By January 16, 2026, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that the Trump DOJ's voter data seizure campaign had expanded to 24 states plus the District of Columbia, up from 18 states sued as of December 12, 2025. The DOJ had contacted at least 44 states since May 2025 demanding unredacted voter rolls containing driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, and was now suing approximately half the states that refused to comply.
The campaign escalated rapidly: from initial demand letters in May 2025, to the first lawsuits in September 2025, to 18 states by December, to 24 plus DC by January. By March 2026, the total would reach 29 states plus DC -- ultimately targeting every jurisdiction except Iowa, Alabama, and South Carolina, and the 12 states that voluntarily complied (Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming).
Federal courts began pushing back: by early 2026, judges had dismissed DOJ cases in California, Georgia, Michigan, and Oregon, with the DOJ appealing all four dismissals. Oklahoma settled its case. The Brennan Center and State Democracy Research Initiative at UW-Madison maintained real-time trackers documenting the unprecedented scope of the federal voter data collection effort.
The expansion from 18 to 24+ states in a single month demonstrated the DOJ's determination to build a comprehensive national voter database before the 2026 midterm elections, despite growing judicial resistance and the absence of congressional authorization for any such database. Combined with the secret MOUs exposed in December 2025 -- which required states to remove voters flagged by federal analysis within 45 days -- the program represented the infrastructure for federally directed voter purges on an unprecedented scale.