Trump's former defense lawyer now runs the Justice Department and is refusing to promise independence from the White House — bad news for anyone worried about political prosecutions.

• Todd Blanche declined to pledge that the Justice Department will act independently of Trump, saying he will follow the president's priorities.
• Asked whether he would refuse an unethical order, he said Trump would never give one — despite Trump publicly pressuring the last attorney general to indict Comey, Schiff, and Letitia James.
• The Justice Department has lost 22 court fights trying to force states to hand over their voter rolls, and Blanche says he will keep going, possibly to the Supreme Court.
• Republicans expect heavy midterm losses, and the worry is that voter roll data gets used to purge legitimate voters or cast doubt on results, as sloppy purges already did in Georgia.
• There is a real underlying issue — some states have registered non-citizens — but Trump's 2020 record makes states unwilling to trust the federal government with their data.

Outlook: Expect the voter roll fight to keep escalating through the courts as the midterms approach, with election legitimacy the likely flashpoint afterward.