Circuit had already affirmed the first appellate loss on 24 June.
Last refreshed: 4 August 2026 · Appears in 7 active topics
After six dismissals, can DOJ's voter-data programme survive its first appellate test at the 9th Circuit?
Timeline for Department of Justice
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The Department of Justice, founded in 1870, is the principal US federal law enforcement and legal agency. It prosecutes federal crimes, defends the United States in court, and enforces civil rights, antitrust and immigration law under an Attorney General who serves at the President's direction; roughly 115,000 staff work across its divisions and US Attorney offices. Pam Bondi has led the department through Trump's second term.
Since April 2026 the department has been the central enforcement actor in a national voter-registration drive, invoking the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to demand complete voter rolls from every state, with the data confirmed in court to flow to the Department of Homeland Security for citizenship screening under the SAVE system . The department's own privacy officer resigned rather than implement the plan, and Democracy Forward is pursuing a separate FOIA suit over the underlying data-sharing arrangement with CISA .
The department also disbanded its KleptoCapture task force, which had targeted sanctioned Russian oligarchs' assets, on 5 February 2026 under Bondi, and its OFAC bureau used the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act for the first time in a cyber case that April, sanctioning Russian exploit broker Sergey Zelenyuk's Operation Zero network .
DOJ has lost every voter-data suit
By 23 July 2026 the Justice Department had lost seventeen state voter-file lawsuits and won none, after a federal court dismissed its Kentucky case that day; thirteen suits remain active and Oklahoma settled rather than fight . Every dismissal has turned on the same defect: the department never specified which statute authorised its demand for unredacted rolls.
The programme's first appellate test went the same way. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, 2-1, the dismissal of DOJ's demand for Michigan's rolls on 24 June in United States v. Benson, prompting the department to seek a rare en banc rehearing on 8 July . Attorney General Pam Bondi maintains the programme will continue regardless of the losing record, while the Ninth Circuit's Oregon ruling remains pending.
DOJ cleared a merger unconditionally
The Department of Justice cleared Paramount Skydance's $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery unconditionally on 12 June 2026, placing no conditions on the deal's roughly 49.5% Gulf-linked foreign ownership . Other regulators went further: the FCC opened its own review of the foreign-ownership stake, and twelve Democratic-led states sued on 13 July to block the deal outright, arguing it would raise prices and cut content.
A California judge granted a temporary restraining order on 20 July, finding evidence of a theatrical-market antitrust violation sufficient to halt the merger's closing, a stricter finding than the DOJ's own clearance reached . Brussels cleared the deal on 22 July, but only after Paramount agreed to sell its Universal distribution stake and forgo European Universal deals for ten years, terms tougher than Washington's unconditional pass.
DOJ indicted Raul Castro without extradition
The Justice Department unsealed a grand jury indictment on 20 May 2026 accusing Raul Castro, then 94, of conspiracy and four murder counts over the 1996 downing of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft . The grand jury had acted a month earlier, on 23 April, but Castro faces no extradition route and no trial date.
Havana's foreign ministry called the charge 'political coercion' through the state outlet Cubadebate, while Russia and China sent Castro birthday messages on his 95th birthday on 3 June, two weeks after the indictment, a gesture of solidarity that came with no material support . President Miguel Diaz-Canel continues to offer talks 'on equal terms' while keeping jailed critics off the table.