The US Department of Justice moved simultaneously on several of President Trump's top legal and political priorities on Thursday, spanning election grievances, military discipline, and civil-society targeting. A federal judge ruled that the FBI may retain over 600 boxes of election records seized from Fulton County, Georgia, allowing investigators to continue probing alleged irregularities in the 2020 vote — an election Trump falsely claims he won. Separately, a federal appeals court panel appeared skeptical of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to demote retired Navy captain and Democratic Senator Mark Kelly over remarks urging service members to refuse illegal orders, while the Southern Poverty Law Center (a prominent civil-rights watchdog long viewed with suspicion by conservatives) sought to unseal grand jury proceedings after the DOJ indicted it for allegedly defrauding donors by funding paid informants inside extremist groups.