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After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots. A number of civil rights and voter advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to bar any such presence, with one suit claiming that “threatening messaging and violent enforcement actions” by administration officials “have created a climate in which voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”

Last month, the California Supreme Court rebuked a local sheriff’s unprecedented seizure of roughly 650,000 ballots cast in the state’s November 2025 special election. The decisions, Bonta v. Bianco and Cervantes v. Bianco, both held that the sheriff had to follow the state attorney general’s directions to pause his investigation and that the seizure violated the state’s laws for securely handling and storing cast ballots. The court also ordered the ballots returned to local election officials.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's 2025–26 term unfolded largely outside the political spotlight. However, the 2026–27 term may not be as quiet, with two redistricting challenges to the state's congressional maps and a case that could revisit the court's approach to statutory interpretation.

Last month, New York Governor Kathy Hochul stood alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a press conference in Manhattan. The purpose: to announce $7.25 million in new legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children and to reaffirm a state law barring local police from formal cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The event was an illustration of a broader pattern in modern American federalism: a governor using her office’s visibility, funding authority, and legal tools to push back against perceived federal overreach or abuses of power.

On July 30, SDRI Legal Director Danielle Friedman spoke with Bob Bauer on Executive Functions. They discussed state criminal statutes that could apply to federal deployment of military or ICE and examine the limits of executive authority in the context of potential federal interference ahead of the November midterms.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has vastly expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) presence across the country, extending its reach to nearly every state and major city. In response, state and local governments are increasingly looking to location-specific protections, and to property law more broadly, to address the effects of this federal presence.

This essay is part of a 50-state series about the nation’s constitutions. We’ve asked an expert from each state to dive into their constitution, narrate its history, identify its quirks, and summarize its most essential components for our readers. In 1848, voters in the Wisconsin Territory ratified the Wisconsin Constitution that is still in use today. This founding document, amended more than 150 times, reflects the work of generations of legislators, advocates, and voters on topics from democracy to finance to individual rights.

The case arose after a new Republican majority in the Michigan House refused to send several bills passed by a previous Democratic-controlled legislature to the governor to become law.

"Politicians at all levels of government have called for reforms to deescalate tensions arising from federal immigration enforcement in their states. One common proposal is banning law enforcement officers — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection officers — from wearing masks."

From Portland to Minneapolis, aggressive actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents against citizens and noncitizens alike have been well documented. Many of these encounters raise grave constitutional concerns. Yet it may surprise—and alarm—many to learn that there is often no viable path to sue federal officers if they violate your constitutional rights, even egregiously.