In some cases, these might be topics that were under-covered. Others received significant coverage but still may have implications that merit more attention.

There are of course far more developments that are noteworthy than a single recap can capture, and we encourage you to keep an eye out for other “looking back, looking ahead” style articles on Just Security in the days and weeks ahead. But in the midst of a news environment dominated by attention-grabbing headlines and algorithms commodifying our attention, we hope that this compilation will provide an opportunity to step back and reflect on some of the important trends shaping our world today.

Climate Milestones and Misses

Global climate progress in 2025 was, in a word, uneven, reflecting an ever-widening gap between ambition and the ability to mobilize that ambition into concrete global action. Two highly-anticipated advisory opinions – from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in May and from the International Court of Justice in July – took strong positions with respect to States’ obligations in relation to climate change, as analyzed on Just Security here and here.

But in practice, climate diplomacy produced relatively weak results; at COP 30 in Belém, for example, there was little progress on crucial questions such as countries’ specific individual commitments to emissions reduction. Earlier this year, analysts described a much-anticipated climate announcement from China as likewise underwhelming, and the year of course was also marked by the United States’ highly visible retreat from global climate engagement – with some signs that U.S. state and local governments may be seeking openings to engage even as the national government pulls back.

Meanwhile, one relatively undercovered story in climate diplomacy was the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), or High Seas Treaty, which received sufficient ratifications this fall to enter into force in January 2026. It creates the first comprehensive legal framework for protecting biodiversity on the high seas, an area covering nearly half the earth’s surface, and is notable as a milestone in climate-biodiversity governance and as a sign that international treaty-making continues to function even in an environment of increasing uncertainty.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s Climate Archive.)

In the Age of Generative AI, How Do We Know What We Know?

This year saw what seemed to be a near-constant rollout of generative AI tools, including new versions of consumer-facing large-language models (LLMs), an explosion in AI video content, and the continued development of sector-specialized generative models. Among the many complex questions raised by the ubiquity of generative AI, one relatively under-covered angle involved epistemic risks: how society and institutions create and understand knowledge, and how we validate what information to trust.

This can play out in different ways across different types of use. Some specialized AI models used for professional purposes may develop faster than users – even very expert users – can fully understand the model’s inputs, limitations, and biases, potentially degrading the quality of knowledge production and eroding public trust in information. In general consumer uses, the ubiquity of AI-generated content may threaten the (already tenuous) social agreement about reality. AI video, for instance, presents new challenges for civilian protection and evidence collection: not only that manipulated images will be taken as true but also that very real evidence, including of atrocities, might be dismissed as AI.

Scholars have been grappling with these questions for several years now. But with the explosion of public-facing AI, the risk becomes that products will move into common use, and policymakers will be charged with regulating them, before the relevant public fully understands those risks and limitations. In July of this year, for example, some scholars expressed concern about this very knowledge gap when the EU released its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, providing guidance on how the 2024 AI Act should be applied to general-purpose AI tools like LLMs.

With AI now shaping our physical world as much as our digital one, understanding and communicating about these epistemic gaps is likely to be a key theme of 2026.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s archive of artificial intelligence articles.)

“A Tale of Two Courts” at the ICC

The story of the International Criminal Court (ICC) this year was, in the words of Just Security Editorial Board member and former ICC Prosecutions Coordinator Alex Whiting, “a tale of two courts.”

On the one hand, developments like sanctions in connection to the Palestine situation and allegations against Prosecutor Karim Khan, now on leave pending investigation, drew headlines.

But against that backdrop, the Court also managed to continue its work and achieve meaningful progress in many areas this year: the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, convictions in the Sudan Situation and a case from the Central African Republic, the first arrest and surrender of an accused in the Libya Situation, the confirmation of charges in absentia in the Joseph Kony case, and launching of new policies, including on environmental crimes and cyber-enabled crimes. (Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s ICC coverage, in which authors analyze a number of these developments.)

Observes Whiting: “This is not to minimize the challenges faced by the Court, or some of the structural problems that may exist within the Rome Statute, but under the direction of the Deputy Prosecutors and the judges, the Court is continuing to function and do its work. The Court is not invulnerable, but it is resilient.”

ICRC Updates Civilian Protection Guidance to Reflect Realities of Modern Warfare

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this year published its updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians (GCIV), the core humanitarian treaty governing civilian protection in international armed conflict and occupation. This marks the last in a cycle of modernizing the commentaries to the Geneva Conventions, after which the ICRC will turn to the Additional Protocols.

The Commentaries provide interpretive guidance on how the Geneva Conventions’ rules should be applied in real-world situations. Given the importance of GCIV in the protection of civilians while under increasing threat in conflicts around the globe (see, for example, the next entry on this list), and the many ways in which armed conflict has changed in the 60-plus years since the last round of Commentaries, this update was particularly anticipated. There is no expectation, of course, that it will provide a panacea, but by updating the guidance to reflect the conditions of today’s armed conflicts, the ICRC reaffirms the centrality of the fundamental legal protections owed to civilians.

Watch this space for a series from international humanitarian law experts analyzing the updated Commentary, coming jointly from Just Security, the ICRC, and EJIL:Talk! early in the new year.

Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan

The brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now well into its third year, has triggered the largest displacement crisis in the world, with approximately 12 million people forcibly displaced as of Dec. 1, and estimates from earlier this year of over 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Civilians are subjected to direct and brutal violence from the conflict itself, while also suffering from a health system under strain; malnutrition, and in some areas famine; and repeated outbreaks of cholera, dengue, and other diseases.

As authors writing on Just Security and elsewhere have repeatedly observed, the scale of global attention – in the press, from the public, and from policymakers – fails to match the scale of the atrocities. At the same time the global community faces the urgent task of addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, it also faces the question of how one of the worst global crises has unfolded with so little international attention.

A Power Vacuum in Public Health Leadership

While the Trump administration’s controversial cuts to public health programs, including the dismantling of Centers for Disease Control initiatives, the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), dominated headlines, a less-publicized consequence was the response to the resulting power vacuum in public health leadership.

Within the United States, regional public health alliances emerged, primarily among Democratic-led states in the west and northeast. However, even as state and local governments stepped in to fill the gaps, they faced deep budget cuts from federal health programs.

Globally, a July 2025 study in The Lancet estimated that U.S. cuts to public health aid could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030. A December 2025 response from other scholars argued that the study’s assumptions were being contradicted by real-world developments. “People, institutions, and governments in several countries have responded to the moment,” they noted, by shifting budgets, reforming supply systems, and increasing aid from other nations—challenging the notion that U.S. leadership is indispensable to global health efforts.

But while European countries, China, and global solidarity networks have been suggested as alternatives to fill the gaps, a real funding shortfall remains. The UK and European Union member states, led by Germany (which recently became home to a new WHO center) have visibly assumed a more prominent role in global public health leadership. However, many are also scaling back their overseas development assistance due to their own budget constraints. China’s public health contributions, especially in Africa, are notable but far smaller than the resources previously provided by USAID.

Ultimately, these cuts have sparked efforts to explore alternative solutions, both domestically and internationally, but these initiatives are constrained by undeniable resource limitations.

(Readers may also be interested in the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions.)

The Double-Edged Sword of U.S.-Belarus Rapprochement

From Just Security Washington Senior Editor Viola Gienger, who curates much of the site’s content on rule of law and diplomacy related to eastern Europe:

Belarus generally garners little attention in the Western news media, and that includes this year’s curious rapprochement between the Trump administration and longtime Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenka, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump overtures even merited the appointment of a specific U.S. special envoy for Belarus, former Trump lawyer John Coale.

The result has been several major releases of Belarusian political prisoners in exchange for easing of sanctions — the husband of opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in June, a mass release of 52 prisoners in September and another of 123 in December, the latter of which included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figures Maria Kolesnikova and Viktar Babaryka.

Despite the recent prisoner releases, Lukashenka (whose 2020 electoral “win” was widely recognized by impartial monitors as fraudulent) continues to play a double game, cracking down on dissent and jailing others, under conditions of abuse and torture, even amid the periodic releases.

Lukashenka has played the West off against Putin for decades, and he became an influential, though still minor, factor after Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the longtime Belarusian leader allowed Russian troops onto his territory for their military operations against Ukraine while at the same time declining to send his own forces to aid the Russians on the battlefield. There also have been persistent reports that Lukashenka allowed Russian nuclear weapons onto Belarus territory, and he played a role in the saga of the failed apparent coup against Putin by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 that ended in his demise a few months later in a plane crash. Given this history, Lukashenka’s latest opening to the West merits a close watch as the United States seeks to broker a peace agreement to end Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

U.S.-Canada Tensions: More Than a Meme

While new U.S. alliances emerged in 2025, other longstanding partnerships faltered. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in diplomatic fractures that appeared between the United States and Canada, long one of the world’s most stable relationships.

Although President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions to make Canada the “51st state” generated headlines, memes, and jokes, the absurdity of the situation itself became the story, obscuring a more consequential and potentially lasting geopolitical shift.

The Canadian public, already sensitive to issues of sovereignty and autonomy, increasingly viewed U.S. rhetoric as disregard for the bilateral relationship. In an Ipsos poll this fall, six in ten Canadians surveyed said they could never trust Americans in the same way again, while seven in ten anticipated similar trade and economic disputes between the countries for at least several years to come.

Despite these tensions, Canada and the United States continue to maintain productive diplomatic relations on issues like mutual defense under the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Arctic cooperation. However, Canada is also exploring new partnerships, including closer links to Europe. And while it has often followed the U.S. lead on foreign policy issues such as China, it may soon face new questions about whether to chart its own independent path in the new geopolitical landscape.

Latin America’s Rightward Swing

In Chile, a presidential candidate who openly praised former dictator Augusto Pinochet won with a tough-on-crime and anti-immigration platform. In Bolivia, after two decades of socialist rule, a centrist candidate triumphed, his closest opponent not from the left but from the right. In Argentina, libertarian President Javier Milei’s party enjoyed a “decisive” congressional elections win despite governing amidst continued economic turmoil, with voters apparently unconvinced they would fare better under left-wing policies.

Elections in Latin America in 2025 didn’t universally swing right; in Honduras, for example, left-wing incumbent President Xiomara Castro appears to have won against a Trump-backed challenger. (Author’s note, Dec. 26: In fact, conservative candidate Nasry Asfura was finally declared the winner of the Nov. 30 election on Dec. 24, with claims of irregularities still maintained from both sides.) But there was certainly an observable trend, as populist rhetoric, “law and order” pledges, and economic frustration seemed to fuel a shift toward more conservative or centrist candidates in a region where the left had done well in recent decades, and where right-wing governance had often been associated with the legacy of dictatorship.

But as a recent Foreign Affairs article observed, “the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.” Traditional left-wing promises of social progress appear to be less convincing to voters than frustration with the political establishment’s perceived failures to address crime and inflation.

High-profile elections in the region will continue in 2026, including in Peru, where one of the leading candidates is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for human rights abuses from his time in power in the 1990s; and Brazil, where recent polls have the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of potential rivals, including the son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. But with the elections months away, much can still change.

The post Nine Stories That Deserved More Attention in 2025 – and Might Shape 2026 appeared first on Just Security.

This post-moderation philosophy creates the perfect conditions for State repression and digital authoritarian drift. Kenya, where Internet Sans Frontieres (I serve as Executive Director of the organization) conducted a seven-month investigation with the KenSafeSpace coalition — created to safeguard a democratic and safe digital space in Kenya — offers a revealing and deeply concerning case study of this global trend.

A Global Context of Harmful Deregulation by Platforms

For years, online experiences differed sharply depending on geography. In wealthier regions such as North America and Europe, content moderation infrastructure, although imperfect, remained more robust than in under-resourced regions like Africa, Latin America, or parts of Asia. This structural inequality, documented notably by whistleblower Frances Haugen, shaped global content governance.

But today, platforms are abandoning proactive moderation altogether. They are replacing it with a narrow, reactive model that intervenes online only when imminent harm can be demonstrated. Platforms are often justifying this shift as a correction to “censorship.” In reality, it strips away the minimal safeguards designed to prevent dangerous content from spiraling into real-world violence.

The consequences are unfolding now, not only in Kenya, but worldwide.

Why Kenya Matters

Kenya is entering a tense  period ahead of the 2027 general elections. The country’s recent history, including post-election violence, shows how quickly inflammatory speech can translate into real-world harm: In this context, the disappearance of proactive content moderation is a direct risk amplifier.

From January to July 2025, Internet Sans Frontieres and the KenSafeSpace coalition observed content circulating on the most widely used platforms in the country: X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, and TikTok. We also collected user reports through a dedicated submission form.

Here is what we found:

• 43 percent of analyzed content showed strong indicators of hate speech, particularly along ethnic and religious lines. In one example, commenting on a video of a religious figure denouncing “infidels,” a user explicitly called for violence against Muslim communities “worse than in 2007” (when Kenya experienced widespread violence after presidential elections). The post was still available online in October 2025 and had already received close to 400,000 views.
• 26 percent of the content analyzed involved normalized and unmoderated gender-based violence. In one widely viewed publication (over one million views), a user asked X’s AI chatbot Grok to “nudify” a picture of a woman, without the consent of the woman. While Grok did not provide the requested answer, other users responded with “nudified” pictures of the woman. The post was still available on X in October 2025.
• Close to 30 percent of the posts posed serious risks of electoral disinformation. One recurring narrative falsely alleges that the incumbent government is mobilizing Somali-born citizens, largely Muslim, to manipulate the next election and secure another term for Kenyan President William Ruto.

Our findings reveal a system where harmful content is allowed to spread at scale, precisely because proactive intervention has been abandoned.

From Platform Neglect to State Overreach

Crucially, this erosion of safeguards is unfolding amidst conditions in which governments have intensified their own efforts to restrict freedom of expression.

In Kenya, authorities increasingly invoke the Computer Misuse & Cybercrimes Act to arrest bloggers, activists, or influencers on vague accusations of spreading false information. Yet a recent report by Amnesty International documents how the most potent and unmoderated disinformation often originates from State actors themselves.

Freedom House’s Freedom of the Net 2025 report places Kenya as only “partly free,” citing among other issues the government-ordered internet disruptions during the 2024 anti-government protests, which have been condemned by several civil society organizations, including Internet Sans Frontieres.

This pattern is visible elsewhere. As platforms withdraw from basic moderation duties, States feel licensed to step in with heavy-handed, often illiberal measures, including social media bans, arrests, surveillance, or criminal liability for intermediaries.

Brazil’s Block of X and the New Era of State-Platform Confrontation

The Brazilian government’s decision to block X nationwide for two months in 2024 illustrates the conflicts to come. The ban had been imposed by Brazil’s Supreme Court after X “had refused to ban several profiles deemed by the government to be spreading misinformation about the 2022 Brazilian Presidential election.” Beyond the cost incurred for Elon Musk’s X, and the disrupted access for millions of Brazilians, many digital rights organizations — fierce defenders of open internet principles — struggled to publicly condemn the block. Why? Because X’s own withdrawal from responsible moderation — and even defiance of court orders — had created such a toxic environment that defending the platform became nearly untenable.

Another warning sign of this new confrontation between Big Tech and  sovereign nations was illustrated by the August 2024 arrest of Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, in France. Internet Sans Frontieres publicly condemned the arrest as a dangerous precedent for intermediary liability (without defending the problematic circulation of extremely harmful content on the app). At the same time, we tried to warn platforms that their disinvestment in safety was making such State actions more likely in the future.

There is still time to reverse the course: Tech companies can make the responsible decision of enforcing proactive moderation and establishing moderation safeguards sensitive to local context. Not all countries can afford the luxury of relying on the marketplace of ideas to curb the negative societal effects of harmful speech online. Additionally, authorities in Kenya should refrain from using the fight against hate speech and disinformation as a pretext to invoking the law and silencing dissent online. Civil society organizations should double down on efforts to research and explain the impact of harmful speech in Kenya, before and during the general elections of 2027. Citizens in Kenya should continue their vigilance and demand accountability from authorities and social media companies.

By abandoning proactive content moderation, platforms are accelerating a global slide toward censorship — the very outcome they claim to oppose. In the short term, some companies may benefit from reduced operational costs or increased engagement metrics. But in the long term, history will not look kindly on those who turned away from the responsibility to protect freedom of expression when it mattered most.

The post The Global Retreat from Content Moderation Is Endangering Free Expression: Kenya Shows Why appeared first on Just Security.

But just two weeks before voting day, Bangsamoro residents were informed that the elections were being postponed until March 2026. Given the Philippines’ history of strongman rule and attempted coups, as well as recent speculation concerning undue military influence in politics, it was reassuring to learn the postponement had not been ordered by either President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. or the armed forces’ chief of staff.

It came instead from the Supreme Court. A lawsuit filed by local politicians claimed the method for apportioning parliamentary districts in the Bangsamoro was unlawful and unconstitutional. The court agreed, invalidating the relevant law and directing the body charged with drawing the electoral map to pass a new law by Oct. 30, this time with due regard for geographic contiguity and municipal borders.

The body in question is the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), the interim government of the six-year-old Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), consisting of 80 members appointed by the Philippines president, with an interim Chief Minister serving in the executive role. In 2019, in accordance with the terms of the peace deal, the former rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were placed in charge of the BTA. Their primary task was to formulate foundational laws – or “codes” – covering such matters as how the BARMM civil service would be organized, how local tax revenues would be shared, and how the rights of women and indigenous groups would be safeguarded.

The Bangsamoro Electoral Code, unsurprisingly, proved to be the most contentious agenda item facing the rebels-turned-legislators. In 2022, when the MILF’s three-year term was almost over, the electoral code still had not been passed. MILF leaders claimed the Covid-19 pandemic had prevented them from completing the code and seeing to other aspects of the transition. This was a dubious excuse, especially since the MILF-led administration had devoted a good deal of its scarce legislative resources to far less-essential matters such as establishing a Sports Commission. Without an election law, the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2022 could not be held.

Elections were rescheduled for May 2025, and voters were told the delay would permit the building of a stronger foundation for peace and democracy by giving the MILF more time for the transition from revolutionary movement to political party. In effect, the national government rewarded the MILF for its tardiness with another three years in charge of the BARMM (and its $1.8 billion annual budget).

In March 2023, the MILF-run transitional administration finally adopted the Bangsamoro electoral code, and in May 2024 passed a law delineating the parliament’s geographic constituencies. By August 2024, new regional parties, including the MILF’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), had registered with the election commission and named their candidates. The official campaign period had not yet begun, but party leaders had already started shoring up support among local officials.

Suspicious Timing

It was then, in September 2024, just as the parliamentary elections appeared finally to be on the horizon, that the Supreme Court made its first intervention in the Bangsamoro electoral process. It upheld a petition claiming that one of the BARMM’s eight constituent parts, the island province of Sulu, should never have come under the region’s jurisdiction. The 2019 referendum on whether to join the BARMM had been administered in a way that invalidated Sulu’s accession, the court held. An integral part of the Bangsamoro, central to claims of historical Moro nationhood, would no longer be part of the region, despite having operated within it for the previous five years. The court’s ruling was more than just a technical redrawing of administrative boundaries: it upended the terms of a negotiated settlement through which the government had resolved an armed conflict that killed 120,000 people and displaced millions.

The court’s decision to remove Sulu from the BARMM appeared to have been based on sound legal reasoning. What made it suspect in the eyes of many observers was its timing. The lawsuit had been filed more than five years earlier. Courts in the Philippines, as elsewhere, can move slowly. But when faced with an urgent matter of constitutional importance, especially one involving institutional arrangements on which governmental and other actors must be able to rely, such as whether a province is rightfully part of a specially created jurisdiction, the court can (and does) act much more quickly. An excellent example of judicial alacrity was in fact the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling from September 2025 that postponed parliamentary elections until early 2026: it was issued within weeks of a case being filed.

But the September 2024 order that removed Sulu from the BARMM was suspicious not just because it took five years for the case to be decided, but because of the political context in which the ruling was, without warning, issued. At the time, the MILF’s prospects for the May 2025 parliamentary elections appeared grim. A formidable alliance of traditional clan leaders from the region, who support autonomy but distrust the MILF’s designs on their political turf, had been formed. Their Bangsamoro Grand Coalition was expected to dominate the parliamentary elections.

During June and July 2024, leaders from these longstanding political dynasties claimed to have been pressured by presidential surrogates to forge electoral alliances with the MILF. Among the reported coercive tactics were threats of investigations into the financial affairs of the local government units they controlled. It was only after these heavy-handed tactics failed that the Supreme Court order removing Sulu from the BARMM materialized. The ruling had the effect of depriving these very same traditional politicians of one of their main electoral strongholds. Without Sulu’s parliamentary seats, the “Grand Coalition” looked decidedly less grand — and less likely to win a parliamentary majority. Some clan politicians eventually allied with the MILF.

This all represented a remarkably fortuitous turn of events for the MILF as well as for President Marcos, whose party went on to form an electoral alliance with the MILF. And it was all made possible by the Supreme Court. Few observers think a presidential administration can force the court to rule in its favor on any matter it chooses. But affecting a decision’s timing is considered not necessarily beyond the capabilities of a president willing to deploy informal influence as well as the office’s formal powers. Over the past 15 years, the court’s independence has been undermined by both liberal and populist presidents. Public trust has suffered accordingly: in 2020, the chief justice had the lowest approval rating, by far, among the five most important national offices (including president, vice-president, house speaker, and senate president).  By 2023, under a new chief justice, public approval of the office was even lower.

Sulu’s court-ordered removal from the BARMM in September 2024 provided an excuse for Manila to postpone the elections a second time — from May to October 2025. The extra five months was ostensibly to give the MILF-led (but still never-elected) administration time to amend or replace the law delineating the region’s parliamentary constituencies. Sulu’s seven seats had to be reallocated among the BARMM’s remaining provinces before elections could be held.

Marcos’ Calculations

The delay suited Marcos in part because he was eager to prevent a recurrence of armed conflict. Analysts have considered an upswing of organized violence a distinct possibility if the MILF were to lose the elections and get shut completely out of power, though some see this as too pessimistic.

Keeping the peace process at least nominally on track is central to Marcos Jr’s preoccupation with rehabilitating his family’s image. He claims to be completing a project of national reconciliation initiated by his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, whose martial law government did sign the first-ever peace agreement with Moro revolutionaries, in 1976, but only after provoking the war in the first place and prosecuting it with the ruthlessness that characterized his regime. As part of the Philippines’ current bid for a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council, the late dictator’s son has, in recent speeches to the U.N. General Assembly, trumpeted the country’s success in resolving the Bangsamoro civil war through a negotiated settlement that, unlike most peace agreements, has survived for more than a decade after it was signed. It would be very bad optics for the Marcos Jr administration if the peace process were to suddenly break down on his watch.

To no one’s surprise, the MILF-led administration did not use the extra five months it was given to carefully redraw the parliamentary districts so that Sulu’s seven seats were reassigned in conformity with prevailing law. Instead, a perfunctorily drafted bill distributed one seat to each of the BARMM’s remaining seven provinces, despite their widely varying populations. No systematic procedure was followed when re-drawing the district boundaries. The law was passed after the deadline set by the election commission, five days into the official campaigning period.

It is almost as if MILF leaders intentionally crafted legislation that could not possibly withstand legal challenge, expecting that a court-ordered postponement of the elections would buy them even more time to consolidate their political bases.

This most recent court-ordered election postponement was politically convenient for President Marcos, too. In early 2025, the outcome of the election had become more unpredictable than ever and the potential for election-related violence was considered extremely high. The president’s office nevertheless downplayed the significance of this latest delay, labeling it a “pivotal step toward constitutional order” in the war-torn region.

To be fair, postponing regional elections for a few months hardly seems a major infraction given the scale and brazenness of the electoral abuses perpetrated by other regimes. But only if we ignore the larger pattern: elections to the Bangsamoro Parliament, were, under the 2014 peace agreement’s timeframe, supposed to take place in 2019; legislative delays in Manila meant they had to be put off until 2022, and then (as we have seen) a series of avoidable “crises” delayed them until May 2025, October 2025, and as of this writing, March 2026.

These postponements are particularly discouraging if one takes seriously the statements made over the years by government and MILF leaders to the effect that lasting peace can be built only on a foundation of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Despite these rhetorical commitments to the principles of “liberal peacebuilding,” neither the MILF nor the national political actors with which it engages wants to contest an election whose outcome they cannot control. Both, moreover, are willing to subvert democratic norms and institutions to avoid having to do so.

The Risk of Renewed Violence

The two most recent delays, both in 2025, are also the most troubling because they reveal the perilous state of the Bangsamoro peace process and the real possibility of a return to widespread violence. One reason the Marcos administration welcomed last month’s court-ordered election postponement was that it knew the MILF was in severe danger of undergoing a major split. It knew this because it was the administration’s own officials who had driven a wedge between the movement’s leaders.

In March 2025, the government unilaterally announced it was replacing the BARMM’s interim chief minister, longtime MILF Chairman Murad Ebrahim (known as Murad), who had been in office since the BARMM’s inception in 2019, with Abdulraof Macacua, who had been Murad’s successor as the MILF’s military chief and served in a number of official roles during the transition. Murad and some of the senior leaders around him were reportedly seen as less willing than Macacua to reach an accommodation with the traditional clan politicians that Marcos’s advisors had been trying to lure into an alliance with the MILF.

Senior officials also reportedly were fed up with Murad’s negotiating team, whose leading members would not authorize steps that would allow the peace process to be declared formally concluded, despite the government’s non-fulfillment of important outstanding commitments. For instance, little to no action has been taken to establish a truth and reconciliation commission or to disband the private militia maintained by the traditional clan leaders who MILF leaders have good reason to fear.

Though the MILF’s governing body immediately rejected Manila’s unilateral appointment of Macacua, Murad stepped down quietly. But just before this month’s planned election, Murad let it be known that his removal from office had been involuntary, leading to questions about whether Macacua conspired with the president’s advisors to oust his boss, or if not, why organizational discipline and revolutionary solidarity did not lead him to reject Manila’s offer to appoint him chief minister, and to publicly reassert the right of the MILF’s central committee to choose its own nominees for leadership positions.

As interim chief minister, Macacua continues to pledge loyalty to Murad as MILF chairman, but he has also forced out BARMM officials considered close to his predecessor. A raft of recent corruption investigations have targeted BARMM officials associated with Murad’s faction of the MILF – possibly with Macacua’s silent assent even when, technically, they are initiated and conducted by national government agencies. More recently, financial decisions taken during Murad’s tenure have come under intense scrutiny and even received indirect mention by his successor, another sign that scores are being settled and potential rivals neutralized.

It is not clear how far down into the MILF organization these kinds of factional divisions extend or, crucially, whether they have affected the MILF’s armed forces. Worrying signs have emerged, such as the suspension in September of a prominent MILF commander. There is enormous potential for renewed violence in the region should the emerging fault-lines in the MILF prompt either a definitive split or a protracted leadership struggle in which commanders would be forced to choose sides. A non-specific statement of support for the MILF leadership issued by most but not all MILF commanders soon after Macacua was appointed was meant to be reassuring but felt ominous to some observers. Academic research on the durability of post-civil war peace agreements has found that when rebel movements fragment, a recurrence of armed conflict is common, as enforcing commitments agreed by non-state parties becomes increasingly difficult and spoilers emerge.

The political violence that is endemic in the Bangsamoro region provides a steady supply of dry tinder. The recent beheading of an indigenous leader, who had resisted encroachment on tribal lands by powerful local politicians, was only the most gruesome example. There have been more than 100 killings of activists from indigenous communities since 2019. Drive-by assassinations of candidates for office and of BARMM administrators, from all communities, are a common occurrence. Extended gun and artillery battles between the police and MILF fighters have occurred in recent years. A deadly 2015 encounter that led to the deaths of dozens of police officers and MILF fighters came close to derailing the peace process.

These hazards are on top of the security threats posed by local organized crime rackets, some of which reportedly receive protection from freelancing MILF members, and by the many violent-extremist groups that operate in the region. In 2017, ISIS-inspired terrorists seized control of Marawi, the Bangsamoro region’s leading city of Islamic culture. The five-month military operation to retake the city and round up the perpetrators of this audacious attack was another blow that the peace agreement somehow survived.

Overconfidence in the Peace Process?

These examples of resilience may be breeding overconfidence among stakeholders about how much strain even a well-institutionalized peace process can withstand. The precariousness of the situation was underscored this summer when ousted Chief Minister Murad instructed MILF military units to cease cooperating with the peace agreement’s decommissioning program. While 26,000 MILF combatants had been processed, another 14,000 are still scheduled to be decommissioned. The MILF, it should be noted, retains a network of operational “base commands” and a number of large, heavily guarded camps from which government forces are normally excluded. Suspension of decommissioning is the MILF’s remaining point of leverage against what it perceives as the government’s failure to fulfill its obligations.

The Supreme Court gave the MILF-led transitional administration until Oct. 30 to devise a new parliamentary-districts law. This deadline is widely seen as unlikely to be met. The only action so far has been a bill proposed by non-MILF members of the transitional administration.

The impression that, despite its pledge to respect regional “autonomy,” the national government is not only interfering in Bangsamoro politics but meddling in the internal affairs of the MILF itself, can potentially delegitimize the entire peace process and fuel renewed armed conflict. The chief minister’s recent insistence that Manila does not control his administration indicates the extent of the skepticism he faces. If the promise of devolved self-government is perceived to be stage-managed from Manila, the numerous extremist groups in the BARMM who reject the peace deal will find it easier to recruit among the region’s vast reservoir of disillusioned youth. If that begins to happen on a large scale, it may be peace, too, and not just democracy, that is sacrificed.

The post Post-Conflict Election in the Southern Philippines Postponed for Third Time: Is Peace Unraveling? appeared first on Just Security.

At its heart, though, Moldova’s story – like those elsewhere — is not about censorship or propaganda alone. It’s about what happens when no one quite owns the rules of the digital arena.

When parliament revised the Audiovisual Media Services Code in July 2025, the goals sounded simple enough: align national law with European norms, curb disinformation, and promote responsible media. The text expanded the Audiovisual Council’s powers to tackle “false information” and “manipulation.” But it stopped short of explaining what those words actually mean in law. Without clear definitions or consistent standards, enforcement became a guessing game. And even where the law is clear, its reach stops at the country’s borders.

Moldova’s framework only applies to online platforms with a legal presence inside the country, which Meta, Google, and TikTok do not have. Their content moderation runs entirely on internal corporate policy, not Moldovan statute. So while any Moldovan-licensed broadcaster, large or small, can be fined for imbalance under national law, a viral post reaching hundreds of thousands may remain untouched because it falls under “community guidelines” written thousands of kilometers away.

The imbalance leaves regulators frustrated and citizens exposed. When a government cannot act fast enough to stem falsehoods, the temptation grows to regulate more aggressively to provide expedient relief to an identified threat. That’s where freedom of speech begins to erode. Moldova’s framework was built to protect expression, yet the ambiguity now risks silencing legitimate media out of fear.

Taking Advantage of Ambiguity

That same ambiguity is a gift to those who know how to exploit it. Across Moldova’s digital space, murky financing and foreign interests have found fertile ground.

Investigators have shown that Ilan Shor, an exiled businessman under U.S. sanctions, continued to fund social media advertising for his banned party from abroad. In 2024, researchers traced more than 100 Facebook pages tied to his network. Collectively, they drew hundreds of millions of views and real revenue – apparently more than $200,000 — for the platform. The ads framed protests as spontaneous public uprisings, attacked European integration, and seeded doubt about state institutions. When Meta removed some of them, mirror campaigns quickly reappeared under new names.

By 2025, the same tactics used by others evolved into something more professional. An outlet called REST Media flooded TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube with anti-EU narratives, a campaign later linked not to Shor’s network, but to Rybar, a Russian influence operation known for re-packaging Kremlin messaging through AI-generated voices and translated scripts. Cybersecurity researchers later linked the operation to Rybar, a Russian influence network known for re-packaging Kremlin messaging through AI-generated voices and translated scripts.

Promo-LEX, Moldova’s leading election-observer group, identified approximately 500 coordinated accounts promoting nearly identical content during just three days of the campaign. Among the content were videos that accumulated more than 1 million views, often boosted by inauthentic engagement. Each click and share fed an invisible economy where dark money buys reach, and the platforms profit from the traffic.

The ‘Commercialization of Deception’

It’s not hard to see why this matters. When false stories spread faster than fact, and when sanctioned figures can still purchase digital megaphones through intermediaries, the result is not pluralism. It’s the commercialization of deception.

Here lies the real paradox. The debate about online regulation is often framed by governments and tech companies as a fight between freedom and control. In reality, the greater threat to free speech is inauthentic speech, content generated or amplified by fake, automated, or paid accounts that simulate public consensus and distort genuine debate.

If every genuine journalist or voter competes with hundreds of coordinated or even automated accounts pretending to be citizens, the marketplace of ideas stops functioning. Protecting expression now means safeguarding authenticity: ensuring that those speaking are who they say they are, and that influence cannot be quietly purchased by hostile interests.

That will require more from the platforms than after-the-fact press releases. They need regional moderation hubs with local-language staff empowered to respond in hours, not weeks. Political advertising must meet strict transparency standards. Who paid? How much? And through which intermediaries? If the funding trail disappears into shell companies or opaque agencies, the ad should not run.

Moldova’s experience also highlights the limits of the EU’s own reach. The Digital Services Act may demand accountability from major tech firms within the Union, but beyond its borders, countries like Moldova remain vulnerable. Democracies on Europe’s edge are effectively beta-testing the future of digital interference. If they fail, that failure will not stop at their borders.

The Moldovan election ultimately held, the system bent but did not break. Voters navigated manipulation, media bias, and fatigue to make a choice, despite weeks of disinformation aimed at eroding public trust and depressing turnout. But resilience should not be the benchmark for democratic success.

As long as algorithms amplify deceit faster than institutions can counter it, Europe’s smaller democracies will continue to fight uphill. The question is whether platforms will keep treating the region as a low-priority market or whether they will concede that their business models now shape its political destiny and take the accompanying responsibility. In the long run, doing so is not just an ethical choice but a strategic one: sustained instability and state backlash threaten the very access and credibility on which their markets depend.

Freedom of speech is not the freedom to deceive. It is the ability for real citizens to speak and be heard without being drowned out by machinery — and manipulation — designed elsewhere. If platforms keep monetizing manipulation, they are not protecting democracy — they are selling it off, click by click.

The post How Tech Platforms Allowed Russia Into Moldova: Lessons for the EU and Others appeared first on Just Security.

The country of Georgia just held local elections on Oct. 4 that fall into the sham category, putting to bed any remaining hope about the country’s status as a democracy. In the 2024 parliamentary elections, the ruling pro-Russian Georgian Dream (GD) regime ensured its victory through widespread intimidation, corruption, and manipulation. But this year’s elections represent a new low and lack any credibility. Russia is a key winner here, with GD’s full sweep of all levels of government – parliament, presidency, and all local councils and mayors’ offices — and, sadly, Western nations must take responsibility for not doing enough to stop it; they failed to enact adequate pressure on the regime or to provide enough support to democratic activists.

When I first moved to Georgia in 2014, the country’s election process, though not without flaws, was trusted, and there had been a peaceful transfer of power from the United National Movement (UNM) to GD the year before. Under GD’s rule, however, the credibility of elections deteriorated, and by the 2024 parliamentary elections, the process was deemed neither free nor fair by independent domestic and international observers. GD conducted a widespread campaign of intimidation and threats, vote buying, raids of civil society organizations, and abuse of state resources. Disinformation experts described how GD, in lockstep with the Kremlin, pushed narratives intended to scare voters with threats of war if they voted for the opposition. Election observers presented their findings showing serious irregularities, including multiple voting, ballot stuffing, lack of secrecy, intimidation, and statistical impossibilities.

Georgian Dream convened the new Parliament on Nov. 25, 2024, an illegal act since cases were still pending in the constitutional court challenging the integrity of the results, and the president, who is required to approve parliament, did not. Opposition representatives refused their mandates and declined to be seated in the Parliament. Then a prominent ex-footballer, known for his anti-Western views, was elected president on Dec. 14 by a GD-dominated 300-delegate electoral college, including members of Parliament, a process that lacked legitimacy given the questioned status of Parliament and fraudulent election results.

Immediately following the elections, GD announced that it would suspend plans to pursue European Union accession, despite overwhelming public support for a European future. This spurred tens of thousands of Georgians to begin peacefully protesting, and protests have occurred every day since. Black-clad security teams with no identifying insignia have systematically attacked and beaten hundreds of protesters.

Attacks on Civil Society

GD has also attacked civic organizations, particularly watchdog and election observer groups, through recent legislation that restricts civil society and limits freedom of expression and association. Their offices have been raided, and their bank accounts frozen. The government has also gone after individual civil society leaders, detaining and suing several. GD has arrested independent journalists on spurious claims in an attempt to silence any fair and balanced reporting about their rule. One watchdog reports that there have been 434 incidents violating the rights of journalists. The regime has also arrested its political opponents, and several opposition leaders are imprisoned. In fact, the regime plans to ban opposition parties full-stop.

The opposition Lelo-Strong Georgia party, despite its leaders having been jailed, and the For Georgia party, led by former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia (in exile for fear of arrest), ran candidates in these municipal elections. However, they competed in only 50 percent of the constituencies, leaving GD uncontested in half the country. Other opposition parties boycotted, arguing that participation legitimized the elections. A campaign of intimidation against the opposition contenders took place during the campaign, and multiple candidates were threatened or bribed and dropped out. GD also passed additional election laws to entrench the already-biased process further in their favor, an act condemned by the Venice Commission.

Given the lack of competition in or credibility of the process, the most prominent independent domestic and international election observation groups, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), bowed out of monitoring this farce. Further, the respected domestic observer organizations are being investigated under the “sabotage” act and have had their accounts frozen, making monitoring impossible anyway. As Levan Natroshvili, executive director of The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), said, “The Georgian Dream’s repressive measures against civil society, including the adoption of restrictive laws, the launch of criminal investigations targeting leading Georgian NGOs, and the freezing of their bank accounts, have rendered independent election observation effectively impossible.” Several GD-affiliated “observer groups” and foreign undemocratic States, however, monitored election day.

Thus, before the polls opened on Oct. 4, 2025, the elections were already illegitimate. With a partisan election framework and commission in place, no independent election observers on the ground, independent civil society and media under attack, and the political opposition in jail, how could democratic elections be conducted?

Peaceful Rally Takes a Turn

On election day, as some voters went to the polls, tens of thousands of protestors convened in the capital Tbilisi. The peaceful rally took a turn when a member from UNM told protestors that they would “reclaim” the presidential palace, and a group of protestors attempted to break into the palace, where they were met with tear gas and water cannons. Multiple protestors and security forces were wounded on election night. The GD regime declared it a coup attempt, and several protest- and opposition leaders have been arrested. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze also accused the West of supporting the coup and threatened the EU ambassador.

Predictably, GD declared victory, securing a landslide with more than 80 percent of the vote, sweeping all local councils and mayors’ offices. (Notably, Tbilisi had only a 30 percent turnout.) Stamping approval, the election chair from Belarus, a country infamous for failing to uphold democratic standards, declared the elections free and fair, further solidifying the absurdity of the entire process.

As the dust settles, GD promises more arrests, crackdowns, persecutions, and the full elimination of the opposition “forever.” In addition to GD, Russia is the clear victor here, fully consolidating a pro-Russian government at all levels of authority in the country. The West not helped defend Georgian democracy. Both the EU and the United States failed to pass legislation to financially sanction and weaken GD and its enablers. In the U.S. Congress, the MEGOBARI Act was held up by one senator, and the evisceration of foreign aid by the Trump administration kneecapped Georgian democracy, media, and election groups. While Georgian democrats acknowledge the battle in the country is theirs to fight, international economic pressure through sanctions is a pain point for the regime. Western leaders can still act to economically isolate the Georgian regime.

GD leaders know well that cosplaying an electoral victory through violence, repression, and rigging the process (with only foreign dictatorships praising the results) does not represent a legitimate and lasting public mandate. And Georgian democrats are determined. As we’ve seen in many other places, autocrats do lose power if citizens – across the country – organize, stand up, and resist, using their power of civil disobedience, boycotts, and strikes. Georgians will fight for their democracy and freedom, and GD can take its fragile place among other paranoid, insecure dictatorships that know their days are numbered.

The post After Another Sham Election in Georgia, the Country’s Citizens Persist appeared first on Just Security.

In the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the FMIC meticulously documented State-sponsored threats, particularly from China, Iran, and Russia, that targeted candidates and the electoral process itself. It also made public the process by which the executive branch would notify key stakeholders, including the American public, of threats to the election. The FMIC posted regular notifications to the American public, outlining the tactics, techniques, and procedures that State-sponsored actors used to influence the American public surreptitiously. The center highlighted specific instances of deepfake videos that sought to undermine confidence in the integrity of the electoral process, such as a Russian State-sponsored viral clip that purported to show mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania being destroyed. FMIC’s transparency contributed to bipartisan efforts to quickly debunk the video.

The FMIC and Gabbard’s predecessor as DNI, Avril Haines, also publicly outlined the objectives that China, Iran, and Russia apparently had for conducting interference operations against the United States. This helped to shed light on similarities and differences in the three countries’ strategies, including their preferred presidential candidate(s).

To its credit, the FMIC didn’t fixate on one threat actor (say, Russia). Nor did it only fixate on attempts to help then-former President Donald Trump and undermine his Democratic opponents, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, as “Russia hoax” conspiracists claim the intelligence community did during the 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, the FMIC went to great lengths to explain how some actors, notably Iran, clearly wanted to undermine Trump’s candidacy.

One would think the Trump administration would have an interest in preserving government functions that monitor nefarious foreign government activity targeting the president of the United States. Instead, in her Aug. 20 announcement of the broader ODNI reorganization and the dismantlement of FMIC, with its remaining work spread across other units, Gabbard claimed the office had politicized intelligence (a charge she also leveled at the intelligence community when the administration recently declassified materials purporting to support its claim that Russia did not interfere on behalf of Trump’s 2016 campaign). To the contrary — not only did the FMIC avoid putting its thumb on the scales of the election results, but it also avoided doing anything that could be misconstrued as censorship of free speech. The FMIC did not recommend censoring specific sources of information, nor did it tell citizens what to read or what to believe. There was no deep-state plot to deplatform conservative voices or denigrate the Trump campaign.

While the law passed by Congress in 2019 to authorize the FMIC stipulates that the center cannot be formally closed until 2028, ODNI’s decision to cripple it now means the United States has effectively ended any meaningful government role in addressing the foreign interference threat. In the meantime, China, Iran, Russia, and other nation-States will continue to use information operations, cyber operations, and other hybrid threat vectors to destabilize the U.S. government, subvert American society, and damage U.S. national security. For example, Russia is ramping up efforts this year to inject Russian State propaganda into the data sets informing AI chat bots, a tactic certain to be copied by other adversarial governments. In July, Microsoft unmasked a cyber operation by the Russian State Security Service (FSB) to target foreign embassies in Moscow with malware.

As congressional oversight rapidly atrophies, members of Congress likely will not rally to the defense of FMIC on a bipartisan basis. But that does not preclude members from using their oversight power to ensure the FMIC’s functions endure in other capacities. Only a year ago, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an open hearing, not only voiced their shared belief that hostile governments were waging campaigns to undermine Americans’ confidence in elections and democracy, but also seemingly agreed that the U.S. government should play an important role in defending against these threats.

Members can still demand the Trump administration specify which U.S. agencies will monitor the various State-sponsored threats that target national interests and, in the absence of ODNI coordination, which part of the U.S. government will coordinate analysis of this multifaceted threat ecosystem so policymakers can use the information responsibly. Relevant committees, including on intelligence and foreign relations, should call hearings that compel administration officials to delineate which countries are conducting hybrid operations to threaten U.S. interests at home and overseas and what specific steps the administration is taking to counter them.

The administration should not get a free pass to tear down the bureaucratic architecture – established, ironically, during Trump’s first administration — to protect U.S. national security and democracy from a metastasizing ecosystem of foreign interference threats. If it does, the beneficiaries reside in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran.

The post What Just Happened? Dismantling the Intelligence Community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center appeared first on Just Security.

No world leader has been embraced more enthusiastically by the American conservative movement and President Donald Trump than Orban. While feting him at Mar-A-Lago in 2024, Trump proclaimed “there’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban.” At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest, Orban’s speech was preceded by a video message from Trump, who called Orban “a great man and a very special person.” The Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 clearly echoes elements of Orban’s authoritarian playbook. The Danube Institute, a think-tank linked to Orban’s Fidesz party, has a formal cooperation agreement with the Heritage Foundation, and the two conduct joint conferences annually.

Exodus of Hungary’s Best and Brightest

Do average Hungarians share the enthusiasm for Orban exhibited by Trump, CPAC, and the Heritage Foundation?  In short, no. Here is one telling statistic: from 2010 to 2024, emigration from Hungary rose by 464 percent. In fact, the number of Hungarians leaving their country rose sharply almost immediately after Orban’s April 2010 election victory. For scores of Hungarians, the future looks bleak, with a recent survey finding that 34 percent of recent graduates and 55 percent of 18-40-year-old Hungarians plan to emigrate. In light of Hungary’s aging population – its median age is 43.9 years – Orban can ill-afford to drive out Hungary’s best, brightest, and youngest. That so many Hungarians are eager to flee Orban’s rule provides the first hint that enthusiasm among his U.S-based cheerleaders is misplaced, even suspect.

Even a cursory inquiry into Orban’s record reveals that he has presided not over Hungary’s advancement but rather its alarming decline. For one, he has masterminded Hungary’s transformation from a full democracy to an “electoral autocracy,”  according to the European Parliament. Freedom House now rates Hungary as only “partly free.” As noted in Bertelsmann’s 2024 Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI): “Elections are typically free but not fair, with the ruling Fidesz party benefiting from large-scale gerrymandering, asymmetrical media access and the misuse of state assets.” Today, Hungary is an SGI bottom dweller, ranking 30^th out of 30 with respect to: (1) Elections, (2) Quality of the Parties and Candidates, and (3) Access to Official Information.

A Stagnant Economy, Corruption, and Cronyism

Adding to Hungary’s woes is its economy, which has stagnated since 2022, with GDP growth rates declining for four years straight and a ballooning budget deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP, significantly higher than the European Union average of 3 percent. Hungary is also plagued by high inflation, forcing the government to take drastic steps such as limiting grocers’ profit margins. Predictably, Hungary’s currency, the Forint, has lost value and both domestic and foreign investors, wary of arbitrary regulatory shifts and opaque enforcement, are rethinking investments in Hungary. More than €20 billion in EU funds that would have come to Hungary have been suspended over rule of law violations, and innovation lags as firms hesitate to invest in research, development, or new technologies. Why? Among other things, they lack confidence in intellectual property protections.

For ordinary Hungarians, Orban’s mismanagement of the economy has translated into living standards significantly lower than many of the other 37 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Given these and other declines, it is no surprise that, just in the last year, Hungary fell 13 places in Gallup’s World Happiness Report. Hungary now ranks below Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and Honduras.  Predictably, countries with thriving democracies dominate the list of happiest countries. Hungarians have grown increasingly disgruntled for many reasons, but the fact Orban has transformed Hungary from a thriving democracy to an electoral autocracy is surely a factor.

Swings from democracy to autocracy typically are accompanied by high levels of corruption and cronyism.  Orban’s increasingly autocratic governance style has delivered precisely the results one would expect. The earlier mentioned Bertelsmann index reported that “corruption has become a systemic issue. Members of the Fidesz elite have rapidly accumulated wealth through informal political-business networks.”  Hungary now ranks as the single most corrupt country in the EU, according to Transparency International, with State resources routinely diverted to Orban’s allies and family. While Hungary’s government had committed to reducing the percentage of single-bid tenders, a favored tool for rewarding Orban’s cronies, it missed the EU’s 2023 target of 24 percent and is unlikely to meet the 2026 target of 15 percent.

Among the new business elites close to Orban, none has enriched themselves more wildly than Orban’s close childhood friend,  Lorinc Meszaros, who rose from being a gas fitter to the head of a major conglomerate. With a net worth of $3.8 billion, to what does Meszaros attribute his remarkable success? In his own words, “God, luck and the person of Viktor Orban have certainly played a role.” Among those three factors, Orban appears to have played a more decisive role. While companies owned by Meszaros won zero public tenders in 2010 — the first year of Orban’s return to office — by 2012 he had won eight. By 2018 he had won 24. When asked by a journalist how he managed to grow his business at a faster clip than Facebook, he helpfully explained that “I am most likely smarter than Mark Zuckerberg.”

Orban also finds ways to reward family members. With an estimated fortune of more than $370 million, Istvan Tiborcz is one of the wealthiest people in Hungary. While Tiborcz is not a household name in most countries, he became one in Hungary after marrying Orban’s daughter, Rahel, in 2013. Tiborcz’s net worth doubled last year.

An Enfeebled Media and Grave Damage to the Rule of Law

Corruption, especially at the highest levels, has been abetted by Orban’s kneecapping of Hungary’s once free press. After Orban’s 2010 return to office, Hungary’s overall press environment deteriorated precipitously in the World Press Freedom Index, with its ranking dropping 45 places in just three years. This decline, which persists today,  was no accident. Rather, it was engineered through legislative, political, and economic pressures imposed by the Orban government.

Where Orban has done his most lasting and pernicious damage is to Hungary’s once robust rule of law. Orban has worked assiduously (and illegally) to stack the judiciary with toadies, something reflected in Hungary’s declining scores in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index. Regionally, Hungary ranks 31^st out of 31 countries. Among the world’s high-income countries, today Hungary ranks 45^th out of 47. Orban has steadily dismantled one guardrail after another, often in plain view.  In 2013, Orban’s parliament amended the Constitution to limit the ability of the Constitutional Court to challenge new laws. This change strips the Constitutional Court of the power to void laws passed by a two-thirds majority, effectively insulating Orban’s actions from judicial review.

U.S. Conservative Movement’s Embrace…of Poor Results

Coming full circle, it strains credulity to suggest the Heritage Foundation and Orban’s other U.S.-based cheerleaders are unaware of the grave damage Orban has done to Hungary’s democracy, media ecosystem, electoral system, economy, the rule of law, and so on. That begs the question: why would the U.S. conservative movement embrace Orban’s corrupt, autocratic governance style when it has delivered such poor results? There is, after all, something unseemly about conservative leaders of a superpower such as the U.S. fawning over the leader of a country demonstrably in decline, especially one with a population and land mass the size of New Jersey and Indiana, respectively.

One explanation for this warm embrace is that key features of the Orban model would advance key Project 2025 goals if applied in the United States. Doing so, however, risks reshaping the United States into a country that shares many of present-day Hungary’s worst features. These include a radical expansion of presidential power, a weakening of checks and balances, the replacement of merit-based civil service workers with political appointees loyal to the president, and the consolidation of partisan control over key government agencies.

In short, Orbanism — and its close cousin, Project 2025 — is not only antithetical to traditional American values, democracy, economic dynamism, and the rule of law, but also provides a proven roadmap for degrading the quality of life of those under its thrall, whether they are Hungarians today, or Americans – including loyal Trump supporters – tomorrow. Those who praise Orban and argue that Hungary provides a useful model for the United States are gravely misguided or worse, and should be challenged with this simple question: have you talked to an ordinary Hungarian lately?

The post Autocracy, Corruption, and Decline: Why Hungary and Orbanism Must Never be a Model for the U.S. appeared first on Just Security.

The case marks the culmination of a decade-long judicial investigation into a sprawling corruption scheme “fanned by ambition, lust for power and greed, weaving its web in the highest levels of government,” according to the prosecution. Judges of the Paris Criminal Court heard arguments from Jan. 6 to April 10, and will deliver their verdict on Sept. 25.

In the meantime, much of the media attention has focused on how the “Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair” is challenging France and its democratic institutions, with too little coverage of how the corruption has harmed the people of Libya. Since NATO’s intervention in 2011 and Gaddafi’s resulting death, two competing factions emerged from the power struggle that followed the regime’s fall: the internationally backed Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) turned Government of National Unity (GNU) in 2021 in western Libya and the Government of National Stability (GNS), led by de facto leader warlord Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) in Benghazi in the East. A civil war raged between these factions until October 2020. Since then, numerous United Nations-led attempts at a more permanent peace have failed to materialize on the ground. Tensions remain high and elections have not been held. Libyans continue to endure the consequences of decades of political instability, worsened by foreign interference, institutionalized corruption, and escalating repressive authoritarianism.

As the Sarkozy trial nears its conclusion this fall, it should provoke deeper scrutiny of how democracies engage with dictatorships – pushing policymakers to critically consider the real-world consequences of Western actions on the lives of local populations. Acknowledging Sarkozy’s legacy in Libya, France should go beyond its lip service to the U.N.-led peace process and work to foster democracy and fundamental freedoms Libyans crucially need, holding both the GNU and the LNA accountable. Alongside its democratic commitments, France should also reckon with the human rights consequences of its Libya foreign policy and interference in the post-Sarkozy era.

The Sarkozy-Gaddafi Affair

The Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair first hit French headlines in 2011, when French investigative news website Médiapart published exclusive confidential documents exposing the scandal. Over the next 14 years, outlets published more than 190 articles on the topic. The evidence appears overwhelming: secret meetings in Tripoli in 2005 between Sarkozy’s ministers and Senussi. In 1999, a French court convicted the intelligence chief of masterminding the 1989 terrorist attack on a French plane, killing 170 people. Journalists uncovered bank transfers between Libya and France in offshore bank accounts. An agenda note was found in 2012 on the corpse of Libya’s former prime minister, Choukri Ghanem, ordering a transaction of 6.5 million euros for Sarkozy’s campaign. Mountains of cash piled up in Sarkozy’s campaign headquarters, as confirmed by anti-corruption officers.

Sarkozy’s motivation appears to be simple: his campaign would receive millions of euros, strengthening his chances of becoming president. Gaddafi, on the other hand, sought judicial, diplomatic, and economic gains. First, Gaddafi wanted to exonerate Senussi from the life sentence he’d received in France for his role in the 1989 attack. Second, in the 2000s, Libya was attempting to shed its reputation as a “terrorism-state” and wanted sanctions lifted. France’s public support of Gaddafi’s regime could help foster increasing legitimization for the dictator. Third, French ministers and Libyan dignitaries negotiated a deal to provide Libya with surveillance equipment in the 2000s.

The accumulation of evidence in the public sphere instigated a judicial investigation into the Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair in 2013, which lasted until 2023, when judges sent Sarkozy and three of his former ministers back to court for this year’s historic trial.

The Cost to the Libyan People

Sarkozy’s trial is finally drawing attention to corruption’s devastating costs on Libya’s civilian population. Notably, the trial sheds light on the role of Amesys, a French cybersecurity firm that sold technology to the Libyan regime to intercept electronic communications and monitor online activities of Libyans between 2007 and 2011.

A 2011 Wall Street Journal investigation into the Tripoli Internet monitoring center, a highly sophisticated surveillance apparatus built by Gaddafi, found that in 2009 Amesys had equipped this security unit with Eagle, one of the most intrusive technologies for tracking online activities at the time. Eagle had the ability to conduct “strategic nationwide interception” that could monitor emails from Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail and see chat conversations on MSN instant messaging and AIM. Users in Libyan intelligence could “request the entire database” of Internet traffic “in real-time.”

Following the Wall Street Journal’s findings, two French NGOs – the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights– lodged complaints with French courts in 2011. Two years later, French authorities launched an inquiry into the French cybersecurity firm. Six Libyan victims testified before the courts, arguing that their arrest and torture were directly linked to the spyware program. In 2021, the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Unit of the Paris Judicial Court indicted the company and four of its executives for complicity in torture in Libya, which was later confirmed by an appellate court.

The Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial has shed further light on these claims. The meetings in 2005 between Sarkozy’s ministers and Senussi, organized by businessman and alleged middleman Ziad Takkieddine, likely facilitated Amesys’ commercial contracts. At the time, France lacked any regulatory measures covering the sale of such technology, which enabled these discussions to go largely unnoticed by French regulators.

With this French technology, Gaddafi was able to heavily monitor and hunt down government opponents who were subsequently arrested, arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared, and tortured with little consequence despite the implications for France. The alleged corruption between Sarkozy and Gaddafi undermined French democracy, but it also empowered Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown of Libyan dissidents and activists.

Even more so, the allegations that Sarkozy accepted millions in Libyan taxpayer money indicate that those who paid the largest price were the Libyan people, victims of an embezzlement scheme and of foreign support for a crackdown against those who spoke out. They faced economic hardship, political instability, and even violence as a result of corrupt dealings at the highest levels of power.

France’s Dangerous Game in Libya

In his dealings with the Libyan regime, Sarkozy strayed away from the more restrained foreign policy approach of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), and instead pursued a more assertive stance. This shift culminated in the French- and British-led NATO intervention that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Yet France’s interventionist legacy did not end with Sarkozy’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election. His successors, François Hollande (2012-2017) and Emmanuel Macron (2017-present), despite their criticism of the NATO operation, have continued to meddle in Libya’s political process at the expense of Libyans’ fundamental freedoms.

Since 2011, France has officially backed the U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), supporting efforts to hold free elections, rebuild public institutions, and prevent armed conflict.

Yet as the U.N.-brokered Libyan Political Agreement in December 2015 was leading to the formation of the GNA, France’s domestic priorities shifted as the country was hit by multiple Islamist terrorist attacks in its capital. The national security crisis reinforced the Middle East strategy of then-Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, under former President Hollande, who prioritized a security approach in Libya at the expense of democratic considerations. Le Drian saw a pragmatic ally in Haftar, especially because of his victories against ISIS and al-Qaeda. For France’s counterterrorism operations in the Sahel region, Haftar appeared capable of imposing order and stability in a fragmented Libya that had become a haven for jihadist groups.

The Libyan Political Agreement called for broad inclusion of Libyan factions in the political process and civilian oversight of the military. In contrast to these terms, France began quietly bolstering Haftar’s eastern regime. Since early 2015, it provided support via special forces, advisers, and clandestine operations. The death of three French secret service agents in a helicopter crash near Benghazi in 2016 forced Hollande to confirm France’s military presence in the country.

France’s meddling and double standards in Libyan political affairs became more blatant under Macron, who hosted Haftar and the GNA’s then-Prime Minister Fayez al‑Sarraj for peace talks in July 2017, circumventing the established U.N. peacebuilding efforts. Though both pledged support for a ceasefire and prompt national elections, Macron’s move – making him the first European leader to host Haftar – granted the warlord international legitimacy, despite EU, NATO, and U.N. support for the rival GNA. Although professing support for the Libyan Political Agreement, Macron failed to include other factions in the talks and made no demands on Haftar.

In May 2018, Macron continued to sideline the U.N.-led process by convening Haftar and Sarraj along with Libyan parliamentary leaders, where he proposed a plan to hold elections by December 10, a timeline widely seen as unrealistic at the time. Macron’s unilateral initiative only incentivized the U.N. plan’s detractors to stall negotiations. After this plan fell apart, U.N. special envoy Ghassan Salamé postponed elections till spring 2019, but Haftar derailed the process by launching an offensive on Tripoli.

In response to the offensive, France leveraged diplomatic protection to thwart the EU from condemning Haftar, downplayed the humanitarian toll, and portrayed the warlord’s opponents as terrorists. On the ground, U.N.-backed forces found four American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, supplied by France, in a Haftar-controlled stronghold south of Tripoli. Meanwhile, France’s Emirati allies hired Russian mercenaries, cementing a long-term Russian presence in Libya. Through the end of 2019, Haftar’s forces made fast territorial advances until Turkey sent troops to bolster opposing GNA forces, prompting the GNA to declare a unilateral ceasefire in October 2020.

Going Beyond Counterterrorism

Paris’ adulation of the Libyan war general goes beyond counterterrorism; it is also rooted in its strategic alliances with key military partners across the wider Middle East, primarily Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, both major buyers of French weapons and backers of Haftar’s LNA. The warlord also enjoys support from Russia, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, while the GNU is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Marginalizing Haftar could jeopardize lucrative military contracts with Egypt and the UAE, two of France’s most important clients. Although the Franco-Emirati relationship has deteriorated since 2021, Sisi and Macron’s ties remain strong.

Natural resources also dictate France’s presence in Libya, as the French energy company Total holds exploration rights in several oilfields in the West and a share of one of Libya’s main oil companies.

Furthermore, as Ali Albayaa, a research fellow specializing in the Middle East and North Africa region at the Human Rights Foundation, told us, “We should not overlook Macron’s personal ambitions of projecting France as a guarantor of European continental security.” Libya is a crucial piece in France’s puzzle, as Haftar controls the majority of the country’s territory and, by extension, the masses of immigrants pouring into France in search of a safer future. Haftar’s capacity to shape immigration realities in Europe partly explains France’s tacit support to the dictator.

The Costs of French Realpolitik

Not only does France’s diplomatic and military support for Haftar delegitimize the U.N. political process, but it also abets the perpetuation of human rights abuses by Haftar’s LNA. In fact, Haftar himself was convicted by a U.S. judge in 2022 of war crimes for his role in ordering extrajudicial killings and torture in Libya. The militias that make up the LNA are no better and have been accused of a host of human rights abuses. The Tareq Bin Zeyad Brigade (TBZ), led by Haftar’s son Saddam, has been accused of crushing any opposition to the LNA. Amnesty International has documented the TBZ’s links to a “catalog of horrors,” particularly against migrants, including torture, mistreatment, and forced expulsions in total impunity.

Haftar’s 2019 offensive on Tripoli, which France tirelessly sought to shield from international condemnation, was marred by significant human casualties, killing at least 430 civilians and displacing 250,000 more.

Rampant corruption and mismanagement further infringe on the local populations’ fundamental freedoms. One example is the collapse of two dams in September 2023 in the city of Derna after a storm brought heavy rains to the country’s northeastern coast. The resulting devastation killed at least 4,000 people and left tens of thousands of people missing to this day. Corruption within both the GNU and the LNA is to blame for the floods’ cataclysmic impact. The dams collapsed after over a decade of warnings about their degrading state and a half-hearted attempt to fix them by Libyan politicians on both sides. The widespread protests that erupted following the disaster were met with the eastern regime’s brutal retaliation and arbitrary arrests of activists.

Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst on Libya security and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, pointed out to us that these authoritarian tactics are not unique to the Eastern regime; in fact, the GNU in the West has adopted more totalitarian actions in recent months, with little objection from the international community.

France’s Pervasive Legacy

“What started out as military aid in the context of France’s fight against terrorism ended with Haftar managing to transform that technical aid into political and ideological support,” Harchaoui explained in an interview. “Once Haftar gained absolute control of Benghazi from ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Libyan political opponents in 2017, France should have ended its support. Instead, under Macron’s presidency, it continued to support Haftar diplomatically.” Harchaoui concluded, “It’s in the name of realpolitik that France lacked realism in Libya. By solely backing Haftar, France left key players out of its unilateral vision for the country’s future. As a result, France does not hold the same relevance that it did in 2019. Libya has turned into a playing field for non-Western powers.”

Despite its waning influence, the damage France has done will persist. The Libyan civil and political spaces are rife with human rights violations, as both regimes deploy authoritarian practices to repress any form of dissent and political pluralism. Libya’s window of opportunity for nationwide elections, which briefly opened in 2021, is not available today due to the partisan nature of foreign interference that has sown divisions rather than the unity sought by the U.N.-led political process. France needs to bear responsibility for the long-term consequences of foreign interference.

With the Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial, French democracy upholds its commitment to holding its former leaders accountable for their wrongdoings. France owes this self-healing, in large part, to its civil society. Without the Médiapart journalists who first uncovered the affair, or anti-corruption organizations like Sherpa, Transparency International, and Anticor, which coalesced as civil parties in the trial “to underscore the systemic mechanisms facilitating financial flows and the associated repercussions on the populations of impacted states,” and without the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT), which also joined as a civil party to represent the families of the DC10-UTA flight victims, France’s judiciary would not have had the tools to address the complex web of corruption weaved by Sarkozy, Gaddafi, and their respective ministers.

If Libyans are to have a real chance at democracy, France must stop undermining the U.N.-led peace process by legitimizing warlords through backchannel diplomacy. Instead, it should hold perpetrators of violence in both Libyan regimes accountable for their human rights abuses through individualized and targeted sanctions.

On the commercial front, any lucrative contract passed between France and its Middle East allies should be conditioned on the respect of human rights. Repression should not be rewarded. And at the grassroots level, in light of civil society’s vital role in democratic processes – as witnessed during the Sarkozy trial – France should support and fund civil society efforts in Libya to ensure diverse voices are included in a viable political solution. Although Libyan civil society organizations, such as Together We Build It, are working to address the absence of women’s participation in peace-building processes, foreign powers should also empower an intergenerational, gendered approach to peace-building. It is only by pushing for accountability, transparency, and letting Libyan voices be heard that France will truly play a constructive role in ensuring Libyans’ access to their fundamental freedoms.

The post The Sarkozy-Gaddafi Trial Exposes Corruption’s Devastating Effect on Libyans appeared first on Just Security.

With federal challenges to restrictive voting laws now dropped in several states, the fight for voting rights falls to individual voters and advocacy groups, raising urgent questions about the future of enforcement.

In this episode Dani Schulkin, Director of Democracy Initiatives at Just Security, is joined by Chiraag Bains. Chiraag is a senior fellow at Democracy Fund, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice & Equity. He also previously served in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. 

Show Notes:  

• Chiraag Bains, “What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits.” 
• Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions  
• Just Security’s DOJ Archives
• Music: “Broken” by David Bullard from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/david-bullard/broken (License code: OSC7K3LCPSGXISVI)

The post The Just Security Podcast: Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits appeared first on Just Security.

Even with decades of progress, voter suppression persists today, making robust enforcement of these statutes critical to ensuring all eligible voters can participate fully in the political process. 

Under the Trump Administration, however, the Civil Rights Division has reversed course. On Jan. 22, 2025, Justice Department political appointees reportedly ordered a freeze on all new civil rights cases, stopping even the filing of complaints and settlements that had been approved internally after potentially lengthy investigations and negotiations. They later directed career attorneys to dismiss their pending cases, in most instances reportedly “without meeting with them and offering a rationale.” All but three career attorneys have resigned or been removed from the Division’s Voting Section.

The Voting Section has now dropped its claims in all salient pending cases. Individual voters and voting rights groups are left to litigate without the weight of the Justice Department on their side, while contending with a once-fringe legal theory that they should not be able to enforce the core of the VRA at all. Meanwhile, President Trump has set new priorities that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote, and his Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon is redirecting the Voting Section’s work accordingly.

The Dismissed Cases

When Trump took office, the Civil Rights Division had pending legal challenges to state and local practices that made it harder to register to vote or to cast a ballot, as well as the use of district maps that diluted the voting strength of racial minorities. The following are the most prominent matters, all of which it has since dismissed.

Arizona Voting Restrictions: In 2022, the Justice Department sued Arizona over a new state law, HB 2492, that requires voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC), such as a birth certificate or passport, to register to vote. About half of Americans don’t have a passport, and 9% do not have a birth certificate or similar DPOC readily available either. The numbers are higher for low-income Americans. And about one-third of voting-age women don’t have DPOC reflecting their current name.

HB 2492 renewed a legal battle that began nearly two decades earlier, when the state adopted a similar measure in 2004. The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona’s 2004 DPOC law was preempted by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a federal law that requires states to “accept and use” a uniform federal form that allows Americans to register for federal elections so long as they attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Rather than adhere to the federal rules for all elections, Arizona implemented a two-tiered system: people who provide DPOC can vote in state and federal elections, and people who do not can vote in federal elections only. 

In HB 2492, the state imposed new restrictions on voters who use the federal form to register without DPOC and for whom the state cannot independently verify citizenship status using certain databases: those voters may not vote by mail, and they may no longer vote for president. They may vote only in person and only for their member of Congress. The law also imposed new restrictions on state-qualified voters: their registrations will be rejected if they do not include their place of birth, a piece of information not determinative of eligibility to vote (consider naturalized citizens and the noncitizen children of diplomats who are born on U.S. soil).

The Justice Department challenged these and other restrictions under the NVRA and the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Materiality Provision, which bars states from rejecting voter registrations based on inconsequential omissions that do not call into question a voter’s qualifications. The suit was consolidated with separate actions filed by voters and voter engagement groups. A federal district court struck down the challenged provisions, and a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in February 2025. Arizona and Republican intervenors have petitioned for the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. However, on Apr. 8, the Justice Department filed a motion asking the court to dismiss its claims.

Georgia Voting Restrictions: Georgia saw record high turnout in the 2020 election. In March 2021, the state enacted an omnibus election bill, SB 202, that curtailed several of the practices that contributed to increased voter participation. Among other measures, SB 202 prohibited election officials from mailing unsolicited ballot applications to any voter; reduced the period during which voters can apply for an absentee ballot; restricted the number and location of drop boxes and the hours during which ballots could be returned there; restricted the counting of certain provisional ballots; and made it a crime to provide food or water for voters waiting in line, both within 150 feet of polling stations and even within 25 feet of any voter farther back. Black voters disproportionately had used absentee voting and drop boxes, and Black churches and civic groups had distributed food and water to voters waiting for hours.

DOJ sued Georgia in June 2021. It alleged that the state enacted SB 202 with the intent to suppress Black voter participation in violation of Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits any voting procedure that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right … to vote on account of race or color.” DOJ also intervened in a consolidated lawsuit brought by voting rights groups. In 2023, the district court temporarily blocked the criminalization of providing food or water within 25 feet of voters who are more than 150 feet from a polling station, but allowed most of SB 202 to go into effect while the lawsuit continued. The court held a trial in Apr. 2024 and its decision is pending.

In February 2025, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop its case. Bondi directed the Civil Rights Division to dismiss its claims on Mar. 31, and it did so the next day.

Virginia Voter Purge: On Aug. 7, 2024, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin ordered a last-minute initiative to remove voters suspected of being noncitizens from the rolls before Election Day. However, under the NVRA, states cannot conduct systematic voter purges during the 90 days before a federal election. This is known as the Quiet Period. Its purpose is to prevent disenfranchisement; if mass purges are conducted too close to an election, there may not be time to fix mistakes. (The NVRA does not prevent removing individual voters who have become ineligible, such as due to death or a criminal conviction.) DOJ and private plaintiffs sued in October 2024 to stop the voter purge.

In addition to objecting to the purge’s timing, DOJ highlighted the harm it would do. Virginia officials used daily transfers of flawed DMV data to identify potential noncitizens. These included people who mistakenly checked a box stating they are not a citizen, even if they elsewhere affirmed their citizenship and even if the DMV had documentary evidence of their U.S. citizenship. The state compared that list to the voter rolls, considering it a match if the two entries contained as little common data as the same first and last names. Officials conducted no further research to determine whether the person in question was a citizen. The state also conducted a large data pull of people who had indicated in DMV transactions that they were U.S. citizens but had at some earlier time provided the agency with a noncitizen document, such as a green card. Despite the clear possibility that these people had since become naturalized, the state flagged them as possible noncitizens too. Officials sent all the suspected noncitizens a notice giving them 14 days to affirm their citizenship and, if they did not, canceled their registration. 

Litigation revealed that many U.S. citizens—including naturalized citizens whose voter registrations were stamped “NEW CITIZEN” and lifelong Virginians who had voted before—were erroneously removed. On Oct. 25, 2024, the district court enjoined the purge and ordered the state to restore the 1,600 voters it had removed from the rolls. Virginia sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, contesting the district court’s ruling on the merits and arguing that it would be disruptive to implement the court’s order so close to Election Day. The Supreme Court stayed the district court’s order without explanation. 

On Jan. 28, 2025, the Justice Department voluntarily dismissed its case. Individual voters had intervened in the case to also challenge the purge program, and their suit continues.

Alabama Voter Purge: In September 2024, DOJ and private plaintiffs sued Alabama over Secretary of State Wes Allen’s attempt to purge 3,251 voters from the rolls 84 days before Election Day, alleging a violation of the NVRA’s Quiet Period. Allen assembled the purge list by identifying voters who had previously been issued alien registration numbers (routinely provided to immigrants) by the Department of Homeland Security. In announcing the purge, he acknowledged “it is possible” voters on the list had since become naturalized citizens. State officials later admitted the list contained at least 2,000 U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, Allen instructed local registrars to “inactivate” these voters, requiring them to re-register to be able to vote in the presidential election. He also referred all of them to the state’s attorney general for criminal investigation.

On Oct. 16, 2024, the district court found that Alabama “blew the deadline” for systematic removals under the NVRA. The court granted a preliminary injunction stopping the purge and requiring action to restore voters to the rolls.

On March 14, 2025, under new management, the Justice Department dismissed its claims. The private plaintiffs also dismissed their claims, declaring victory and vowing to take action again if the secretary of state tries to implement another unlawful purge program. For the Justice Department, however, voluntarily dismissing a case after obtaining preliminary relief, without any form of permanent settlement, was highly irregular. The Civil Rights Division’s political leadership made clear the Trump administration thought the lawsuit never should have been brought. The Division issued a press release titled “U.S. Department of Justice Dismisses Biden-Era Lawsuit Against Alabama in order to have more Secure Elections,” echoing Alabama’s narrative that its purge program was important to “ensure only citizens are voting” and stating that dismissing the case would “permit Alabama the time and space to develop a legal, efficient, and effective process to remove noncitizens from their voting roll.” The statement strongly suggests DOJ would not sue the state if it violates the NVRA’s voter purge parameters again.

Texas Redistricting: In December 2021, the Justice Department sued Texas over its new congressional and state House maps, arguing that they intentionally diluted the influence of voters of color. Texas grew by 4 million people between 2010 and 2020, picking up two congressional seats. People of color represented 95% of the growth. However, the state legislature drew two new seats with White-majority voting populations. It also eliminated a Latino opportunity district; over-concentrated voters of color into particular districts (known as “packing”); and cut others out of an urban core and attached them to far-away, rural, predominantly White counties (known as “cracking”). The state House map used similar tactics. In alleging purposeful racial vote dilution, DOJ noted that courts had struck down statewide maps in every Texas redistricting since 1970 and had found intentional discrimination multiple times. 

On Jan. 27, 2025, the court on its own accord ordered DOJ attorneys on the case to state whether they intended to continue the litigation. The attorneys asked for more time and then, in March 2025, dropped all of their claims. Voting rights groups are still suing over the maps. Their trial began May 21, 2025, and is ongoing.

Louisiana Redistricting: Following the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a new congressional map in which only one of its six districts was majority-Black even though a third of the state’s population is Black and the state experiences racially polarized voting. In 2022, a district court preliminarily enjoined the use of the map, ruling that it likely violated the VRA by illegally diluting the influence of Black voters. The court ordered the state to draw a new map with two majority-Black districts. Louisiana did so, but it eschewed geographically compact options to avoid forcing out one of two Republican incumbents; instead, the legislature crafted a second majority-Black district that stretched 250 miles across the state. A group of self-styled “non-African American voters” then sued, arguing that the new map constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was the predominant factor motivating the shape of the new majority-Black district. A different district court agreed. The state appealed to the Supreme Court. 

Louisiana and the NAACP argue that the new map is lawful: the state must be able to draw a second majority-Black district to comply with the VRA, and the particular district they drew took its shape primarily due to partisan incumbency protection, not race.

In December 2024, the Justice Department filed a brief explaining that drawing a majority-minority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act does not itself establish that race predominated in violation of the Constitution. It also argued that the district court applied the wrong legal standard in deeming the new map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. DOJ sought to participate in oral argument. However, four days after President Trump took office, the Justice Department told the Court its brief “no longer represents the position of the United States” and withdrew its request for argument time.

During oral argument, held on Mar. 24, three justices challenged the correctness or importance of the 2022 order enjoining the original map (a court order that is not currently before the Supreme Court), and another justice seemed to question the continuing need for the VRA’s prohibition on racial vote dilution. The Court’s decision is pending.

Houston County, Georgia, At-Large Elections: On Jan. 16, 2025, the Justice Department sued the Houston County Board of Commissioners in central Georgia, alleging that its system of at-large elections dilutes Black voting power in violation of the VRA. Black voters constitute 32% of the electorate and Black candidates have run as Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, but White voters vote sufficiently as a bloc to defeat them every time. Houston County has had only one Black commissioner since Reconstruction, last elected in 1988. Racial vote dilution like this is often remedied by replacing at-large elections with a system of single-member districts. 

DOJ dropped its case on Mar. 24. Houston County voters intervened to pursue the case, and the local government has moved to dismiss their claims.

Hazleton, Pennsylvania, At-Large Elections: On Jan. 7, 2025, the Justice Department filed a similar suit against the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, over its at-large system for electing its five city council members. Hispanics make up 63% of the city’s residents and 43% of its citizen voting age population, but racially polarized voting and the at-large system have prevented them from electing their candidates of choice. All seven Hispanic candidates to run from 2014 to 2023 lost; no Hispanic person has ever served on the council. DOJ also pointed to evidence of possible racial hostility, including a city council member’s statement “If you want to keep breaking the rules and keep living like a slum or pig, go back to wherever you came from,” which some local residents took as anti-immigrant.

DOJ voluntarily dismissed its case on Apr. 24, 2025. No private plaintiffs had intervened or brought their own suit, so this matter is now closed.

One Remaining, but Paused, Case: DOJ has one still-pending VRA Section 2 case, filed on Jan. 15, 2025, in which it alleged intentional discrimination in redistricting by Fayette County, Tennessee. The county commission had multiple Black members in the past. During its 2021 redistricting process, however, the county rejected maps with majority-Black districts, against the advice of its redistricting attorney, and drew lines that diluted Black voting power. Since 2021, all five Black candidates to stand for election have lost, resulting in no Black commissioners among the 19 currently serving even though Black residents are 26% of the county’s voting age population. Last month, the Justice Department consented to a 150-day pause of the litigation. The county is considering adopting a new districting map. 

The Impact of DOJ’s Withdrawal on Voting Rights

As discussed above, private plaintiffs are still litigating most of the cases DOJ dropped. However, DOJ’s withdrawal presents two serious problems for voting rights enforcement.

First, the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section brought unique resources, expertise, and weight to the litigation. Many of its attorneys had decades of experience, through Democratic and Republican administrations. They had seen voter suppression in all its forms over the years, and they understood the highly complex and evolving doctrines involved in proving VRA and NVRA claims. In addition, DOJ’s involvement in a case signaled the seriousness of the allegations to defendants, judges, and the public. For these reasons, its disappearance could slow momentum in some of these lawsuits. 

Second, defendants are now arguing that there is no “private right of action” under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that only DOJ can enforce the statute. If they are right, any and all Section 2 claims by voters and voting rights groups — including in the cases discussed above — would have to be dismissed. DOJ’s absence raises the stakes of such a ruling dramatically. If private plaintiffs can’t sue, and DOJ won’t, no one will be enforcing the core of the VRA.

This legal theory gained steam after two Supreme Court justices seemed to endorse it in a 2022 concurrence. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court made certain Section 2 violations harder to prove. Justice Gorsuch wrote separately, joined by Justice Thomas, to note that the Court since 1980 had “assumed” but “never decided” that private parties could sue under Section 2. He called it an “an open question.” Perhaps they could not. 

That conclusion would run headlong into a wall of text, history, and precedent. The VRA contains references to the ability of “an aggrieved person” and a “party, other than the United States,” to initiate proceedings “to enforce the voting guarantees of the fourteenth or fifteenth amendment.” The House and Senate reports accompanying the law’s 1982 reauthorization explicitly state Congress’s intent “that citizens have a private cause of action to enforce their rights under Section 2” and have had that right “since 1965.” Private parties have filed over 400 Section 2 lawsuits since 1982, far more than DOJ. Congress was well aware of the plethora of private suits when, in 2006, it again reauthorized the statute without blocking them. Plaintiffs have relied even more heavily on Section 2 since the Supreme Court in 2013 disabled a separate provision that blocked discriminatory laws before they went into effect. 

Nevertheless, in 2023, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took up Gorsuch’s suggestion and ruled that only DOJ could enforce Section 2. This month, that court held that private plaintiffs couldn’t use another statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, to enforce Section 2’s prohibitions either.

With DOJ off the field, these decisions render the VRA’s prohibition on racial vote suppression currently inoperative in the seven states covered by the Eighth Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Defendants are making the same argument in other parts of the country. Before long the question could reach the Supreme Court, which could decide the question for the entire nation.

New Federal Priorities

Two weeks after her confirmation, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon emailed new mission statements to Division career staff, directing them to pursue cases implementing President Trump’s executive orders. Among them is EO 14248, Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which makes combating voter fraud a top priority—even though such fraud is exceedingly rare. (President Trump continues to argue that the 2020 election, which he lost, was rigged. Dhillon has done the same. A wealth of evidence and legal judgments have debunked their claims.)

Accordingly, the Voting Section’s mission is now “to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion.” It will work with DHS “to share database information upon request for accurate voter registration list maintenance,” a reference to voter purges, and “ensure that only American citizens vote in US federal elections.” The statement reiterates “preventing illegal voting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error” as priorities. Although it cites the Voting Rights Act as a statutory authority, the mission statement contains no reference to combating racial discrimination. 

EO 14248 directs other strategies that would suppress voter participation. It purports to require the independent Election Assistance Commission to alter the federal voter registration form (at issue in the Arizona case discussed above) to make voters submit DPOC such as a passport or birth certificate—documents that 21 million voting-age American citizens don’t have—and it requires federal agencies to “assess” the citizenship of public assistance recipients before providing them a voter registration form as required by the NVRA. A federal court preliminarily enjoined these parts of Trump’s EO last month. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies in the House recently passed the SAVE Act to legislate an even stricter DPOC requirement (even REAL ID driver’s licenses wouldn’t count) and require voters to provide that DPOC in person, effectively ending online and mail-in voter registration.

Trump’s EO also takes aim at the seventeen states (plus DC, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) that count mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within a certain period afterward. It cites a poorly reasoned case from the Fifth Circuit, which held that the federal statute setting the Tuesday after the first Monday of November as “the day of the election” means that ballots must be not only cast but also received by that date. The order directs DOJ to “take all necessary action” to apply that logic in the rest of the country. The Voting Section likely would lead this legal campaign.

Another executive order directs agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate impact liability. Disparate impact is the doctrine that facially neutral policies are discriminatory if they disproportionately harm people based on race (or another protected characteristic) and if that disproportionate harm can’t be justified. Congress has enacted disparate impact liability in several civil rights statutes. The Supreme Court has validated the approach. Trump’s EO nonetheless asserts that disparate impact is unconstitutional because it requires decision-makers “to consider race” (true, insofar as one must pay attention to disparities to make a judgment about discrimination) and “engage in racial balancing” (a misrepresentation of taking action to prevent unjustified disparities).

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits not just intentionally discriminatory voting rules, but also those that “result[]” in vote denial or dilution based on race. Section 2 “results” claims differ from disparate impact claims in important ways—VRA plaintiffs must adduce evidence in certain enumerated categories concerning past and present discrimination—but the statute may still draw this administration’s ire. DOJ might not be content to have dropped its own lawsuits. The agency could intervene in other plaintiffs’ cases to argue that the Constitution permits only intentional discrimination claims, or that Section 2 results claims should be even harder to prove. If courts agreed, state and local governments would be able to get away with much more voter suppression.

The reorientation of the Voting Section in these ways, however, could be hindered by dramatic staff turnover. The number of its career attorneys reportedly is down from around 30 to just three. Political appointees reassigned the section’s career chief, six managers, and at least one line attorney to an office that handles employment discrimination complaints made internally by DOJ employees. A seventh manager retired. Other attorneys appear to have accepted the deferred resignation program or quit. These losses are part of an exodus of over 250 attorneys, 70% of the total on staff, from the Civil Rights Division. The Division is reportedly now asking attorneys in its fair housing office to work voting cases. Very likely, the Department will have to hire new attorneys to advance its new agenda. 

* * *

The Trump Administration’s retreat from voting rights enforcement and efforts to tighten access to the ballot mark a rupture with the Civil Rights Division’s traditional role. Protection of voting rights will now fall even more heavily on private plaintiffs, including the voter engagement groups and legal nonprofits that have consistently enforced Congress’s anti-discrimination mandates. State governments must also do their part: legislatures can pass state versions of the Voting Rights Act, and state attorneys general can file affirmative litigation to protect the vote and help defend against new federal crackdowns that violate the law. Each of these actors will be crucial to protecting the machinery of democracy in the coming years.

The post What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits appeared first on Just Security.