The Marshall Project news digest

Donate Edited by Andrew Cohen View in browser Pick of the News A new Top 25 list: The key prosecutor and sheriffs’ elections to watch in November. With just five weeks to go before the midterms, Daniel Nichanian is out with his latest list of some of the key justice-related contests around the U.S. Some of the 2,400 races for sheriff or prosecutor will be defined by the candidates’ positions on immigration enforcement and cooperation with ICE agents. Some contests will be defined by more traditional criminal justice issues like policing, prison conditions and sentencing reform. Some involve comebacks by notable public officials. Some involve rematches between campaign rivals. Bolts TMP Context from 2024: Why sheriffs’ elections matter. The Marshall Project The U.S. Supreme Court rescues the White House again. The court’s six Republican appointees ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can use a flawed online system that tracks sensitive private data, including Social Security numbers, to make it easier for states to purge people from its voter rolls. Critics say the ruling will result in citizens being deprived of their right to register or vote. The New York Times “The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent. U.S. Supreme Court Things fall apart. A longtime federal prosecutor in Chicago resigned from the Justice Department in protest last week. Sheri Mecklenburg blistered her boss, Andrew Boutros, for forcing her to bring unjustified felony charges against anti-ICE protesters known as “the Broadview Six.” Chicago Sun-Times More: Mecklenburg’s resignation allows her to testify against the DOJ this week in a hearing that could result in sanctions or even criminal contempt proceedings against Boutros and other Justice Department employees for misconduct in the Broadview Six case. The federal judge presiding over the case dismissed charges against the protesters after discovering that prosecutors illegally manipulated grand jurors. Bloomberg Law Immigration nation. Federal immigration officials spent millions on warehouses across the U.S. without a plan for how to turn them into immigrant jails, according to a federal watchdog report released last week. Washington Sun Immigrant advocates filed a new federal lawsuit to block the Tennessee Highway Patrol from conducting traffic stops alongside federal immigration agents. States Newsrooms More on the immigration enforcement surge in New Bedford, Massachusetts. WGBH Cattle industry executives in Republican-led states aren’t happy with the administration’s workplace raids on farms. The New York Times It’s nearly impossible to get asylum from immigration judges in Chicago. Chicago Sun-Times The fight for prison air conditioning enters a new phase in Texas. A federal judge last week ordered state corrections officials to ensure that every prison cell in Texas is covered by air conditioning by the end of 2029. The cost of the project has been estimated at $1.5 billion and there are several recent examples of state legislators refusing to fund prison upgrades or settling for cheaper fixes like the use of swamp coolers, which do little to reduce heat behind bars. Meanwhile, people locked in immigrant jails often complain that they are freezing from the persistent use of air conditioning to keep ICE lockups cold. TMP’s Jamiles Lartey has more in the latest edition of Closing Argument, our weekly newsletter. The Marshall Project N/S/E/W Police in Jackson, Mississippi, say they believe that Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman, was killed in a dispute over stolen drugs and left hanging from a tree for days before her body was discovered. Mississippi Today Her family does not believe the crime was racially motivated. Two Black men have been arrested