voter suppress 6 SAVE act

estb 2 26 26 BIT BELATED // DISAMBIG?

see big lie 6 --> GOP STEAL

SEE VOTER ID

SEE MISO 4

SEE VOYE ROLL PURGE CAGE ~ ERIC SYS

SEE FREE & FAIR ELECTIONS 5 26

see illegal alien vote bs

SEE FULTON CTY FUCKERY FOREIGN CHINA --> PRETEXT FOR EMERG DECL

HOUSING BILL HOSTAGE 6 26

STAKES: IMPEACHMENT, DEMS OVERSIGHT SUBPOENA

SEE COURTS

see STUDENT SUPPRESS HBC 8 26 NC

SEE CRM 5

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mma

Election denial activists promote dubious database to catch supposed voter fraud

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 11/02/26 3:56 PM EST

A group of election denial activists — Peter Ticktin, Jerome Corsi, Wayne Allyn Root, and John W. “Rick” Richards Jr. — have been using right-wing podcast appearances ahead of the upcoming midterms to promote ELLY, a tool Richards created that they claim helps expose voter fraud. They have also claimed to have passed on supposed data from ELLY to the Trump administration, even as experts have criticized the tool for potential “high false positive rates,” privacy concerns, “and unvalidated accuracy claims that threaten eligible voters’ rights.”

What is ELLY?

ELLY, a tool that supposedly analyzes voter rolls, was developed by election denial activists and is reportedly “being marketed to county officials” in Georgia, Missouri, and North Carolina ahead of the midterm elections. According to NBC News, ELLY is used to “aggregate public records like obituaries, U.S. Postal Service data, property tax information or maps from Google to help users cross-reference the data with voter registrations.”

ELLY is being pitched to officials as “an alternative to ERIC,” or the Electronic Registration Information Center, “the nonpartisan data-sharing network that’s considered the gold standard in helping states maintain accurate voter records.” ERIC became a target of misinformation from right-wing media in recent years, and multiple Republican-led states have since left the group.

NBC News noted that “America’s voter rolls are largely built for registration, not removal, and election officials do struggle to keep them up to date.” But the report explained that ELLY “will rely entirely on public records,” using data that “is less reliable than the personal, protected information government entities have and use … to maintain voter rolls, like Social Security and driver’s license numbers.”

David Becker, who helped build the Electronic Registration Information Center and now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, has “said ERIC didn’t use public data because it was clear the rate of false positives would be too high.” He told NBC that “even names and birthday[s] or birth date[s] result in huge numbers of false positives, far more false positives than true positives. And so in order to get quality data, you need to have the sensitive information.”

Who is behind ELLY?

ELLY comes from John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., a retired physician from Georgia, and his son, John W. Richards III. The two created a similar tool called “EagleAI NETwork” that they promoted in 2023 and which was reportedly used in Georgia “to file mass voter challenges in 2024.” Election experts told NBC News at the time that “the kind of public data that Richards plans to use may lead to a high rate of false positives,” adding that EagleAI “draws inaccurate conclusions and then presents them as if they are evidence of wrongdoing” and “might employ search techniques that could be discriminatory.”

“The results are going to vastly over-inflate potentially inaccurate voter registrations,” said Becker.

EagleAI was also promoted by fellow election denial activist Cleta Mitchell, who founded the Election Integrity Network and helped the effort to undermine ERIC. In February, Richards was photographed dining with Mitchell along with Heather Honey and Marci McCarthy, who are two election deniers Trump installed in his administration.

Kris Jurski, whom NBC News has described as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories and built his own voter roll review program,” claimed that he also “helped build ELLY.” NBC also reported that he “has been promoting it to activist groups and on social media.”

Who is promoting ELLY for the midterms?

Citation

From the October 20, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble

During media appearances in the weeks leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, several election denial activists have promoted ELLY, making claims about what it can find and encouraging audiences to use the tool.

Jerome Corsi, who has a history of spreading conspiracy theories, touted ELLY on the podcasts of David “Nino” Rodriguez and Wayne Allyn Root, saying that he wanted to “mak[e] sure you’re aware of it and others are aware of” the tool. Corsi has claimed that ELLY is “50 different databases coordinated” with all kinds of information regarding voters that will “monitor mail ballots coming and be able to determine which ones are valid and which ones are not valid” and thus “prove that crimes were committed.”

Video

Citation

From the October 16, 2026, edition of DO NOT TALK, streamed on YouTube

Peter Ticktin, an attorney and longtime friend of President Donald Trump, has said that ELLY includes information connecting “voter rolls together with the property appraisers of your county.” He has claimed that with the tool, “we’re going to catch these guys doing the crimes that they’re doing, and then we’re going to be able to make it transparent,” declaring: “This is our opportunity to get our country back.”

Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host with a history of spreading election denial and conspiracy theories, has repeatedly had Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards on his podcast to discuss ELLY. Root also urged his audience to email him to get them in touch with Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards about the database.

During Richards’ repeated appearances alongside Corsi and Ticktin on Root’s podcast, he has claimed that ELLY “democratized the entire U.S. voter roll.” Richards has also said that “we can forward the exact data to the politicians and the lawyers to prove what the outcome should have been.”

Who would even use the dubious ELLY tool?

The tool is apparently being pitched to other election denial activists, state and county election officials, and even the Trump administration. On October 30, election denial activist Peter Bernegger claimed that there are “big problems with mail-in ballots for midterms in Wisconsin,” citing ELLY and an absentee mail-in ballot list from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

During podcasts, Ticktin, Corsi, and Root have clearly expressed that they are trying to get the database to Trump, his administration, or the GOP in hopes that they will use it in the 2026 elections. These three election denial activists all appear to have ties to the Trump administration, repeatedly claiming that they have interacted with the president and his staff. And some of these interactions appear to have led to policy outcomes: Root recently took credit for Trump announcing $1 million for anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction.

Root has also said that “the facts of the ELLY system” combined with the “synergy” of the $1 million offer could help Trump declare a national emergency “after the election,” something they all have pushed for since last year. Ticktin also seemed to suggest that the supposed data gives Trump “what he needs” for such a declaration.

Video

Citation

From the October 28, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble

Promoting ELLY on Root’s October 26 show, Corsi said that “average Americans can take advantage of” Trump’s offer by using “our database.” During another appearance, Corsi claimed that people could use his and Ticktin’s websites to document supposed tips about election fraud, explaining they’re going to create a “structured mechanism.” According to Corsi, they will use ELLY to check tips, go “through Peter Ticktin’s office [to] file it into the Department of Justice under this $1 million bounty,” and then “we’ll make sure they’re filed with the FBI, and we’ll make sure you get credit for the case that’s filed.“ Root said that he would put their form on his website as well.

Other claims from these election deniers include:

Ticktin claimed that he and Corsi had been “advising the president of the program that Rick Richards has developed,” which Trump was “pretty happy” about.

Corsi claimed that “these databases have been turned over to the Department of Justice and to Homeland Security,” which are “using the tool themselves to do their criminal investigations.”

Root asked Richards and Corsi to give him “bullet points” about the database “because I’d like to send it to President Trump and make sure he knows it exists out there, and I'd like to send it to some Republican candidates I know here in the state of Nevada to make sure they know it exists.”

Root also suggested that he would write a column regarding the database and would “text” and “call” Trump about it, promising to “send it to President Trump’s office — I’ve got good friends there who hand everything to President Trump.”

Corsi has expressed hope that candidates in the upcoming midterms “who lose or those who want to contest an election, perhaps even before it’s certified,” could use the database “to challenge an election result.” Corsi also said that he would “like to share this with candidates” in order to “show you in your race the ballots that ought to be challenged,” so “if candidates get in touch with us, we will get them the data” that could establish “a pretty good basis for saying this election was fraudulently conducted and should not be certified.”

Ticktin urged “every one of the candidates that loses” in the midterms to “contact me or Jerome Corsi or Rick Richards” to “help you get set up with this program,” adding, “If you qualify for turn[ing] people into the DOJ, we’ll give you the information you need to be able to do that.”

Video

Citation

From the October 27, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble

The effort to tout ELLY comes as election denial activists have pushed other measures to try to undermine the midterms. Corsi and Ticktin were reportedly involved with a proposed executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections that circulated within the Trump administration. Root also proposed his own version of a national emergency, saying he messaged and spoke with Trump about it. He subsequently pushed it to Trump during an interview.

//

Key election denial activists in the right-wing media ecosystem

10/01/26 10:00 AM EDT

Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms

06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT

Tina Peters and other election deniers claim they've pitched the Trump administration on a midterm “election-security plan”

07/30/26

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MMA

John Solomon says the Supreme Court may "debate about what goes on in California" in regards to election results because of the DOJ noncitizen voter cases

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AN 10 26

Zeteo reports that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “engaging in an all-out effort to challenge the results of next week’s midterm elections in a desperate campaign to cling to power” for the next two years. But sources inside the White House confirm that Trump is personally issuing the marching orders — regardless of the damage it does to American democracy. ADMIT ON AK?

“The president and the White House are steering all of this,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo.

The Trump administration is already spreading unfounded fears of noncitizen voting, in what Zeteo writers Justin Glawe and Asawin Suebsaeng describe as “selectively and vindictively targeting political opponents and liberal state leaders.” They’re also conducting arrests and threatening to criminally prosecute Democratic election officials, and they’re strong-arming the politicized Justice Department to argue in court that an election isn’t legally legitimate unless Trump’s side is the winner in it.

“To help sway the election in Republicans’ favor, the DOJ is apparently violating its own policies by attempting to interfere with how states administer elections and determine the validity of votes,” reports Zeteo. “And even as its lawsuits flounder, the Trump-Vance administration has zero intention of taking its foot off the gas between now and Election Night, and possibly beyond.”

The dark cloud looming over November consists of three scenarios that have election officials "holding their breath,” reports Zeteo. This includes the prospect of the president installing military troops or federal law enforcement in polling locations. It could also include attempts to block the certification of valid election results, either by lawsuit or by outright seizing ballots or voting machines. And Trump himself has suggested he might challenge the election victories of Democrats if Republicans are not victorious in certain elections.

“Again: Trump has refused to rule any of this out,” reports Zeteo, “and has indeed test-run preliminary versions of each authoritarian power grab.”

According to sources speaking with Zeteo, Trump is already hammering away in the background, demanding if his lieutenants and assorted hacks are “ready for different election challenges.”

Trump has already admitted his intent on the record, reports Zeteo, telling reporters that “I’m the one that said do it,” when explaining a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to proactively decertify the outcome of the race for one of Alaska’s U.S. Senate seats if a Republican is not the winner.

It does not matter that Justice Department guidelines are clear that the DOJ is not supposed to interfere with how states handle elections, according to the DOJ’s own website. But consistency is not the Trump administration’s strong suit, reports Zeteo.

DOJ spokespeople did not respond to Zeteo’s request for comment, including on details of whether or not the head of the public integrity section officially waived its own guidelines.

“Either way, the intent of the policies is clear,” Zeteo reports.

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AN 10 26

Zeteo reports that President Donald Trump and Republicans are “engaging in an all-out effort to challenge the results of next week’s midterm elections in a desperate campaign to cling to power” for the next two years. But sources inside the White House confirm that Trump is personally issuing the marching orders — regardless of the damage it does to American democracy. ADMIT ON AK?

“The president and the White House are steering all of this,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo.

The Trump administration is already spreading unfounded fears of noncitizen voting, in what Zeteo writers Justin Glawe and Asawin Suebsaeng describe as “selectively and vindictively targeting political opponents and liberal state leaders.” They’re also conducting arrests and threatening to criminally prosecute Democratic election officials, and they’re strong-arming the politicized Justice Department to argue in court that an election isn’t legally legitimate unless Trump’s side is the winner in it.

“To help sway the election in Republicans’ favor, the DOJ is apparently violating its own policies by attempting to interfere with how states administer elections and determine the validity of votes,” reports Zeteo. “And even as its lawsuits flounder, the Trump-Vance administration has zero intention of taking its foot off the gas between now and Election Night, and possibly beyond.”

The dark cloud looming over November consists of three scenarios that have election officials "holding their breath,” reports Zeteo. This includes the prospect of the president installing military troops or federal law enforcement in polling locations. It could also include attempts to block the certification of valid election results, either by lawsuit or by outright seizing ballots or voting machines. And Trump himself has suggested he might challenge the election victories of Democrats if Republicans are not victorious in certain elections.

“Again: Trump has refused to rule any of this out,” reports Zeteo, “and has indeed test-run preliminary versions of each authoritarian power grab.”

According to sources speaking with Zeteo, Trump is already hammering away in the background, demanding if his lieutenants and assorted hacks are “ready for different election challenges.”

Trump has already admitted his intent on the record, reports Zeteo, telling reporters that “I’m the one that said do it,” when explaining a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to proactively decertify the outcome of the race for one of Alaska’s U.S. Senate seats if a Republican is not the winner.

It does not matter that Justice Department guidelines are clear that the DOJ is not supposed to interfere with how states handle elections, according to the DOJ’s own website. But consistency is not the Trump administration’s strong suit, reports Zeteo.

DOJ spokespeople did not respond to Zeteo’s request for comment, including on details of whether or not the head of the public integrity section officially waived its own guidelines.

“Either way, the intent of the policies is clear,” Zeteo reports.

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Todd Blanche warned: A presidential pardon can’t save you from state prison

Former chief of staff to Homeland Security, Miles Taylor wants to see state governments go after President Donald Trump and his allies for their attempt to steal the 2020 election, particularly now that Trump is trying to change the election again.

In his Monday column, Taylor argued that the Trump administration is preparing to challenge unfavorable midterm election results through lawsuits filed with the Justice Department. He thinks the DOJ will pressure election officials and possibly interfere with certification.

But Taylor also warned that loyalty to Trump will not necessarily protect them from prosecution or professional consequences.

A new Justice Department lawsuit filed last week seeks to block Alaska from certifying its Senate election if Republican Dan Sullivan loses, citing potential confusion with another candidate with the same name. The differences between the Dan Sullivans is obvious on the ballot.

"The brazenness is remarkable," wrote Taylor. "On October 22, DOJ sued Alaska to bar the state from certifying its Senate race if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses to Mary Peltola, on the theory that a second man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot might confuse voters. The election hasn’t even happened. Yet Trump told reporters he personally directed it, and even Senator Sullivan’s campaign said it never asked for DOJ's intervention."

Another federal effort tried to segregate California ballots linked to suspected noncitizens, arguing that inaccuracies in the underlying data undermine those efforts. The district attorney ultimately admitted he may not have accurate information on the voters. Former federal prosecutors chatting about it couldn't help but laugh.

All of these actions pair with Trump's demands for voter rolls, prosecution threats and federal monitoring, as an intimidation campaign rather than routine election oversight. Taylor interpreted officials’ refusal to rule out blocking certification as evidence that the administration may contest results it dislikes.

"DOJ has fired off letters to all 50 states threatening election officials with prosecution. The Department has already brought thirty lawsuits seeking the voter rolls of various states," Taylor cited. "They’re deploying a thousand federal 'monitors' to the polls, and armed agents were literally knocking on voters’ doors in nine states until a judge blocked it last week as voter intimidation. A DOJ official tells NBC that more states could be sued before or after Election Day, leaving open the possibility of ballots being frozen right through certification. And Todd Blanche says that blocking certification is a 'doomsday scenario' he won’t rule out."

But if the administration thinks it can pardon its way through election interference, Taylor said it should exercise caution.

Taylor explained that presidential pardons cover federal offenses, not state crimes, and argued that presidential immunity does not automatically shield advisers, lawyers or prosecutors. In fact, he argued, officials who unlawfully pressure state election administrators could face investigations under state laws addressing threats, conspiracy, forgery or election interference.

"So to Trump’s henchmen, let me offer a friendly reminder before you move to decertify election results or prevent the peaceful transfer of power: the man you’re doing this for is putting you at risk… he doesn’t care about you… and even if he did, he cannot save you from accountability," Taylor closed.

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comm cause sac bee

Backers of a proposition that would require California voters to show government ID before voting have pitched the measure as a commonsense, bipartisan reform with broad public support.

In public appearances, they’ve separated their effort from President Donald Trump’s divisive SAVE America Act, a farther-reaching election administration bill that has stalled in Congress.

But so far, the movement to pass the California measure has drawn heavy support from a Republican state lawmaker, his conservative following, and a group of billionaires — many with a recent history of backing Trump and the GOP.

Backers of Proposition 39, which would also require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, raised more than $10 million so far. The bulk of that total came from large-dollar donors who helped pay for signature gatherers to get the measure on the ballot.

Volunteers from Reform California, a conservative group spearheaded by Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-Valley Center, also played a major role in gathering signatures.

At least nine billionaires, as tracked by Forbes’ list, have invested in the fundraising committee Californians for Voter ID, which is run by Julie Luckey, the mother of tech billionaire and Trump supporter Palmer Luckey.

The top donor is Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, who contributed $4 million. Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, were the fourth-largest donors to federal elections from 2023 to 2024, according to the nonpartisan campaign finance site OpenSecrets. A 2022 ProPublica investigation found the couple backed candidates and groups promoting false claims surrounding the 2020 election.

Other billionaire donors include:

• Attorney Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 vice presidential candidate, gave $370,000.
• Venture capitalist Douglas Leone contributed $250,000.
• Twin investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss each gave $250,000.
• Investor Aubrey Chernick gave $150,000 and his wife, Joyce Chernick, added another $25,000.
• Venture capitalist Tim Draper contributed $50,000.
• Los Angeles real estate developer Rick Caruso gave $25,000.

Many of the donors have ties to Republicans.

Shanahan endorsed Trump when she and Kennedy dropped out of the presidential race. Leone gave $2 million to Ron DeSantis in his failed 2024 presidential bid, and later, more than $2 million toward electing Trump.

The Winklevoss twins each contributed $1 million toward boosting Trump in 2024 and millions more to other GOP committees in recent years.

The Chernicks made maximum contributions to GOP gubernatorial hopeful Steve Hilton and have given hundreds of thousands more to Republicans in Congress.

Draper and Caruso cut a different profile.

Draper has donated to candidates from both parties, including Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris. He is also funding a new political committee, Grow California, that aims to elect business-friendly candidates to the Legislature.

Caruso ran for LA mayor as a centrist Democrat, but was previously a registered Republican.

An April poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found 56% of respondents supported the voter ID provision. Support dropped to 39% after they were given more context about the measure’s sponsor and opponents.

In an interview, DeMaio dismissed any suggestion that conservatives were providing the animating support for his ballot measure.

“A lot of people are sick and tired of the conspiracy theories and don’t want to have low public trust and confidence in elections, and they see voter ID as the common sense bipartisan way to fix it,” DeMaio said. “Why is that such a mystery?”

Tenoch Flores, a spokesperson for No on Prop. 39, a coalition seeking to stop the measure, said it was being driven by “MAGA partisans and right-wing billionaires trying to rig elections in their favor.”

Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican consultant, argued both sides were being disingenuous. He cast doubt on liberals’ claims that photo ID would meaningfully suppress voters and said conservatives’ accusations of widespread fraud had never been borne out by evidence.

Instead, he argued this year’s ballot measure was fundamentally a tool to boost GOP turnout.

“The Winklevoss twins and the venture capitalists don’t care about voter ID,” he said. “They care about a Republican Congress.”

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AN 10 26

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department plan to use a “a historic number” of election-monitoring initiatives is facing a challenge in court from civil rights lawyers.

The NAACP has taken legal action against Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, asking for information concerning the department's plans to deploy more than 1,000 election monitors for the November 3 election.

The lawsuit, which has been brought in the federal court in Washington, is asking a judge to compel the department to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request that was submitted on September 1. The NAACP claims that the Department of Justice failed to meet the statutory deadline for deciding on the request and is therefore seeking emergency intervention before Election Day.

According to the complaint, the planned deployment “stands to jeopardize the election” and could interfere with voters’ ability to cast ballots “free from intimidation.”

The request for records asks for information regarding the legal basis of the operation, the locations where the monitors will be deployed, how they will be selected and trained, whether state officials gave their consent, and whether personnel from federal law enforcement agencies could take part.

The extent of the operation has attracted attention since Dhillon has stated that the department aims to send around 1,000 monitors to the polling stations. Todd Blanche, the Attorney General, said on Sunday that monitors would be going to all 50 states.

Blanche described the operation as being in line with the Justice Department's long-standing role in elections. For a long time, the department has sent federal officials to oversee compliance with voting-rights laws, but the NAACP contends that this year's initiative has moved away from that traditional function and is now focused on examining allegations regarding ballot security.

The Justice Department stated to The Guardian that its observers “comply with all legal and ethical requirements” and would not intervene in the voting process.

Concerns over the way the monitors would operate grew following an incident at Wyoming's primary. The Republican governor, Mark Gordon, stated that two federal monitors came to a polling place without being informed and tried to look at the voting machines. He called their actions "aggressive, unexpected, and disruptive".

The department denied that description and stated that the monitors had not done anything improper.

Kristen Clarke, who is the general counsel of the NAACP and previously headed the Civil Rights Division under President Joe Biden, stated that the organization would like the government to make public the authority it considers to be the basis for the operation and the way in which it plans to carry it out.

Now that Election Day is less than a month away, the conflict is causing part of Trump's election campaign to be brought before a federal judge and may compel the Justice Department to make public the details, which the NAACP says is the largest election-monitoring operation in the history of the United States.

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MMA

Who's calling for the Trump administration to send federal agents to polling places?

Right-wing media personalities have pushed for the Trump administration to send federal agents and the military to polling places and interfere with vote counting, but voting rights groups are pushing back

Written by Jack Winstanley & Reed McMaster

Published 10/02/26

Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, right-wing media figures have called for President Donald Trump to deploy federal law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, or the military to polling stations across the country to “surround the polls” as votes are cast or to interfere with vote counting after the election.

While administration officials have offered mixed messaging on whether they'd actually send law enforcement agents or military to polling places, the law directly prohibits any potential effort to station armed federal agents at polls, and experts say this policy could potentially disenfranchise voters who feel intimidated by their presence. In order to prevent this kind of interference by federal agents at the polls, civil rights, labor, and voting rights groups have filed lawsuits ahead of the midterms.

The proposal to deploy ICE officers to polling stations is just one of several election-related policies floated by right-wing media and the Trump administration ahead of the 2026 midterms. Right-wing media figures have also suggested the president could declare a national emergency over alleged voter fraud in order to increase federal control over the midterms, and have pushed for restrictive voting requirements such as those included in the SAVE America Act. The courts have blocked many of the administration's actions to implement parts of these policies.

Is it even legal for law enforcement or the military to be at polling places?

As the Brennan Center for Justice's Sean Morales-Doyle has written, “The law is crystal clear: It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place.” Dale Ho, then-director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, similarly stated, “There's no law that I'm aware of that permits, or that would authorize, the president to deploy federal law enforcement or military or anything like that for domestic use in … or around polling places.”

Experts explain that stationing federal law enforcement at polling sites risks intimidating voters out of casting their ballots. The ACLU noted that the mere presence of federal immigration agents at polling places could qualify as illegal voter intimidation, with its report listing “the deployment of federal immigration agents or federalized National Guard in or around polling places in targeted communities during early voting or on Election Day to try to suppress voting” as an example of “illegal voter intimidation.” The ACLU also specifically cites “aggressively questioning voters about their citizenship, criminal record, or other qualifications to vote” as another example of illegal voter intimidation.

Ahead of the midterm elections, several lawsuits have already been filed to block federal agents from interfering at the polls, including one from a coalition of civil rights groups and unions. The Brennan Center also noted that any individual can sue under the Voting Rights Act if they are “intimidated from voting by the presence of ICE agents or soldiers.”

Who has been among the biggest proponents of having federal agents at polling places? Steve Bannon.

For months, former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon has been a prominent voice supporting the deployment of federal agents to polling stations, regularly advocating on his show for ICE to be present at polling stations.

Bannon said ICE officers will be near polling places: “If you don't have an ID — if you're not a citizen — you're not voting.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/19/25]

While interviewing former Trump Department of Homeland Security adviser Todd Bensman, Bannon stated, “I think ICE agents belong at polling places.”

Bannon dismissed fears of voter intimidation, stating, “It's intimidation. It should be intimidating to noncitizens. Yes, we want it to be intimidating to noncitizens. You should not go to a polling place.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/13/26]

Bannon called it a “minimum requirement” for ICE to be present at polling stations. [Real America's Voice, War Room, 7/17/26]

Bannon said that stationing ICE at airports can be “a test case … to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” Bannon added, “They can’t work the machines, you know what they’ll do? Just walk up and down, hey, we're going to speed things through — can we check your IDs? That’s what’s going to happen in the fall of ’26 because, folks, we’re tired of having elections stolen.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/23/26]

Bannon stated, “And I'm saying you're going to have ICE agents around the polls to make sure you can't have illegal aliens in there voting.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/19/26]

Bannon also said in February, “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/3/26]

Who else in right-wing media has promoted federal agents at polling places?

Article III Project founder Mike Davis: “I would have ICE agents and other federal law enforcement at every polling place across America. And that should only scare away noncitizens.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 9/1/26]

Podcaster Tim Pool stated that, “at the bare minimum,” he expects federal law enforcement to be present at polling locations in states that do not cooperate with DHS. He said, “This press conference had me expecting, OK, Trump made the announcement. Markwayne Mullin, DHS, they're going to come out and they're going to say, here's what we intend to do. I mean, at the bare minimum, we expect something like we will have federal law enforcement agency at polling locations in states that do not cooperate.” [Rumble, Tim Pool Daily Show, 7/17/26]

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “Making sure illegal immigrants do not show up at polling sites is not a horrible use of ICE.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 3/24/26]

Podcaster Benny Johnson: “Can we deploy ICE to every voting booth in America? Would that fix the fraud? Of course, it would.” Johnson continued, “Why are we even talking about the SAVE Act? You don't need the SAVE Act if you don't have a nation overrun with criminal aliens.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 3/24/26]

On X22 Report, the host declared that ICE and the National Guard can “absolutely” “assist with helping in the elections.” [Rumble, X22 Report, 3/24/26; X22 Report, accessed 9/24/26]

Fox’s Jesse Watters argued for ICE to be at polling locations. Watters said, “Well, one of the demands, they say no ICE agents can be at a polling station. What's the trouble with that, Jessica? What's the problem? If illegals aren't voting, why can't ICE agents be at a polling station?” [Fox News, The Five, 3/23/26]

X22 Report’s host also argued that “if you pre-position ICE in certain areas around the country, maybe with the National Guard, that makes it a lot more difficult for the illegals to actually vote in the election.” He added that lawsuits preemptively filed over potential ICE deployments to polling locations were an attempt “to find out if ICE is going to be at the voting centers.” [Rumble, X22 Report, 3/3/26]

During an appearance on Newsmax, radio host Tony Katz questioned, “Why aren’t ICE agents at polling places? Why aren't we ensuring that Americans vote?” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 3/3/26]

The Gateway Pundit wrote in a blog that any concern from Democrats about voter intimidation because of ICE presence “only makes sense if illegal aliens are, in fact, showing up to vote.” The blog, which also shares Bannon’s call for ICE to “surround the polls,” states, “Democrats will inevitably argue that ICE’s presence at the polls constitutes voter intimidation, but that concern only makes sense if illegal aliens are, in fact, showing up to vote.” [The Gateway Pundit, 2/4/26]

Newsmax host Carl Higbie said, “ICE at polling places shouldn’t be a problem because illegals shouldn’t be voting in our elections.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 2/2/26]

Who has suggested deploying the military to interfere with vote counting after the election?

In response to host Alex Jones asking what “martial law after the election” would look like, attorney Peter Ticktin said “it would be the FBI probably going out and seizing the machines where there’s a good reason to suspect that the vote was not a real vote.” He further explained, “Let the machines do the count, but before the count — but then let us commandeer and get the ballots. If we have the ballots, we can count them ourselves. You know, there’s ways we can do it, and it would be done after the election, but before certification.” Earlier in the episode, Ticktin claimed Trump's “going to seize the machines. … If it’s stolen from us because of their machines, we’ll be — then he’s going to have to declare martial law.” [Alex Jones Live, The Alex Jones Show, 9/29/26, 9/29/26]

Mark Cook, described by Colorado Newsline as one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,” said during an interview with podcaster David Nino Rodriguez that “if the military shows up to ensure that the people can run their own election unfettered, I’m all for that.” He stated, “What really needs to happen is the people that have been manipulating elections, that have stolen the elections from the people and have blocked the people away from having oversight in their own elections, we need someone to hold them back so citizens can have the oversight necessary to conduct their own elections and ensure and verify the integrity of the vote. So if the military shows up to ensure that the people can run their own election unfettered, I'm all for that. Bring them.” [Rumble, 2/19/26; Colorado Newsline, 6/18/24]

On Brighteon Broadcast News, host Mike Adams argued, “We need the military to count the votes, especially in the blue cities, because you can’t trust Democrats.” While speculating about a potential “armed uprising” from the left, Adams added, “I think Trump actually sort of tactically needs that to happen in order to declare the emergency and deploy the troops before Election Day.” [Natural News, Brighteon Broadcast News, 1/14/26; Media Matters, 4/2/18]

On Health Ranger Report two days later, Adams repeated his call to “have the military count the votes.” He argued, “You have to have a national emergency to where you deploy the military, especially in blue cities,” in order to count the votes. [Natural News, Health Ranger Report, 1/16/26]

What has the Trump administration said about deploying federal law enforcement or the military to the polls?

The Department of Homeland Security has offered mixed messaging on the potential for sending ICE officers to polling locations. In February, DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity Heather Honey — whom ProPublica has described as “a protege of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results” — reportedly told a group of secretaries of state that “any suggestion that ICE will be present at any polling location is simply not true.” But Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has refused to rule out the possibility; during his confirmation hearing, Mullin said that if ICE is sent to polling places, “there will be a reason for us to be there, and it’ll be known why we’re there.” Mullin added in September that agents could make arrests at polling places if needed, noting that the “only reason” agents “would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone.”

White House border czar Tom Homan, meanwhile, downplayed concerns about federal law enforcement presence at polling stations, noting, “Part of DHS' job is secure elections, and I’m not going to say … what our plan is going forward, but if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don’t see the issue of what they’re concerned about.” And earlier this year, Trump expressed his own willingness to send federal agents to the polls when a reporter asked whether he would “send the National Guard or ICE to voting locations in November” and Trump responded that he would do “anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”

What do voting rights groups advise voters to do in response to threats of law enforcement or the military at polling places?

Voting rights groups have resources to prepare voters for the possibility of federal agents or the military intimidating voters at polling stations. Democracy Security Project Action Fund suggests voters “go to vote.gov and check your eligibility; be sure that you’re registered” and know “the most convenient polling place for you, whether that’s in person or vote-by-mail. Keep track of deadlines.”

Additional recommendations from the ACLU include:

What to do if there are reports of ICE, National Guard, or other federal agents in your community during early voting or Election Day

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Right-wing media figures urge immediate purges of voter rolls following Supreme Court’s election database decision

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 10/01/26

After the Supreme Court ruling on the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, right-wing media figures and election denial activists are calling on states to purge their voter rolls — even though there is a moratorium on the systematic removal of voters from voter rolls 90-days prior to election day, and evidence the database could boot eligible voters from the voter rolls.

What did the court say about the modified SAVE database?

The Supreme Court recently gave the Trump administration a win on its so-called election integrity efforts, ruling in favor of the government's attempt to weed out exceedingly rare cases of noncitizen voting using the modified SAVE database, which has been newly updated with data from the Social Security Administration. The database was “dramatically revamped” to allow searching through bulk uploads of voter lists for potential noncitizens.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson highlighted in her dissent that the newly shared SSA data that has been linked to the modified SAVE database “contains information about natural-born U.S. citizens as well as naturalized citizens and noncitizens," which she suggested could lead to citizens being pulled into bulk searches and potentially flagged for removal from the voter rolls.

There are already examples of citizens being inaccurately flagged by the modified SAVE database. In one review of registrants flagged by the database in Texas, “some 20% were later found to be citizens who were reinstated.”

The court's ruling also notes that the National Voter Registration Act does not allow states to conduct “any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” less than 90 days prior to an election, but included the footnote:

We will consider the scope of this provision in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, et al., No. 25–1017, which asks whether the NVRA prohibits States from implementing programs within 90 days of federal elections to cancel the registrations of voters who are not U.S. citizens. The parties in this case do not ask us to address that question and have not briefed it, and we do not need to decide it here.

The Trump administration may use this nonanswer about the 90-day moratorium from the Supreme Court as an opportunity to ignore the moratorium and encourage states to do mass purges of voter rolls using the data from DHS.

All of this is to the delight of figures like Cleta Mitchell and Hans Von Spakovsky who agree: The voter roll purges must go on.

What are election deniers saying about the ruling?

Right-wing media figures with ties to the election denial movement have called for purges based on the Supreme Court’s ruling — despite the clear language barring such purges within 90 days of the election.

War Room host Steve Bannon introduced one of his segments about the ruling by calling it “a flashing green to go purge these voter rolls with 39 days left” and hosted guests who argued the 90-day moratorium is moot.

Former Justice Department official Jeff Clark — who in 2022 praised the election conspiracy theory film 2000 Mules — spoke with Bannon about the ruling on the evening of September 25, arguing that the 90-day moratorium from NVRA is “blown up” because of an Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act — or IIRAIRA — provision that he says is “very clear.” The passage Clark seems to be quoting apparently pertains to the sharing of information about citizenship and immigration status between government entities, not the removal of registered voters from the voter rolls.

Bannon asked Clark if states “can purge these voter rolls and do it right now for the 3 November election” despite the 90-day moratorium, to which Clark replied, “Yes.”

Clark also dismissed cases where individuals have been incorrectly flagged as noncitizens and barred from voting if they don't prove their citizenship fast enough, saying, “Tough.” He argued, “It's reasonable to expect people who want to vote … to come forth and prove that and to prove that on a timely basis.”

Video

Citation

From the September 25, 2026, evening edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

During the same edition Clark appeared on, election denial activist Cleta Mitchell made similar arguments, claiming that the 90-day moratorium was irrelevant because it “only applies to what the statute says is a systematic review and analysis of the voter rolls.” She called for a “very targeted process” of finding individuals who may be noncitizens. Mitchell encouraged people to use “citizen challenge laws” and go to their local election officials to demand “that those names come off before the election.”

Video

Citation

From the September 25, 2026, evening edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

During these interviews, Bannon raised the issue of whether Democrat-run states could be forced by DHS to use the SAVE database to clean their voter rolls. He asked Clark, “Practically, can the White House just tell people, Hey, the decree came out, and you're going to purge those voter rolls because the 90 days is not relevant?” Clark claimed the ruling will “disproportionately have an effect of making it harder to have the Democrats, you know, steal elections using illegals votes in red states than in blue states because, you know, it's not like Adrian Fontes in Arizona is going to be all hepped up about trying to get this information.” Mitchell argued that DHS “can make public the numbers, and they need to fight back when these blue state secretaries of state, these Democrat secretaries of state, who wanna act like there's nothing to see here. There's a lot to see here.”

Hans von Spakovsky — who has worked to “raise unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud throughout the course of his decades-long career as a conservative activist” — also offered up action items on “blue states” that do not purge their voter rolls during a radio interview this week. He claimed that “there's one current remedy which is the U.S. Department of Justice suing California under the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls.”

Von Spakovsky also put forward that passing the SAVE America Act would “force blue states to actually check for citizenship” and agreed with the host that placing ICE agents at polling sites would deter noncitizens from voting.

Newsmax's Carl Higbie monologued about the ruling, calling it a “major win for the midterm elections” and saying he is “interested to see if this cuts away any historical Democrat voting numbers.”

Whether they are willfully ignoring the 90-day moratorium provision, arguing it simply does not count, or conspiring to create work-arounds, these right-wing media figures are more than happy to have the Supreme Court backing up their efforts to create chaos during the November elections.

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Trump attack dog has a bold Election Day plan —and critics say it's illegal

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Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor sounded the alarm against a piece of tech he thinks his ex-boss is trying to use to block voters from the polls.

According a column on his Substack for the group DEFIANCE.org, Taylor said that an immigration-verification tool called SAVE would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections, which are traditionally run by states and local governments. SAVE stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

One of the key reasons that the American elections are so difficult to hack is how decentralized they are. Each state has its own election rules, and each county has its own process. So there are thousands of different variables. A foreign adversary that breaches one system can only impact that specific jurisdiction. But if Trump creates a centralized federal database, it would be a massive change that could be hacked all in one place. Taylor called it a kind of "Master Switch" that a foreign adversary could flip to decide that millions of people are suddenly ineligible to vote.

"Former homeland security officials like myself have watched in slow-motion horror as the administration moves to hand control of American elections to a tiny DHS office (partially run by contractors) that receives the least congressional oversight and scrutiny of almost any corner of the department," wrote Taylor.

What makes SAVE different is that it's already a program being implemented under DHS for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). That office operates independently of Congress because it is funded by immigration application fees rather than congressional appropriations.

"In my experience, offices like that behaved like fiefdoms, because functionally they were, i.e. they were self-funding, self-directing, and accustomed to minimal scrutiny. That also means they’re places where it’s especially tough to shine a light," Taylor warned.

SAVE wasn't built to handle elections, though. The aim was to stop benefits fraud.

An example he cited comes from Missouri, which used SAVE's database to make allegations about "noncitizen voters" before it ever actually verified them. Local clerks were told to flag them as temporarily unable to vote.

"In hundreds of cases the tool was simply wrong, and in one county more than half of those flagged as noncitizens proved to be U.S. citizens. In another case, Texas flagged 2,724 voters as suspicious based on SAVE data and began demanding proof of citizenship, only to discover some of those removed already had proof on file with the state, which ordered them reinstated," Taylor revealed.

He said that it's clearly disenfranchising voters. Already seven states have run roughly 35 million voters through the system and flagged 4,200 people. That's 0.01 percent of voters. Those haven't even been verified for accuracy. Now Trump wants to deploy it across the U.S. to decide whether people get to vote.

He recalled during his time at DHS that they had been doing a deep dive into what Russia did to the U.S. during the 2016 election and noted that experts are still trying to map out everything ten years later.

"In its comprehensive review, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russian actors targeted election systems in all fifty states; in one, Illinois, they evidently penetrated the voter database and were 'in a position to delete or change voter data.' So why weren’t they able to manipulate the election outcome? Well, one reason is that there wasn’t some central nervous system for them to attack. Our elections are scattered across those all of those fifty states and thousands of counties, on different systems built by different vendors. So breaking into Illinois only got them as far as Illinois," he said.

Under Trump's new system, "a savvy hacker" or a group of hacktivists like "Anonymous" could easily access whether an entire party or demographic could be blocked from the polls.

Finally, he warns that centralizing voter eligibility would also give whoever controls the White House a lot of influence at a time when Americans already don't trust the executive branch.

He championed the states refusing to turn over voter-roll data, noting that they are protecting election security, not undermining it.

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The voting battle's explosive twist: Legal maneuver gridlocks Trump's plan

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The dark electoral secret the media has hidden for 50 years

For over 50 years, our media has been covering up Republican voter suppression efforts. This year, though, they’re getting so obvious that it’ll be interesting to see if they continue to whitewash the practice.

Remember all those reports you’ve seen on TV during previous elections, where the reporter is outside a polling place with a line stretching around the block?

In the 2008 election, for example, CNN anchor Kirin Chetry noted that in Ohio:

“It was, after all, 120,000 votes that made the difference in that state in 2004 and gave the win to now President Bush.”

Republicans controlled the voting in Ohio, so they rigged polling places so people in mostly-Black, Hispanic, and student areas would have to wait hours and hours in line to vote, knowing that these were also the people most likely to be paid hourly and so would be unwilling to stand in line for hours to vote.

Here’s how it played on CNN from their November 4, 2008 transcript:

“MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kiran, certainly, around Ohio, board of election officials are bracing for long lines. And this is because the state is expecting record turnout, 80 percent of Ohio’s voters are expected to turn out and about a quarter of the voters vote early.

“And, of course, we’ve been seeing those long lines over the last several days in Columbus where voters had to wait several hours to cast a ballot, but for the most part, people were in good spirits. And the enthusiasm outweighs the frustrations.”

No mention that this is the #1 voter suppression technique that Republicans have been using in the states they control ever since the 1960s.

In that election, lines in Black neighborhoods in Republican-run Georgia ran eight to ten hours, four hours in Blue parts of Republican-run Florida, and the same in Democratic strongholds in Republican-run Virginia. As CNN’s Campbell Brown reported:

“Take a look at this. Early voting lines around Atlanta today were two, four and at times even 10 hours long, pretty maddening. And, unfortunately, for the impatient among us, it’s been the same in some of the other early voting states as well. But don’t let that dampen your enthusiasm.”

Nobody bothered to mention that the long lines are almost entirely in heavily-Democratic precincts. I’ve been voting since I was 18 — including a decade in Georgia — but have always lived in mostly-white mostly-upper-middle class neighborhoods so I’ve never waited more than 15 minutes to vote.

But the media seems to consistently miss that disparity or the reason Republicans always set it up, instead telling the stories of “brave” voters so “dedicated” to democracy that they’ll stand in line for hours.

Here’s the Washington Post on election day, 2012 from 40% nonwhite Arlington, Virginia, whose elections were controlled by a State Board of Elections appointed by Republican Governor Bob McDonnell:

“At 8 a.m., in Arlington, Va., 644 people were lined up outside an apartment building polling station, almost all of them late for work. ‘I’m glad to see everyone out, it doesn’t matter who they’re voting for,’ said Emma Durazzo, 84, who works at the Pentagon and, in 28 years in the neighborhood, has never seen lines like this on Election Day.”

In previous elections going back to 2002, Democrats (Governors Mark Warner and Tim McCain) had run the elections in Virginia.

Pew and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did an in-depth analysis after the 2012 election and found that nationally 20% of Black voters and 17% of Hispanic voters reported waits exceeding 30 minutes, versus 11% of white voters.

The Brennan center found that Black voters typically waited 45% longer in line than white voters, and Latino voters waited 46% longer.

As Beto O'Rourke notes about what happened when John Roberts and his corrupt Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act:

“Within minutes of the decision, Texas imposed the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, disenfranchising more than 600,000 citizens who, all of a sudden, couldn’t meet the state’s standard for proving who they were. Over the decade that followed Texas also closed more than 700 polling places, twice the number of the next most restrictive state, and almost all of them in African American and Latino neighborhoods. Congressional districts were racially gerrymandered, voting by mail was restricted and voting locations were moved miles away from colleges and universities.

“Without the protection of the Voting Rights Act, politicians were free to not only pick their voters, but they could now choose who could vote in the first place.”

While this may be a secret to the media and most white voters, Republicans are very, very clear about their favorite voter suppression strategy. Just look at what they did last week in Texas’ Tarrant County, where the 1.2 million voters are 60% nonwhite.

With 316 voting locations, the county experienced long lines in the 2020 presidential election, as CBS Dallas/Fort Worth reported. They noted:

“Bill and Dee Horn waited two hours, but said it was well worth it. Now in their 60s, they say they’ve voted in every presidential election since they were 18.”

But the lines in this increasingly blue area weren’t long enough for the Republicans who control the Commissioner’s Court that determines how many voting locations there will be and where. They cut out 92 of those polling places, virtually all of them in minority or student areas.

When people have to stand in line for six hours to vote in Tarrant County this November, will the media cover it the way ABC/Channel 11 in Republican-controlled North Carolina did?

“At University City library in Charlotte, lines were two hours long Thursday morning and growing. Some standing in line said they were ready for the election to end.

“‘Voting is the equivalent of the shower we all needed after the three (presidential) debates,’ said Gregory Weeks, chairman of the UNC Charlotte political science department, who waited two hours to cast his ballot.

“Back in Raleigh, Mitchell said she didn’t mind waiting in line.

“‘It’s important,’ she said, ‘and I’m happy to get the chance to do it.’”

During the Jim Crow era, conservatives used a wide array of strategies to prevent Blacks and other minorities (and often women) from voting, including guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, so-called literacy tests, requiring the recitation of part of the Constitution from memory, poll taxes, etc.

When these were all outlawed with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Republicans shifted their strategy to creating long lines, purging people from voting rolls, and challenging signatures on mail-in ballots.

In the first national election after the Act’s passage, for example, the only precinct in Tallulah, Louisiana that was majority Black ended up with one single polling place for roughly 1,400 voters. When it opened at 6 a.m., approximately 600 people, virtually all Black, were already standing in line.

The newly-created US Commission on Civil Rights concluded, as Black aldermanic candidate Zelma Wyche said:

“[B]ecause of the long wait, many Negro voters…tired of waiting and went home without casting ballots.”

When reporter and former statistics professor Greg Palast went through official government numbers from the 2024 election, he found that Republican voter suppression won the day for Trump and the GOP, just as it had for George W. Bush in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004:

“Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

“And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass ‘vigilante’ challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.”

And that doesn’t even begin to count all the people who simply gave up and went back to work after standing in line for an hour or two.

You can bet that if Democratically-controlled Blue states had been shorting voting machines and polling places in upscale white Republican areas, the GOP’s squeals could be heard halfway around the world. It would be an epic scandal, and the media would cover it as such.

This fall, how will they cover the long lines and outraged voters who show up only to discover they’ve been purged from the rolls by Republican secretaries of state? Stay tuned…

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• Glenn Thrush and Michael C. Bender @ The New York Times: From Top Civil Rights Post, She Spars With the Left, and Her Colleagues

Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights unit, has extracted flashy agreements and personnel moves from big universities and sought to force states to turn over confidential voter data.

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Trump’s voter suppression scheme just hit a major snag ct?

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President Donald Trump won North Carolina three times, yet as Democrats seem poised to take the state's Senate seat in the upcoming midterm election, Republicans are going to great lengths to cling to power — including by limiting voting opportunity for North Carolina's African American community.

"North Carolina’s state board of elections once again refused to provide an accessible early voting location at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black college or university," reported Democracy Docket's Natalie Hausmann on Thursday. "With student activists in the front row, the GOP-controlled board rejected student pleas for an on-campus polling place in November’s general election during a Thursday vote."

Hausmann added, "Earlier this year, the board voted along party lines to deny students a voting site on their campus. Brian Kennedy of Democracy North Carolina told Democracy Docket at the time that the vote served as a 'blueprint for what voter suppression across the nation can look like.' Now, it’s happened all over again."

The students were allowed to attend the meeting in which the decision was announced, even though that choice was ultimately made against them. In addition to making it more difficult for African Americans to vote in a state with a long history of segregation and other forms of racial discrimination, the decision is controversial because it specifically targets a voting practice that is disproportionately popular among African American communities.

"The denial followed a series of election board votes to curtail Sunday voting – popular among black voters – across several counties," Hausmann wrote. She went on to quote one of the Democrats on the state board who outright claimed the decision could have been racially motivated.

"Jeff Carmon, one of two Democrats on the state board, said some GOP county plans had 'racial undertones,'" Hausmann reported. "'Can we identify a single voter who is better served by having fewer opportunities to cast a ballot?' Carmon asked at the start of the meeting."

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BREAKING: Trump DOJ Announces 1,000 Monitors to Watch You Vote

1K POLL WATCHERS HARMEET

Aug 17, 2026

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon just announced the Justice Department will deploy 1,000 election observers for the midterms. The DOJ wants you to think this is business as usual, but Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias breaks down why this deployment is anything but and how it's laying the groundwork for what comes after Election Day. Meanwhile, it's no surprise the announcement comes the same day the DOJ lost its 23rd straight court case over access to sensitive voter data. Plus, where are these 1,000 monitors actually coming from? Subscribe to our free newsletters or upgrade to support our work: https://demdock.com/4fBUQam00:00 DOJ Announces Plan For 1,000 Election Monitors 01:09 Harmeet Dillon Announces Election Observers 02:34 Playing Dillon's Full Announcement Clip 03:44 Dillon Normalizes an Unprecedented Power Grab 05:02 DOJ Run By Election Deniers, Not Independent 07:02 Where Will These Thousand Monitors Come From 09:43 History Proves The Alarm Was Justified 11:19 DOJ Loses 23 Straight Voter Data Cases 15:39 What Observers Can And Cannot Legally Do 17:49 How You Can Help Protect The Vote Democracy Docket is the leading digital news platform covering voting rights and elections in the courts — from an unapologetically pro-democracy and independent standpoint.

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Right-wing media have been arguing for decades that fewer Americans should have the right to vote

Repealing the 19th Amendment, disenfranchising welfare recipients, and requiring a civics test — right-wing media are full of ideas about how to restrict voting

Written by Jack Winstanley

Research contributions from Jack Wheatley & Zachary Pleat

Published 08/10/26

With the midterms approaching, the Trump administration and its allies seem desperate to suppress the vote. The president has pressed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a package of legislation that experts say would create new barriers for voters and potentially disenfranchise millions. He has signed executive orders restricting mail voting and pushing for proof of citizenship in voter registration, and there has been significant chatter about sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations, which analysts say would be illegal.

The executive orders have been struck down, and the SAVE America Act faces an uphill battle in Congress.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress the vote have a significant ideological precedent. For decades, right-wing media have advocated restrictions on voter eligibility, laying the groundwork for Trump and his allies to undermine the upcoming midterms and push for policies that would make it harder for some Americans to vote. In a review of our archives, Media Matters found that primetime hosts, podcasters, columnists, and the like have attacked women’s right to vote, encouraged limiting the vote to property owners or heads of household, and advocated civics tests as a voting eligibility requirement. Some have outright stated that they only want people who share their political beliefs to be eligible to vote, or suggested kicking recipients of government assistance off the voter rolls.

More recently, right-wing media figures and online influencers have claimed that opponents of the SAVE America Act “want to steal elections” and “want the illegals to be able to vote,” continuing a years-long campaign of misinformation about mass election interference and widespread fraud. In light of this supposed fraud and interference, some commentators and election deniers have advocated more policies that could suppress voter turnout: restrictions on mail-in voting, getting “rid of” voting machines, or sending ICE agents to “surround” polling places. Others have called on Trump to sign an executive order declaring a “national emergency” to give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms.

Below we’ve compiled a survey of right-wing media arguing that fewer Americans should vote, going back to 2004.

Right-wing media figures have criticized individual voting, called for a single household vote, or argued that only property owners should be allowed to vote

• • Streamer Asmongold, whose real name is Zack Hoyt, argued in favor of “mass disenfranchisement,” adding that land ownership should be a requirement for voting “because you have a direct, immediate, observable, tangible buy-in to the American future.” He continued: “Ask George Washington. Ask Thomas Jefferson. That's why. You got skin in the game.” [YouTube, Asmongold, 6/1/26; Media Matters, 7/10/26]

• • In a clip uploaded to Instagram, Christian influencer Savanna Stone said: “My ideal voting system would be a one family vote, so my husband and I would vote together.” She went on, adding: “Traditionally, like, the husband would ultimately decide but again, like, I believe that a wife and husband should have the same political views, the same religious views. That’s how the marriage works.” According to CBC, “Stone is a rising star in the online conservative community, with some 800,000 followers across her platforms. She mainly posts Christian relationship advice, but is also highly critical of feminism, advocating for traditional gender roles.” [Instagram, The Pocket Podcast, 3/10/26; CBC, 6/12/26]

• • On The Dinesh D’Souza Podcast, Calvin Robinson, a conservative British commentator and cleric, stated, “This is why universal suffrage has harmed us as a society, because it's meant that there's no longer a vote for the household, for the family.” He added, “The husband votes, and then the wife goes out and undermines his vote. And so, they're literally canceling each other out now — the man and the wife.” [YouTube, The Dinesh D’Souza Show, 12/5/25; Prospect Magazine, 3/29/24]

• • Nick Fuentes argued that “people that own property” were one of the groups of people he “would entrust” with voting. He stated, “An 18-year-old that is renting an apartment and never had a real job and is basically, their parents are paying for everything. They don't have a car. They really have no way of knowing how the world works, and they also have no skin in the game.” [YouTube, Jack Neel Podcast, 11/24/25]

• • Evangelical author Nancy Pearcey told Alex Clark on The Spillover that “it's been a net negative to go from the household vote to the individual vote.” [YouTube, The Spillover, 2/2/24]

• • Josie Glabach, known online as The Red Headed Libertarian, said: “The founders felt like it was more like one family, one vote.” [OAN, In Focus with Addison Smith, 3/17/23]

• • Former Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn: “Originally, if you didn't own land, you didn't vote, and there was a good reason for it: because those without property will always vote away the property of other people unto themselves, and that's the beginning of the end.” He argued, “If I don't own anything, what kind of a problem do I have with voting for a measure — a tax, a law — that takes somebody else's property and gives it to me? I have no stake in personal property ownership because I don't have any.” [Clear Channel, The War Room with Quinn and Rose, 10/21/08]

Right-wing media figures have called for a repeal of the 19th Amendment or otherwise attacked women's right to vote

• • During a panel debate on The Michael Knowles Show, conservative influencer Priya Patel argued that repealing the 19th Amendment “would be better for the country overall.” She added that, short of repealing the 19th Amendment, “We could go back to something in terms of, I don't know exactly how you'd structure this, but something of a single family vote.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 4/18/26; Yahoo News, 3/28/26]

• • Michael Knowles argued that “only married women living in rural and maybe suburban areas [should] get to vote.” He added, “They actually get two votes,” arguing that “they get the right to vote of the women who are single and in the urban areas.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 12/19/25]

• • When asked what he'd do as president, Nick Fuentes stated that he'd “for sure” take away women’s right to vote. Later, while describing who he believes should be “eligible to vote,” Fuentes stated that only “people with children, people that own property, people that are of a certain age, people that have had military service, people that speak English” should vote. [YouTube, The Jack Neel Podcast, 11/24/25]
  • Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, replying to co-host Harold Ford Jr.’s comments about women’s suffrage, said that we “shouldn't have given them the right to vote.” He added, “Everything went downhill a hundred years ago.” [Fox News, The Five, 11/17/26]

• • On Timcast IRL, Fresh and Fit host Myron Gaines stated, “I think we need to repeal the 19th Amendment.” He argued, “If we had to rely on the female vote, Kamala Harris would be in office right now. … Because women are single-issue voters. And that's a big problem.” [Rumble, Tim Pool IRL, 10/9/25]

• • Guest Terry Schilling on The Charlie Kirk Show claimed: “Every goal of the feminist movement — ever since they got, you know, the right to vote — after that, it all went downhill.” He also argued that the movement for women's equality has “always just been about tearing down men and removing them from society.” [Rumble, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/2/24]

• • On LFA TV’s America First Live, host Alan Jacoby stated, “My wife literally thinks women should not vote. I tend to agree with her a lot.” [LFA TV, America First Live, 12/19/23]

• • On BlazeTV, Todd Erzen replied to a post criticizing the 19th Amendment: “Yes, it should be repealed.” [Blaze TV, The Steve Deace Show, 11/15/23]

• • Right-wing podcaster Candace Owens stated, after asking her audience if society had improved since the passage of the 19th Amendment, “I’ve realized that right now, women in this society are allowing very bad things to take place because we’re too nice.” She went on: “We are willing to allow evil to take place over and over again. We’re allowing evil to go as far as it possibly can simply because we don’t want to upset anybody. We don’t want to make people feel bad." [The Daily Wire, Candace, 7/14/23]

• • On OAN, above the chyron “Josie makes case for abolishing 19th amendment,” Josie Glabach claimed the “19th Amendment itself, it’s an infringement on the 10th Amendment.” [One America News, In Focus with Addison Smith, 3/17/23]

• • Steven Crowder questioned when the military “had to become inclusive,” adding, “I think that this went wrong with women getting the right to vote.” He went on to claim, “Men didn't have the right to vote unless they were a part of mandatory draft, they had to pay taxes, mandatory bucket duty, you had to show up if there was a fire. If you didn't do these things, you weren't allowed to vote. Voting was a privilege for men, and then women said well, we want the right to vote, and they said OK, so part of the draft, and they said no.” [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 9/20/21]

• • Right-wing author Ann Coulter: “I used to think women just shouldn’t be able to vote, now I think at least liberal women should not be able to hold office.” [Media Matters, 10/23/14]

• • Former Fox host Tucker Carlson: “You want your government run by people whose favorite show is Say Yes [To The Dress]?” On Fox News' Outnumbered, Carlson criticized a Republican ad encouraging young women to vote by casting doubt on whether or not the people targeted by the ad should vote, adding, “I don't think as a general matter you should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote. That's what the Democrats do, giving Newports to the homeless to get them to the polls. That's literally true. Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people.” [Media Matters, 10/2/14]

• • Radio host Rush Limbaugh stated that “when women got the right to vote is when it all went downhill.” He added, “That’s when votes started being cast with emotion and maternal instincts that government ought to reflect.” [Media Matters, 7/5/12]

• • Coulter: “If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.” As quoted by the New York Observer, Coulter added: “It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.” [Media Matters, 10/4/07]

Right-wing media figures have argued that voters should have a “minimum level of knowledge” of civics or political issues, with some suggesting a test requirement or barring people they disagree with from voting

• • After Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis claimed young voters supporting the Democratic Socialists of America are “brainwashed,” guest Steve Milloy suggested “we need to raise the voting age back to 21,” adding, “They have votes that are as good as mine and I'm sorry, that's just not right.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 8/6/26]

• • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh argued that “we should drastically curtail the right to vote, across the board” and advocated for passing a “fifth grade civics exam” in order to vote. He said: “immigrants should not be allowed to vote in our elections until they've been legal citizens in this country for, say, 10 years. … Voting is not or shouldn't be a universal right granted to everyone. … I also think all voters should be required to complete and pass a fifth grade civics exam, which will be administered in English, by the way. … And we should disenfranchise everyone on welfare, even if they're American citizens.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 4/29/26]

• • Right-leaning streamer Asmongold endorsed “as many barriers to voting as possible,” including a “regular citizenship test” or a “logic test.” He stated: “I think that having just the masses of uneducated retards voting causes a lot of problems.” He added, “If you can’t finish the logic test you can’t vote.” [YouTube, Asmongold, 11/5/25]

• • After reading results of a survey measuring Americans' civics knowledge, Walsh argued that people lacking civics knowledge “should not be allowed to vote.” Walsh continued: “And when it comes to voting, they have the same power that you do. Their vote counts equal to yours.” He added: “These people should not be allowed to vote. I mean, you hear people say that in a half-joking way, I can't believe these people can vote. But really, they shouldn't be able to. Like, actually, they should not be able to vote.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 9/21/23]

• • Fox host Jesse Watters endorsed a civics test requirement for voting. After guest and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy spoke about his idea for a constitutional amendment for younger Americans to pass a civics test in order to vote, Watters said: “I agree with you 1,000 percent, Vivek.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/10/23]

• • Fox News host Greg Gutfeld argued that people who move from Democratic-run states to Republican-run states “shouldn’t be allowed to vote.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/6/23]

• • Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro argued that the right to vote should require “some sort of minimum level of knowledge” of U.S. civics. Shapiro added: “The basic idea that you should be able to have basic, not, as you say, fake poll test, literacy test designed to exclude Black people or something — the idea that you would have to have, like, a basic knowledge of America's Constitution, for example, to vote, I don't see that as a horrible idea. I really don't.” He continued: “I mean, I think that you should actually have to jump through the hoop of having to take the time and effort to vote, because if you're not willing to do that, then why should I take your vote as seriously as somebody who is willing to take voting seriously?” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 2/3/20]

• • Former Des Moines radio host Jan Mickelson, who stated he is in the “voter repression business,” said, “I want people not to vote unless they agree with me.” He also said being uninformed “should exclude you from being part of the process,” and suggested a “civics test” should be implemented “in order to qualify to vote.” [Media Matters, 6/8/15]

• • On Fox & Friends, Ann Coulter argued that “there is nothing unconstitutional about literacy tests” during a Fox & Friends segment that ran with a chyron reading, “Should citizens pass a civics test to vote?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/15]
  • Talking about civics tests, then-Fox host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said: “What about if we took it one step further … into voting?” She added: “When you look at how many people get those answers wrong, how concerning is it to you that those very people are voting?” [Media Matters, 10/23/14]

• • After airing a montage of man on the street interviews asking people what the debt limit is, former Fox Business anchor John Stossel stated that “people who don’t know what the debt is shouldn’t vote.” He added: “Why should dummies vote?” O’Reilly joked that Stossel should “have a little bumper sticker:‘If you’re dumb, stay home on election day.’” [Fox News, The O’Reilly Factor, 7/26/11]

• • In National Review, Jonah Goldberg argued, “It’s about time we toughened up the requirements for voting.” He added, “Indeed, I would be more comfortable having newly naturalized immigrants decide the future of this country at the ballot box than leaving it up to, say, typical white 18-22 year-olds. I know that the immigrants can pass a civics test. I have no such confidence in the kids at my local malls.” [National Review, 1/13/04]

Right-wing media claim Americans receiving government assistance shouldn’t have the right to vote

• • Matt Walsh stated: “If you're living off of taxpayer money, you shouldn't get to vote.” He said: “We could transform our country overnight with a few tweaks. … Disenfranchise, take the vote away from anybody on welfare, number one.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 10/21/25]

• • Former Washington Times columnist Ted Nugent: “Let's also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare.” He continued: “Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That's insane.” [The Washington Times, 12/3/12]

• • Talk radio host Michael Savage: “Do you think a person on welfare has the right to vote? I don't.” He added: “Why should a welfare recipient have the right to vote? They're only gonna vote themselves a raise.” [Talk Radio Network, The Savage Nation, 10/22/08]

//

After Trump's address, election deniers claim vindication and say that voting restrictions and arrests are next

1. 07/22/26 3:13 PM EDT

The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous

1. 07/02/26 10:05 AM EDT

Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms

1. 06/30/26

-=-=-=

an 7 26

Trump just lost his 19th straight judicial case in an attempt to obtain state voter roles, continuing his failed track record of being rejected by courts when attempting to suppress voters.

“[Department of Justice] loses for the 19th time in efforts to obtain state voter rolls, this time in Colorado, courtesy [sic] of Judge Philip Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney posted on X on Tuesday.

In the case itself, Judge Brimmer declared that Trump’s administration has no legal authority to supersede the states and try to purge voters from the rolls.

“The authorities cited by the United States do not support its position,” Brimmer wrote on Monday, citing cases including Jud. Watch, Inc. v. Lamone in 2019, State of Ala. ex rel. Gallion v. Rogers in 1960 and Dinkens v. Att'y Gen. of U.S. in 1961.

“In order to state a claim for violation of” existing laws, Brimmer added, “the United States must allege that it requested a ‘record or paper required by section 20701.’” Yet “because the Court finds that Colorado's SVRL is not a record or paper that must be produced pursuant to” existing statues, the court denied Trump’s claim.

“Accordingly, the Court will grant the motions to dismiss of the Secretary, the Common Cause Intervenors, and the Alliance Intervenors, and deny the United States' motion to compel, and dismiss its claims,” Brimmer concluded.

Adam Klasfield, editor-in-chief of All Rise News, posted on X that this is an ironic loss for Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who was just cleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee for possible confirmation to be full-time attorney general.

“On the day he clears Committee, reports emerge that Todd Blanche lost his 19th consecutive lawsuit seeking sensitive voter data,” Klasfield wrote. “Blanche has no victories in these cases. (Edited post: The ruling was dated Monday, first reported today.)”

Speaking with AlterNet in June, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause Dan Vicuña argued that Trump’s various so-called voter reform efforts — including seeking states’ voter rolls — are all part of an effort to steal the midterms.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people.

This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He continued, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

As for the attempts to nationalize elections, Vicuña added that the efforts are likely illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña explained. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected.

Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

-=-=

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AN 7 26

WASHINGTON — Mass voter challenges are likely to occur in the 2026 midterm elections, the Brennan Center for Justice warned Tuesday, with the potential to “undermine the democratic process.”

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been laying the groundwork for questioning the election process in state after state, as Trump has made “election integrity” the centerpiece of his recent domestic policy initiatives, including in a July 16 address to the nation.

The center, at NYU School of Law, found in a report Tuesday that more than 185,000 challenges to voter eligibility were filed by private citizens in 2024, though “the real number is likely higher” since many election officials either were not contacted or sent incomplete responses to an inquiry. The center is regarded as left-leaning.

Mass challenges are a fairly recent development, spurred by improvements in election technology and transparency. Thousands of votes now can be challenged at once.

They’ve rarely been successful, but experts worry they create voter doubts about whether elections are being conducted fairly. Historically such challenges have also often been used to suppress the votes of people of color, a separate brief said.

“Eligible voters facing challenges sometimes don’t vote simply because the process is too confusing. Responding to a challenge requires numerous steps that can trip up voters. They may not understand their options for verifying their identity,” said the report by Brennan Center Counsel Andrew Garber.

Garber found that “mass voter challenges have become a key element in the campaign to use election integrity as a pretext for voter suppression.”

In 2024, he found, election deniers lodged challenges, “in addition to spreading lies about widespread voter fraud, refusing to certify elections, discrediting voting machines, engaging in bad faith poll watching, filing frivolous lawsuits, and threatening election officials with physical harm or criminal penalties”

This year, Garber warned, such challenges are likely to be an “integral strategy in the playbook to undermine the democratic process.”

Mass challenges, he said, “add basically zero value to elections while creating new costs.”

One big worry, though: “There are instances of eligible voters being removed from the rolls and learning of their removal after the deadline to register and vote in the next election,” the report said. “As is often the case with voter suppression, vulnerable individuals frequently suffer the effects.”

Mullin threats

The Trump administration is pushing state officials to examine their voter rolls and tighten their election security, thus opening the door for the help of the federal government in conducting mass challenges, the report predicted.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last week that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania and threatened to prosecute election officials in states that don’t “participate in securing the elections” ahead of the November midterms. He has not specified the source of his data.

Trump has demanded Congress require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and photo IDs at the polls. So far, lawmakers have so far been reluctant to approve the SAVE America Act that in various versions would restrict voting, and it remains stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Trump and his allies have maintained for years the 2020 election was marred by voter fraud. No evidence of any widespread fraud has been found.

Election officials have largely maintained their rolls are accurate and up to date.

“In most states, list maintenance practices tend to keep pace with natural changes in voters’ lives, such as moving,” said a report this month by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Mass challenges

Recent mass challenges have rarely been successful.

The report cited efforts in Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Florida and Iowa in 2022.

“These challenges were widely rejected for lack of evidence or failure to comply with state law,” the Brennan Center found.

In 2024, Brennan’s research found that private citizens filed at least 185,232 voter challenges in the states studied. Of those, the center found officials accepted at least 5,477. That means they may have removed the voter from the rolls, declared them inactive or taken other steps to make it difficult for them to vote.

Researchers sent requests to Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas and to numerous counties in those states, the report methodology said.

“One takeaway is evident: With only around 3 percent of challenges clearly accepted, challenges contributed little to list maintenance in 2024,” Brennan found.

For instance, Georgia got in touch with about 875,000 voters in 2023 who had moved or had not voted for several years. That was more than a hundred times the number of Georgia voters who were successfully challenged the next year.

The center compiled the report by sending public records requests to 42 state and local government entities. It asked for any documents involving voter challenges in 2024 and how officials dealt with those challenges. It also looked at court filings, public reporting and election board meetings.

“Acquiring a complete record of challenges is impossible: They are often made ad hoc, officials may have no obligation to track them, and the records produced are often incomplete,” the center noted, adding that some officials refused to provide records or said they got no challenges.

---

mma

June 26, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Now, Johnson goes up there, and we're advocates of this housing bill. It's an important bill, but it's not a must pass by any measure. They're going to use it as a messaging bill.

...

Help me out here. They're shipping the president the bill today?

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well, I don't know what day, but what I read last night is that the speaker told the press that they would be sending the housing bill to the president. Once they do that, it is — he has ten days to sign it. And if he doesn't — or veto it. And if he doesn't veto it and does nothing, it becomes a law without his signature.

What my message is, is that he has to veto that bill. He caught everybody by surprise and made the MAGA base — I basically burst into tears when I saw that he had cancelled the bill signing for that housing bill, that was supposed to take place at noon on Wednesday. And he just cancelled it. I had sent some things around and —

BANNON: That was amazing. That was amazing.

MITCHELL: And it was wonderful, wonderful.

BANNON: Wonderful.

MITCHELL: And he needs to stick to it. I'm asking everybody within the sound of my voice to call the White House today — 202-456-1111 — talk to a live operator and say: Mr. President, please veto that bill until the SAVE America Act is put on your desk.

...

BANNON: We're big proponents of some of the elements of this housing bill. It's not perfect, but we're a big believer in that it can have great things, but it's not a game changer.

MITCHELL: No.

BANNON: Whoever's telling the president that's going to motivate the base to go out there is just — they're dead wrong. They don't know the base, and they're not spending time with them.

//

1. ### On The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses what MAGA media figures are promising Bill Pulte will do as acting DNI

06/25/26 8:03 PM EDT

2. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, June 26

06/26/26 11:01 AM EDT

3. ### Benny Johnson: “These are the Kamala Harris states and every single one of them was a rigged election”

06/25/26

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5 26 Billionaires’ Shocking Plan To Silence Working-Class Voters

May 18, 2026

50% of voters say being forced to show a passport would be a barrier to voting, according to a new poll we conducted. Billionaires like Elon Musk, the Uihleins, and Leonard Leo are funding Trump’s attempts to take over elections and nullify your vote.

...

4:59

4 minutes, 59 seconds

According to our poll, 66% of working-class voters said that the $130 fee for a new passport would be difficult for them to afford.

5:08

5 minutes, 8 seconds

And 47% of working class voters say that it would deter or prevent them from voting.

5:15

5 minutes, 15 seconds

It'd be tough on middle-class voters, too: 53% say it would be cost prohibitive, and 36% say they wouldn't be able to vote.

5:22

5 minutes, 22 seconds

And for what?

5:23

5 minutes, 23 seconds

The number of noncitizens voting in American elections is essentially zero, but since 2020, a subset of activists has become obsessed with the idea.

5:32

5 minutes, 32 seconds

All of the groups that had been built up into this election denial infrastructure started almost simultaneously talking about the myth of noncitizen voting.

5:41

5 minutes, 41 seconds

And it was very clearly a coordinated effort, very likely a funder-driven effort, to coordinate around this single line of messaging.

5:50

5 minutes, 50 seconds

[Cassie] Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center took us down the funder rabbit hole– because while the giant, gaping loopholes in campaign

5:57

5 minutes, 57 seconds

finance law make it intentionally difficult for people to follow the money, there are some big names that you really need to know.

6:05

6 minutes, 5 seconds

[Brendan] A lot of the national groups get their money from billionaires like Dick Uihlein or Elon Musk, or wealthy, powerful individuals who control a lot of money, like Leonard Leo.

6:16

6 minutes, 16 seconds

You might recognize Leonard Leo as the guy who picked Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices.

6:21

6 minutes, 21 seconds

[Brendan] Leonard Leo, who controls over $1 billion, has groups like the Honest Elections Project and Save Our States, which have been playing an important role, at least in helping to advance messaging and policy development.

6:34

6 minutes, 34 seconds

This January, the Honest Elections Project released a big game plan that literally outlined each of the steps that Trump has pursued,

6:41

6 minutes, 41 seconds

including serious restrictions on mail-in voting– Tell me about mail-in ballots.

6:45

6 minutes, 45 seconds

–you know, the method that Trump both constantly rails against and uses himself. I used a mail-in ballot, you probably said. Yeah, I did. You know why? Because I'm President of the United States.

6:54

6 minutes, 54 seconds

There are also foundations like the Bradley Foundation, and all of these organizations collectively pour, tens and at this point, hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting these broad national groups.

7:05

7 minutes, 5 seconds

[Cassie] The Bradley Foundation is a Wisconsin-based organization that put more money than anybody into election denialism and voter suppression.

7:13

7 minutes, 13 seconds

They were a big sponsor of the Only Citizens Vote coalition, a who's who of billionair-funded, anti-voter organizations– over 80 in total, a lot of them involved in Project 2025.

7:24

7 minutes, 24 seconds

[Brendan] They help craft legislation, they provide testimony when legislation that would undermine the freedom to vote is moving in state legislatures or sometimes in Congress.

7:35

7 minutes, 35 seconds

They're more of the experts in the room.

7:37

7 minutes, 37 seconds

Back in 2024, Only Citizens Vote created model anti-voter legislation in partnership with the massive corporate lobby group ALEC.

7:45

7 minutes, 45 seconds

Leading the way on that legislation was Cleta Mitchell.

7:48

7 minutes, 48 seconds

She's a Federalist Society member, OG election denier, and most importantly, on the board of the Bradley Foundation.

7:54

7 minutes, 54 seconds

[President Trump] All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000 plus votes.

7:57

7 minutes, 57 seconds

Cleta Mitchell now has her own group called the Fair Elections Fund, which helps to coordinate many of these efforts, as well as seed money to state-based groups, some of which are themselves associated with the Election Integrity Network.

8:09

8 minutes, 9 seconds

[Cassie] Ok, here’s another big name: the Election Integrity Network, which brings us down another rabbit hole.

8:15

8 minutes, 15 seconds

The Election Integrity Network is fueled by just a few big players, including the Conservative Partnership Institute and Citizens for Renewing America.

8:24

8 minutes, 24 seconds

The Conservative Partnership Institute is funded by Trump donors.

8:28

8 minutes, 28 seconds

It's run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and gets its money from big players like the Koch linked Donors Trust Fund,

8:35

8 minutes, 35 seconds

a group funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby, and, of course, the Bradley Impact Fund Foundation.

...

---

---

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mMA 5 26

Podcaster whose group was connected to a January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally suggests she was involved in creating the SAVE Act

Written by Alex Kaplan (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/alex-kaplan)

Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/kayla-gogarty)

:{:{Published 05/08/26}:

Tea Party Patriots founder and podcaster Jenny Beth Martin (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/tea-party-patriots-leader-whose-group-sponsored-stop-steal-rally) — whose group was listed (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/sponsors-of-the-pre-attack-rally-have-taken-down-their-websites-dont-forget-who-they-were/) as a “coalition partner” of a rally (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/capitol-rally-organizers-before-riots/2021/01/16/c5b40250-552d-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html) in Washington, D.C. ahead of the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol — suggested during a rally later aired on her podcast that she played a role in the creation of the SAVE Act, which would curtail voting access nationwide and has been pushed (https://www.npr.org/2026/04/14/nx-s1-5771526/senate-filibuster-save-america-act) by the Trump administration in its current iteration.

The SAVE Act, which was introduced (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8281) by (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4292/related-bills) Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and has since been modified and rebranded (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-america-act-explained-how-the-new-show-your-papers-voting-bill-is-even-more-extreme-than-the-save-act/) as the SAVE America Act, would bar (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-gop-hardliners-threaten-shutdown-over-voting-bill_n_66ba5d36e4b04b3eb251f670) noncitizens from voting in federal elections — something which is already illegal (https://www.brennancenter.org/series/voting-and-citizenship) and exceedingly rare (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/noncitizens-are-not-voting-federal-or-state-elections-heres-why)— and would create (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-media-use-save-america-act-undermine-upcoming-midterm) new barriers (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-save-act-bills-would-still-block-millions-americans-voting) for people attempting to register to vote.

Roy already said (https://www.mediamatters.org/justice-civil-liberties/rep-chip-roy-says-election-deniers-and-project-2025-contributors-helped) that he “drafted that bill … alongside our good friends Stephen Miller, our good friends Hans Von Spakovsky, Cleta Mitchell, other good friends of President Trump and patriots across the country who have been fighting for election integrity for years.” These remarks suggest Martin may have been involved as well.

Martin was involved with early promotion of the SAVE Act, speaking (https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/speaker-johnson-news-conference-on-voter-eligibility-legislation/642029) at (https://web.archive.org/web/20260508161826/https://www.lee.senate.gov/2024/5/mike-lee-and-chip-roy-to-announce-save-act-to-protect-american-voters) the 2024 congressional GOP press conference announcing the bill, endorsing (https://web.archive.org/web/20260508162059/https://roy.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-roy-reintroduces-bill-protect-integrity-and-sanctity-american-elections) an iteration of the bill, and repeatedly (https://www.facebook.com/reel/1631510911370201) campaigning (https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/anti-voting-activists-have-a-plan-to-pass-the-save-act/) for (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/election-denier-jenny-beth-martin-told-steve-bannon-shes-pushing-pass-save-act) its passage (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4040411).

At an April 25 event, which was broadcast (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4040393) on Martin’s podcast The Jenny Beth Show on May 5, Martin gave a speech and described being in contact with Lee, along with Mitchell (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jul/02/cleta-mitchell-republican-election-denial). She mentioned a January 2024 conference call in which Mitchell “gave an update about problems with elections,” specifically Arizona, and a text exchange in which Martin said “we need to make a law” that will “fix” Arizona.

Martin portrayed those conversations as being how the SAVE Act got started.

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Citation

From an April 25, 2026, event, broadcast on the May 5, 2026, edition of The Jenny Beth Show on YouTube

JENNY BETH MARTIN (HOST; PRESIDENT, TEA PARTY PATRIOTS): In January of 2024, Sen. Mike Lee, Cleta Mitchell with the Election Integrity Network, and I were in a car — in a meeting, and I was — I had joined by conference call. And we were talking of — Sen. Lee was giving an update on things that were happening in the United States Senate. Cleta gave an update about problems with elections, urging some action to be taken, and she described exactly what happens here in Arizona.

You have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, but the Supreme Court, as James — right? Got your name right? As James said earlier, that the Supreme Court said that you also must take the voter registration form from the National Voter Registration Act, the motor voter law, the NVRA. And that law or that form, which stems from federal law, is supreme — federal law is supreme law of the land, so you must take that form. So now you in Arizona have the bifurcated ballot, meaning if you show proof of citizenship, you can vote for president and governor and senator. Well, president and senator and Congress and governor and all the way down to school board or whatever your lowest level office is. If, however, you haven’t, and you’re part of the 43 or so thousand people who have not shown proof of citizenship, you still get to vote for president, Senate, and Congress. And I heard this — I heard it before because when I started working on election integrity issues, I heard about it and just it makes no sense to me.

And so I texted Mike Lee. And I said, “We need to make a law. This is ridiculous. We have to fix this because if Arizona wants to require proof of citizenship, they are a border state for Pete’s sake. Let’s make sure that we have proof of citizenship.”

And when you’re talking about a state where fewer than 10,000 people decided the 2020 election, if you believe the results, but let’s just go with the results on record. Fewer than 10,000 people decided it and you’ve got over 40,000 people who haven’t shown proof of citizenship? Yeah. We need to have proof of citizenship. And the federal government should not be preventing your state from showing it.

That’s how this bill got started. Now, it has turned in — in addition to being proof of citizenship to register to vote — it has also turned into voter ID. And Sen. Mike Lee and Congressman Chip Roy and Congressman Bryan Steil, who is from Wisconsin, and the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson, have championed this bill from the beginning. And without Speaker Johnson being such a huge champion of it, I don’t think it would have gotten as far as it did.

Tea Party Patriots leader whose group sponsored a “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6 brags about training poll watchers for 2024 (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/tea-party-patriots-leader-whose-group-sponsored-stop-steal-rally)

01/30/24 3:11 PM EST

Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-media-use-save-america-act-undermine-upcoming-midterm)

03/20/26 2:04 PM EDT

Election denier Jenny Beth Martin told Steve Bannon she’s pushing to pass SAVE Act in September (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/election-denier-jenny-beth-martin-told-steve-bannon-shes-pushing-pass-save-act)

:{:{08/25/26}:

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AN 4 26

Trump DOJ official misled federal judge about sensitive voter data - Alternet.org

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AN PP 5 26

When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.

If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.

At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.

As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.

It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”

Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.

1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.

Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.

Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.

2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.

In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.

3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.

Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.

Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.

A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”

4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.

FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.

(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)

The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.

5. Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”

In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.

Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.

Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.

6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.

The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.

Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.

More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.

In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”

7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.

Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.

Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.

Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.

An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”

8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.

In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.

Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.

“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.

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AHA doh: 3 26

FLYNN WANTED MIL TO GRAB BALLOTS/VOTING MACHINES; TRUMP T2 IS USING DOJ LAWFARE RETALIATION NO RULE OF LAW TO DO IT; SHERIFF / OATHKEEPER COPYCAT TO PLEASE DEAR LEADER, BUT BUILDS CRED FOR BIG LIE ~ 2026 MIDTERMS

AN 3 26

In Riverside County, California, Sheriff Chad Bianco — a Donald Trump supporter and former Oath Keepers member who is running for governor of California as a Republican — recently announced that his department had seized 650,000 voting ballots cast in a 2025 election. Bianco, at a, told reporters, "This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported.""

MS NOW's Steve Benen, in an opinion column published on March 24, argues that Bianco is conducting an "investigation that appears entirely baseless" and could be used as a "template" for MAGA Republicans to challenge election results they don't like.

"For those inclined to be charitable," Benen explains, "there is a relatively benign interpretation of these developments. It's possible, for example, that Bianco is simply trying to generate attention for his longshot gubernatorial candidacy. Relatedly, the sheriff likely realizes that ballot seizures will please the White House, which in turn, may lead to greater institutional support from his party in the coming months. The move, in other words, may very well be little more than an elaborate campaign stunt that will have little practical impact and will be largely forgotten after Bianco loses. But then, there are the less benign interpretations of what transpired."

The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer notes that Bianco's investigation "comes on the heels of Trump sending the FBI to seize election materials in Georgia in response to other assorted conspiratorial complaints."

"The broader concern is that a template is taking shape, offering precedents for law enforcement to start making plans to seize ballots in areas nationwide — after or even during official counts," Benen warns. "What's more, the more frequently this happens, the more Americans may be led to believe it's normal and routine for law enforcement officials to seize and impound ballots — despite the fact that this is neither normal nor routine."

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MMA

Right-wing media are calling for ICE to “surround the polls” in midterms

Right-wing media figures claim Democrats are “basically admitting they're cheating” by opposing ICE at polling stations. But noncitizen voting is a fake problem and ICE has racially profiled US citizens.

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 03/27/26

Right-wing media personalities are pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be deployed to polling stations during the 2026 midterm elections, claiming it will “fix the fraud” of alleged noncitizen voting and suggesting the only reason Democrats oppose the idea is that “they want to cheat” and “protect illegals’ voting rights.” Department of Homeland Security officials, meanwhile, have put out mixed messaging regarding whether or not the department will consider this course of action.

In reality, according to experts, instances of noncitizen voting are negligible and the presence of ICE agents at polling stations would be illegal, as it could intimidate voters into staying away and have a “chilling effect” on elections due to ICE’s history of racial profiling and harassing and detaining U.S. citizens.

• ## DHS officials have given mixed messaging on deploying ICE to polling sites in upcoming midterm elections

• • A DHS official previously dismissed concerns that ICE would be present at polling locations. Heather Honey, deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, reportedly told a group of secretaries of state in February that “any suggestion that ICE will be present at any polling location is simply not true.” PBS, [2/26/26]

• • But new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not ruled out the possibility.During his confirmation hearing, Mullin said if ICE is sent to polling places, “there will be a reason for us to be there, and it’ll be known why we’re there.” White House border czar Tom Homan also downplayed concerns about ICE at polling stations, saying, “Part of DHS’ job is secure elections, and I’m not going to say, you know, you know, what our plan is going forward, but if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don’t see the issue of what they’re concerned about.” The Hill, [3/25/26]

• • At CPAC, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche rhetorically asked,“Why is there an objection to sending ICE to polling stations?” He continued, saying, “Illegals can’t vote. It doesn’t make any sense.” The Hill, [3/27/26]

• ## Experts have consistently stated that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and that deploying federal agents at polling stations would be illegal and lead to voter intimidation

• • The Brennan Center for Justice’s Sean Morales-Doyle asserted that Trump can not send ICE agents to polling sites, writing, “The law is crystal clear: It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place.” He added, “In fact, it is a federal crime for anyone in the U.S. military to interfere in elections in any way.” Brennan Center for Justice, [10/22/25]

• • Voting rights advocates have also warned that deploying ICE to polling sites, or even threatening to do so, could intimidate voters from casting their vote.Potential voters who may be intimidated by ICE's presence at polling sites have legal redress under the Voting Rights Act and “the person bringing the suit only has to prove that they were intimidated, not that the person they’re suing intended to intimidate them.” Brennan Center for Justice, [10/22/25; CNN, 3/25/26]

• • ICE has also shown a pattern of racial profiling, which has led to a “chilling effect.” A Brookings Institution survey found “high percentages of Latino citizens avoiding important activities, including being engaged in their children’s schools and reporting crimes to police for fear of being asked for their immigration papers.” Since a 2025 Supreme Court ruling allowed ICE to “profile Americans based on perceptions that they look like an immigrant,” U.S. citizens have reported being racially profiled and detained by ICE. Brookings Institution, [10/16/25; The Guardian, 1/22/26]

• • A recent internal review from DHS on noncitizen voter registration indicated “there is no evidence of widespread fraud.” While the review has found some instances of noncitizen voter registration, as The New York Times pointed out, “Even that number could be inflated. The verification tool has mistakenly flagged some people who appear to actually be citizens, according to some local election officials.” The New York Times, [1/14/26]

• • According to the American Immigration Council, instances of noncitizen voting are “infinitesimally small.”The right-wing Heritage Foundation’s own study on voter fraud “has documented just 68 total cases of noncitizen voting going back to the earliest cases documented in the 1980s.” American Immigration Council, [8/1/24]

• ## Right-wing media are calling for ICE to “surround the polls” in November because “illegals shouldn't be voting in our elections”

• • War Roomhost and former Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon: ICE at airports can be “a test case to get, to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”Bannon added, “They can’t work the machines, you know what they’ll do? Just walk up and down, hey, we're going to speed things through — can we check your IDs? That’s what’s going to happen in the fall of ‘26 because, folks, we’re tired of having elections stolen.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [3/23/26]

• • Bannon also said in February, “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [2/3/26]

• • The Gateway Pundit: “War Room’s Steve Bannon Says ICE Must ‘Surround The Polls’ in November to Stop Election Fraud.”The blog added, “Democrats will inevitably argue that ICE’s presence at the polls constitutes voter intimidation, but that concern only makes sense if illegal aliens are, in fact, showing up to vote.” The Gateway Pundit, [2/4/26]

• • The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “Making sure illegal immigrants do not show up at polling sites is not a horrible use of ICE.” Shapiro asked, “Why are illegal immigrants at polling sites? I mean, if ICE is there — like, if ICE shows up at a polling site and I show up at a polling site, I’m not worried about ICE because I’m not an illegal immigrant.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [3/24/26]

• • Podcaster Benny Johnson: “Can we deploy ICE to every voting booth in America? Would that fix the fraud? Of course, it would.”Johnson continued, “Why are we even talking about the SAVE Act? You don't need the SAVE Act if you don't have a nation overrun with criminal aliens.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [3/24/26]

• • Fox’s Jesse Watters argued for ICE agents to be at polling locations.Watters said, “Well, one of the demands, they say no ICE agents can be at a polling station. What's the trouble with that, Jessica? What's the problem? If illegals aren't voting, why can't ICE agents be at a polling station?” Fox News,*The Five*, [3/23/26]

• • Newsmax host Carl Higbie said, “ICE at polling places shouldn’t be a problem, because illegals shouldn’t be voting in our elections.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [2/2/26]

• • Radio host Tony Katz: “Why aren’t ICE agents at polling places? Why aren't we ensuring that Americans vote?” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [3/3/26]

• ## Right-wing media claim Democrats are “basically admitting they're cheating” by opposing ICE at polling stations because they want to “protect illegals’ voting rights.”

• • On his prime-time show, Jesse Watters said Democrats are “basically admitting they’re cheating” by opposing ICE at polling locations. Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [3/23/26]

• • Former Trump FBI deputy director and podcaster Dan Bongino claimed “Democrats don’t want any immigration enforcement anywhere near polling locations” because “they want to cheat.” Bongino also argued that Democrats are “so concerned about this” because “they like the cheating.” Rumble, *The Dan Bongino Show*, [3/5/26]

• • In an op-ed for The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh claimed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ opposition to ICE at polling stations is about “ensuring that tens of millions of illegal aliens can vote in the next election.”Walsh wrote: “He desperately wants ICE to stay very far away from *polling stations,* in particular. He says it several times. Why might that be? Who exactly would be intimidated by the presence of a federal immigration officer at a polling station? Who would choose to stay at home, in hiding, rather than get anywhere near an ICE agent?” He continued, “Jeffries is simply too dumb to realize how transparent he’s being here. His overriding concern — and the concern of his party — is ensuring that tens of millions of illegal aliens can vote in the next election.” The Daily Wire, [3/23/26]

• • On Newsmax, American Principles Project President Terry Schilling said Democrats “can deal with ICE agents at every single polling location across the country” if they continue to oppose the SAVE Act. Schilling also claimed that Democrats are “pushing illegals to the polls.” Newsmax, *The Right Squad*, [2/11/26]

• • While previewing an upcoming interview with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), Newsmax host Ed Henry suggested that Democrats are “so concerned about ICE potentially being at the polls in November” because “maybe they don’t want election integrity.”Newsmax, *Ed Henry The Big Take*, [3/3/26]

• • One America News host Dan Ball claimed Democrats oppose ICE agents at polling sites because they want to “protect illegals’ voting rights.”Ball continued, “Otherwise, why would you give a rat's you-know-what if ICE goes to a polling station to look for illegals? They shouldn't be voting.” One America News, *Real America with Dan Ball*, [3/9/26]

• • Newsmax host Rob Finnerty suggested Democrats don’t want ICE at polling sites because then “illegal aliens” won’t be able to vote for them.Finnerty stated, “ICE can't be at polling sites because how are illegal aliens going to vote if ICE is arresting people at polling sites?” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [3/10/26]

• • Newsmax host David Harris Jr. said, “I really hope ICE is at every single voting poll around the country come voting time.” Harris Jr. also claimed Democrats “don’t want to have the people that shouldn’t be here in the first place interfered while they go cast their votes.” Newsmax, *David Harris Jr. The Pulse*, [3/11/26]

• • Right-wing blog Townhall claimed Democrats are “more than willing to withhold funding from DHS,” despite terror attacks, “all to ensure that illegals are freely able to go to polling sites.”The blog criticized Democrats in a piece titled “Despite Terror Attacks, Dems Vow to Continue DHS Shut Down to Block ICE From Polling Sites.” Townhall, [3/9/26]

• • Right-wing blog RedState criticized Democrats who oppose ICE at polling stations, writing, “Why would you not want ICE to be keeping illegal aliens out of polling places? Unless you had some other reason for wanting illegal aliens at polling places, Democrats?” The blog added, “You keep the illegal aliens out of the polling places, and ICE doesn't need to be there. Will the Democrats commit to that? Why are they placing illegal aliens over the American people?” RedState, [3/9/26]

//

1. ### Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections

:{:{03/20/26}:

2. ### Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience

:{:{02/18/26}:

3. ### Daily Wire host admits if the SAVE Act becomes law, “fewer actual American citizens will end up voting”

02/12/26

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MMA

Right-wing media use the SAVE America Act to undermine the upcoming midterm elections

Right-wing pundits have falsely claimed Democrats oppose the SAVE America Act because they are “cheating” and “want the illegals to be able to vote”

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 03/20/26

• Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, right-wing media are using the controversial SAVE America Act to undermine election integrity by claiming Democrats oppose the bill because they “want to steal elections” and “want the illegals to be able to vote.” This is the latest iteration of a longstanding pattern in which right-wing media cast doubt on elections as Americans prepare to cast their votes.

For example, in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, right-wing media were peddling election conspiracy theories and insisting the 2020 election was rigged. Ahead of the 2024 election cycle, right-wing media deployed that same playbook, spreading false information about undocumented immigrants voting, accusing Democrats of rigging the system, and attempting to undermine the validity of mail-in voting.

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, right-wing media figures are yet again claiming that Democrats are trying to cheat and want undocumented immigrants to vote, even though instances of noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare. Still, right-wing media figures have advocated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at polling locations, President Donald Trump to declare a “national emergency” to enforce his preferred election policies, and Congress to pass the SAVE Act (since modified and rebranded as the SAVE America Act).

Though the SAVE America Act appears to be doomed in the Senate, the controversial bill, which aims to rewrite election laws nationwide, would, if passed, create new barriers for people attempting to register to vote by requiring them to provide documents such as a passport or birth certificate as proof of citizenship. But as the Brennan Center for Justice points out, millions of citizens lack access to these documents, and “roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport.” As an example of the potential effects, the Bipartisan Policy Center examined a similar law requiring proof of citizenship passed in Kansas and found the law prevented roughly 12% of applicants from registering to vote. The SAVE America Act could also place additional burdens on married women who have changed their last name from the one that appears on their birth certificate.

Nonetheless, right-wing media have been using the bill to sell a false narrative that Democrats have “nefarious intentions” and are “petrified about having safe and secure elections” because “they want the illegals to be able to vote.”

• • War Roomhost Steve Bannon said “we have to codify” the SAVE America Act “to stop the Democrats with the illegal aliens stealing the 2026 midterm.”Bannon also threatened, “If Thune cannot deliver this week on these basics about not allowing them to steal elections, why is he not removed as a leader of the Senate?” Real America’s Voice,*War Room*, [2/3/26]

• • Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that when Democrats “fight this hard” against the bill, “you know they’re cheating” in elections.Watters then argued that it’s “logical” to require voter ID after you “poured 20 million foreigners into the United States.” Fox News,*The Five*, [2/4/26]

• • On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed the “only reason I can think” Democrats “don't want voter IDs, signature verification” is because they have “nefarious intentions.”Hannity continued, suggesting Democrats must not “want honest elections with integrity so everyone can have confidence in the results.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/6/26]

• • QAnon conspiracy theorist Scott Presler: “The Democrats are petrified about having safe and secure elections because they know that our Congress and our Senate would look much different today if we had secure voting.”Presler: “Having a trust me, bro, election system in Minnesota is the reason why it's been blue even since Mondale.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/6/26; Media Matters,8/23/21]

• • Presler later commented on Fox News: “When Sen. Chuck Schumer says that tens of millions of Americans will be removed from the voter rolls, did he say the quiet part out loud? Did he allude to the fact that perhaps tens of millions of noncitizens are on the voter rolls?” He added, “Anyone that is only for Americans being registered to vote cannot be against the SAVE America Act.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [3/11/26]

• • Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer said “there’s no logic” for Democrats’ opposition to the bill “other than they’re working so hard to let anybody vote without knowing if they’re a citizen or not.” Fleischer then claimed noncitizen voting is “the perfect crime” because “no one will catch you.” Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [2/11/26]

• • Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones claimed Democrats oppose the bill because “they want the illegals to be able to vote.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [2/20/26]

• • Fox News host Will Cain claimed Democrats “benefit from having insecure voting rolls, they benefit from the potentiality of illegals voting in American elections.”Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [3/11/26]

• • Newsmax host Rob Finnerty claimed, “Democrats don’t want the SAVE Act to pass because if it does, people who aren't legally allowed to vote in our elections will not be able to vote in our elections anymore.” Finnerty also characterized the Democratic party as “a party built around illegal aliens and dead people voting.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [3/12/26]

• • On Newsmax, actor Dean Cain said “there's no reason in the world” for Democrats to “oppose the SAVE Act, other than it will stop them from being able to cheat.”Newsmax, *Ed Henry The Big Take*, [3/6/26]

• • On Newsmax, The Federalist’s Ben Weingarten suggested that it’s incredibly easy to cheat in elections today and claimed Democrats have been “normalizing the idea that noncitizens should be able to vote.”Weingarten attacked Democrats for “gaslighting” and spreading “propaganda” about the SAVE America Act and stated, “Americans want clean voter rolls and clean elections where it's easy to vote and incredibly hard to cheat. And we have the opposite today.” Newsmax, *The National Report*, [3/11/26]

• • Fox contributor Newt Gingrich claimed Democrats oppose the bill “because they want to steal elections.” Gingrich continued, “They want to have the ability to vote people who aren't legal or people who are dead.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [3/19/26]

• • Trump ally and right-wing podcaster Roger Stone: “SAVE America Act Hits the Achilles Heel of Democrats’ Fraud Scheme.” Wrote Stone, “There is only one reason for Democrats and far-left special interest groups to oppose the SAVE America Act: because they want to enable fraud. They know that loosening the system allows them to essentially stuff the ballot box. The illegals who are still floating around in this country by the millions can exploit these loopholes.” Substack, [3/4/26]

//

1. ### Newsmax host discusses a Senate filibuster against the SAVE Act: “This is why people need guns in this country, because a government is willing to go 80% against the country”

03/18/26 10:15 AM EDT

2. ### Nick Shirley rebooted James O’Keefe’s debunked voter fraud myths for a new audience

02/18/26 4:25 PM EST

3. ### Daily Wire host admits if the SAVE Act becomes law, “fewer actual American citizens will end up voting”

02/12/26

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AN PP 3 26

In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines.

He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize voting machines to overturn Trump’s defeat.

On social media, Harvilicz has called for doing away with voting machines, saying they are “eminently vulnerable to exploitation.” In a March post, he wrote that “DHS needs to ban voting machines for all federal elections. The time is now.” He also has repeatedly questioned the validity of Democratic electoral victories and pushed for Republicans to overhaul electoral systems to their advantage.

Election experts as well as current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz’s central role in overseeing the security of electoral systems and voting machines is especially concerning at a time when the administration is taking unprecedented steps to relitigate Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That includes the FBI’s seizure of 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, and having a team working for Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, take custody of voting machines used in Puerto Rico in 2020.

“The security of our election infrastructure depends on leadership that is trusted, impartial and grounded in evidence — not individuals who have promoted conspiracy theories about the very systems they are now responsible for protecting,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and the rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “Placing someone with that background in charge of policies affecting election security can undermine public confidence in our elections at a time when trust is already fragile.”

DHS didn’t answer detailed questions about Harvilicz or his team, providing a more general statement about the work done by the agency. “DHS and its employees are focused on keeping our elections safe, secure, and free,” it said. “Every single day appointees at the Department of Homeland Security work to implement the President’s policies and keep our Homeland safe.”

Harvilicz didn’t respond to questions about his DHS role. Harvilicz’s X account notes his post as DHS’ assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk and resilience policy but says he’s been detailed to the Defense Department. (Such temporary assignments are typically done in 120-day increments.)

Harvilicz was appointed to the DHS job around July, taking on a role that in the past has largely focused on shaping policy to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, including its election systems.

But current and former DHS officials say Harvilicz and his team have transformed their functions to become more hands-on. They’ve been deeply engaged with facilitating multiple administration data-gathering efforts aimed at scouring voter rolls for noncitizens, the officials said. ProPublica has reported on one such effort, which has led to hundreds of citizens being incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens.

Harvilicz’s team includes Heather Honey, the deputy assistant secretary of election integrity. ProPublica has reported that Honey was previously a leader in the Election Integrity Network, a conservative group that has challenged the legitimacy of American election systems. Honey worked closely with Cleta Mitchell, the network’s leader, who played a prominent role in helping Trump try to overturn his 2020 loss.

[VID]

Also reporting directly to Harvilicz is Samantha Anderson, who through the advocacy arm of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank closely associated with the president.

Multiple officials and elections experts said they were worried that Harvilicz and Honey would have prominent parts in assessing and describing the cybersecurity of the coming election, both to the public and to administration leaders. They also expressed concern that if Trump again wanted to get control of voting machines after the election, perhaps if Republicans lose seats in the midterms, that Harvilicz is ideally positioned to help them do so.

“It would be super easy for them to get the voting machines,” a current DHS official said, adding they can “describe it as they want, if they don’t like the results.”

Harvilicz co-founded Tranquility AI, which has developed an artificial intelligence tool for law enforcement, with Penrose, and they are listed on its 2025 patents as developing its systems together.

Penrose, a former intelligence officer, played a leading role in the campaign to help Trump in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, ProPublica has reported. Penrose also participated in multiple attempts to clandestinely seize voting machines, including in Michigan, where prosecutors accused him of breaking into some of the machines. (Penrose wasn’t charged in the case.) He appeared to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the failed Georgia prosecution in which Trump was accused of conspiring to overturn the election results, according to The Washington Post.

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an 3 26

As allies of President Donald Trump are rumored to be urging him to issue an executive order seizing control of elections ahead of the midterm elections, Arizona’s top attorney and election administrator both say doing so would be blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to happen.

“No president has the constitutional authority to ‘take control’ of elections,” Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Elections in this country are administered by states. It is a deliberate feature of our constitutional system designed to prevent the federal government from seizing power over how Americans choose their leaders.”

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a proposed executive order, written and supported by conspiracy theorists, has been passed around the White House with the goal of Trump formally issuing it. It would declare an emergency over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, and use that as the basis to wrest control of elections from states and make sweeping changes to how Americans register to vote and cast their ballots, and how those votes are then counted.

Mayes said the entire exercise is based on fanciful claims of election fraud that are not backed by any evidence, many of which were rejected by the courts in 2020.

“Arizona’s 2020 election results were investigated, audited, litigated, and certified, even by members of the president’s own party,” Mayes added. “There is nothing to relitigate, and debunked conspiracy theories are not a legal basis for seizing control of American elections.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement to the Mirror that his main concern is focusing on elections in Arizona, not Trump’s actions.

“I don’t have time to be distracted by noise from Washington DC. IF a new (executive order) is forthcoming, and it purports to violate the Constitution like the last one, we will challenge it in Court,” Fontes said. “For now, local and state elections officials in Arizona will stay focused on the task at hand: continuing to provide high quality elections for our voters, as we’ve done for decades.”

The draft executive order that is being shopped to the Trump administration was published by Democracy Docket, a digital news site about elections, and is said to be written by Peter Ticktin, a Trump ally and Florida-based lawyer who represents former Mesa County clerk and election denier Tina Peters.

When asked about the order by reporters on Friday morning, Trump said he had “never heard of it.”

The proposed executive order, an earlier version of which was published in April 2025 by a group led by Trump ally and election denier Cleta Mitchell, includes a number of proposals that have been on the wishlists of election conspiracy theorists for years.

It would require every voter to re-register in 2026; eliminate the use of ballot tabulation machines and force every ballot to be counted by hand; allow anyone to challenge the eligibility of voters; require all races be counted by midnight on Election Day; and create a national voter registration database.

The proposal also would have each ballot require a unique identifier, and each voter would need a unique PIN, which some have noted would erase the secret ballot requirement by Arizona law.

“First Trump said he’d impose new voting rules ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ and now extremists are pushing him to use emergency powers to control our elections,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X. “That’s not how things work in our country, and a federal takeover of our elections violates our Constitution and the law. The American people will not stand by and let their voting rights be undermined.”

Trump and his allies have been pushing for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem making a stop in Arizona to stump for it and fueling more baseless election conspiracy theories along the way.

She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster” and made the false claim that there is widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants. But when pressed by reporters to provide examples, Noem could not provide even a single one.

The proposed executive order is based around many of those baseless conspiracy theories, alluding to interference by foreign actors in machines and claims of widespread noncitizen voting, both of which have been found to be baseless.

The SAVE Act has passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a roadblock in the U.S. Senate because the GOP majority doesn’t have enough support to get around the filibuster. Trump has said that if it does not pass, he would look for alternative ways to enact it.

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an 2 26

Legal and voting rights experts are sounding the alarm after a Washington Post bombshell report revealed that President Donald Trump — who has been insisting on federalizing voting and has issued an executive order to pressure states to require proof of citizenship for voter registration — is now being urged by activists to sign an executive order declaring a voting "emergency."

The proposed 17-page order would "unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” the Post reported, noting that the proposal "claims China interfered in the 2020 election" which would be the "basis to declare a national emergency."

Former Trump national security official Miles Taylor warned that the "biggest electoral crime in American history might be unfolding."

"The president cannot seize control of state-run elections by declaring a fake 'emergency.' There’s no statute that permits it," wrote Fair Fight Action communications director Max Flugrath. "Reviving debunked conspiracy theories to force changes before a major election is what politicians do when they believe they’re going to lose."

Flugrath added that the Post's reporting follows up on an October New York Times investigation which found "that Trump officials discussed a fake 'national emergency' to force new election rules on states. A DHS official said it could allow Trump to 'go around Congress' and take over elections."

“What a gift such a clearly unconstitutional executive order would be!" election security expert David Becker told CBS News' Scott MacFarlane. "Though divorced from legal and factual reality, it would enable the courts to invalidate this power grab well in advance of the election, and confirm the clear limits to fed'l interference in elections."

Prominent elections attorney Marc Elias wrote, "My team and I have been anticipating this for months. It is unconstitutional and illegal. The media should note: Last time he issued an EO about voting, we sued and won. If Trump issues such an order we will sue again and we will win again."

"Far right voices in Colorado," journalist Kyle Clark noted, "have long called for this step as a prelude to military tribunals and mass executions."

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) said, that there is "no national emergency exception" to Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.

"States regulate elections unless Congress passes law," he added, stating that is why Trump "desperately" wants to pass the SAVE Act, "to suppress voting."

The NAACP called the proposed executive order a "dangerous proposal," and "a direct assault on our democracy."

Former WBZ-TV anchor Liam Martin commented, "I tend to think even this SCOTUS would block an attempt to federalize elections. But what Trump and his team are doing is setting the stage to declare the midterms void and refuse to seat the new members. What do we do then?"

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an 2 26

Intelligencer writer Ed Kilgore says “virtually every Republican political strategist agrees that the economy, and particularly the cost of living, will be the dominant issue in the 2026 midterms.”

Too bad MAGA isn’t letting the Republican Party go there.

“Convincing swing voters that [President] Donald Trump is decisively bringing back the best-ever economy and lowering the price of essential goods and services — which he promised to do a thousand times during his 2024 campaign — is the key to the Republican Party’s hopes of defying the odds and hanging on to control of Congress in November,” said Kilgore. “It’s reinforced by many polls that show the economy is the No. 1 concern for voters, and that there’s a great deal of anxiety, some of it generated by the rise of AI and the immense power of billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, that goes beyond prices at the gas pump and the grocery store.”

The voters know what they want, said Kilgore. But MAGA wants something else — and it’s MAGA that pulls the GOP levers.

“… [J]ust as the midterm campaign season begins in earnest, Trump’s MAGA movement, and perhaps Trump himself, are showing signs that they really don’t want to dwell on the economy beyond braying that it’s better than ever, blaming Democrats for every problem, and implying that unhappy Americans are ingrates,” said Kilgore. “… [At his State of the Union, Trump] churned through the affordability passages in a sleep-inducing manner and only came to life when he could return to savaging immigrants and the Democrats who defended them. And now a reenergized MAGA movement is waging a two-front war to keep immigration front and center in the national political discourse.”

But centrist voters who decide the November election are looking at their mounting bills, not the folks picking sweet potatoes or cleaning hotels, said Kilgore.

In addition to low-traction anti-immigration hype, Kilgore said MAGA is pushing hard on making it harder to vote — which is not only a low-interest issue with voters, but also not going to happen.

“… MAGA influencers are joining Trump in insisting that congressional Republicans make promoting the SAVE Act, their top, and perhaps only, priority this year,” said Kilgore. “… [but] SAVE Act proponents understand perfectly well that it will never see the light of day in the Senate.”

“Any way you slice it, a day spent ventilating about the completely made-up noncitizen-voting scourge (and all the attendant conspiracy theories and election denials justified by this myth) is a day when Republicans are not addressing affordability,” Kilgore added. “That might be fine with MAGA activists, but GOP candidates in purple states or marginal districts will surely think otherwise.”

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'Extraordinary Presidential Power': Trump Is Urged to Declare Emergency Over Voting

Trump, who has insisted on federalizing voting and who issued an executive order last March to pressure states to require proof of citizenship to register voters, is reportedly now being urged to declare an emergency over voting.

“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” The Washington Post reported in an exclusive.

“President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue.”

According to Florida lawyer Peter Ticktin, who is advocating for a presidential order on voting, “we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.”

“That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it,” Ticktin told the Post.

Claiming there is an emergency would allow the president to ban voting by mail and voting machines “as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued.”

Trump has repeatedly urged Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which critics say could disenfranchise millions of American citizens who do not currently have a passport or access to their birth certificates. It could also disenfranchise people who have married and changed their names but did not do so on all their legal documents.

“Trump has said that if the bill fails, he will act unilaterally to impose the changes for the midterms,” the Post reported.

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