Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press Title: Trump Image ID: 26162714231920 Article: President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a proclamation about the fishing industry, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, June 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) A campaign to rig the midterm elections is well underway.
The first time he was president, Donald Trump encouraged a violent mob to thwart Joe Biden’s legitimate election win, then refused to intervene to halt the chaos. No accountability followed.
Instead, Trump has become far more powerful, with a firm grip on Congress, sycophants surrounding him and loyalists controlling the Supreme Court. He is leaving behind himself a trail of impunity, lawless violence, retaliatory prosecutions, and unprecedented grift and corruption.
Nobody should expect a blue wave election to magically steer the country away from fascism in November. There are too many forces working against a case for optimism.
Just this year, the Trump-friendly Supreme Court majority greenlit racial gerrymandering and ruled that citizens cannot sue the federal government if postal employees intentionally refuse to deliver mail. It is now contemplating the elimination of grace periods for mail-in ballots and the loosening of statutory limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates.
South Dakota, Utah, Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi have all passed laws requiring documentary proof of citizenship, such as passports or birth certificates, in order to register to vote. New Hampshire dropped student IDs as an acceptable proof of identity, and Kansas stopped recognizing driver’s licenses for transgender voters.
Meanwhile, Trump has demanded state and county 2024 voting records, to the chagrin of most courts, and successfully seized roughly 200 boxes of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Ga. The Department of Justice has stopped its traditional election-integrity training sessions for prosecutors and FBI agents, deleted from its website a 281-page guide on prosecuting election offenses, and left the Justice Department’s election crimes branch without a director.
In an April survey, 28 of 37 election experts reported that they consider physical threats to voting places “somewhat likely” this November. In January, Trump said he should have ordered the National Guard to seize ballots during the 2020 election. In a May Truth Social post, he pledged to have “an Election Integrity Army in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote” that “will be much bigger and stronger” than in 2024.
When asked by reporters whether he would send National Guard or ICE troops to voting locations this year, Trump replied: “I do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”
On March 25, 2025, Trump issued an executive order, his first attempt to control federal elections. That order directed agencies to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration, pressured states to use federal databases to verify voter eligibility, sought stricter enforcement against non-citizen voting (which is virtually non-existent), and encouraged the disenfranchisement of ballots received after election day. Because the Constitution gives primary authority over federal elections to Congress and the states, not presidents, that order was largely blocked by the courts.
So Trump then issued another executive order on March 31, broader than the first on citizenship verification, mail-in voting, and threats of prosecution. This order ropes in the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration by directing the creation of a federal list of individuals eligible to vote in federal elections, to be sent to the states for use in verifying voters.
The list is supposed to come from Social Security records “and other relevant federal databases,” including one known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, which since 1986 has tracked eligibility for government benefits. Homeland Security currently oversees this database through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. This week, a federal judge blocked its use for voter-roll verification on privacy grounds.
Second, the order directs the U.S. Postal Service to begin making a rule on mail-in ballot procedures that would establish enhanced tracking and barcode systems for absentee and mail-in ballots, restrictions on the delivery of ballots that are not on the hypothetical federal list of eligible voters, and new standards for handling and verifying mail-in ballots.
The practical impossibilities of creating a master Homeland Security citizen list and building a U.S. Postal Service data portal in time for the November elections make the order self-defeating, but that’s not the point. For buried in this second order are provisions that take effect immediately, with or without them. That includes a directive telling the attorney general and other department heads to withhold funding and prioritize the investigation and prosecution of election officials, postal workers, vendors, and volunteers who help get ballots to people the administration might later decide are ineligible. Trump specifically cites numerous federal criminal laws banning such things as conspiracy, false statements, and aiding and abetting.
What this means is that a county clerk who mails a ballot to a registered voter could be exposed to Trump’s wrath to the same extent as someone who knowingly helps a noncitizen vote. Postal workers who deliver election mail as part of their job have no way to know who is on any list at all, but they might now think twice about the risks.
No court order can undo that chilling effect — one that could already be shaping decisions inside election offices this summer.
Kimberly Wehle is a law professor and author of “How to Read the Constitution — and Why,” “What You Need to Know About Voting — and Why” and “How to Think Like a Lawyer — and Why,” and the Substack newsletter, “The Little Law School.“
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