Two months into his second term as president, Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order intended to overhaul dramatically how elections are administered in the United States, taking aim at everything from voter registration requirements to election equipment to mail-in ballot deadlines. NBC News noted that the “reforms,” if implemented, would’ve risked “disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans.”
But that wasn’t the only problem. As The Washington Post summarized soon after, “The U.S. Constitution designates the power to regulate the ‘time, place and manner’ of elections to the states, with the proviso that Congress can step in and override those laws. It gives no specific power to the president to do so. Election experts said that Trump was claiming power he does not have and that lawsuits over the measure were all but guaranteed.”
Predictably, the executive order faced immediate legal challenges, and a federal judges blocked the Republican’s outlandish power grab from going forward.
He’s apparently not giving up. NBC News reported:
Trump said in a post to Truth Social that he would sign an executive order to try to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines, a move that would almost certainly face immediate challenges in court. The president said in the post that he was ‘going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS’ and voting machines.
The 288-word online tantrum — complete with six exclamation points, a robust number of sentences written with the caps lock on and the word “woke” — was remarkable in its inanity.
Trump claimed that no other country on the planet “uses Mail-In Voting,” which isn’t even close to being true. He similarly accused Democrats of cheating in elections, which also isn’t true.
But the Republican, who’s become increasingly unsubtle about his authoritarian ambitions, also made clear that he’s eyeing yet another power grab, claiming an administrative authority over elections that the Constitution explicitly gives to states.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote, peddling a legal absurdity. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
As part of the same tirade, the president added, “WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT … by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” Given the circumstances, that is the sentence that worries me most. Trump’s hysterics have become the background noise of our civic lives, and his lies have become about as common as the sunrise. But when the president starts talking about the steps he’s prepared to take related to next year’s midterm elections — or perhaps more accurately, next year’s scheduled midterm elections — that’s when alarm bells start going off. He’s already talked about a new census count to help Republicans in the 2026 cycle, which coincides with a White House effort to get red states to rig their district maps to boost GOP candidates. And now Trump is eyeing another presidential directive to ensure his version of “honesty” is applied to next year’s elections. Journalist and historian Garrett Graff noted in response to the latest online rant from the White House, “This is step one in how we lose free and fair elections. It’s not that Trump will ‘cancel’ the midterms. It’s just everyone has to vote in person, and urban downtowns will be filled with ICE checkpoints and intimidating National Guard troops to ‘double check’ that only citizens vote.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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