SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
save act
This Is Not Just a War on Iran. It Is a War on American Democracy.
Trump's military gamble in the Middle East isn't just reckless foreign policy. It could be the opening move in the end of American democracy as we know it.
Apr 06, 2026
When Donald Trump ordered military action against Iran, the response from much of the political commentariat followed a familiar script. Reckless, they said. Destabilizing. A dangerous distraction from domestic failures. A president lashing out. All of these characterizations may be true. But they miss what may be the far more consequential story, one that connects the bombs falling on Tehran to a calculated, if desperate, effort to make democratic accountability in the United States structurally impossible.
This is not hyperbole. This is what the evidence, taken together, begins to suggest.
To understand why, we need to step back from the fog of the immediate crisis and ask a harder question: what does Donald Trump actually need right now? Not rhetorically. Not ideologically. Politically and structurally, what does a president with cratering poll numbers, a midterm catastrophe on the horizon, and a plutocratic agenda that depends entirely on his continued hold on power actually require to survive?
The answer, it turns out, looks a great deal like what we are watching unfold.
Buying the One Constituency That Could Stop Him
Trump's political coalition has always rested on an unusual alliance. Fossil fuel companies were early and enthusiastic backers. Big Tech, or at least significant factions of it, increasingly joined the fold, drawn by promises of deregulation and the intoxicating proximity to state power that Silicon Valley's more authoritarian-curious wing has found so appealing and profitable. These were the interests Trump understood, catered to, and rewarded.
The military-industrial complex, once ambivalent about Trump, now has enormous skin in the game.
But one pillar of American elite power remained conspicuously cool to the whole enterprise: the military-industrial complex. This was, in part, by design. Trump ran as the anti-war candidate, the scourge of "forever wars," the prophet of "America First," the man who would bring the troops home and stop pouring national treasure into conflicts that enriched Beltway contractors while delivering nothing to the working-class communities that voted for him. It was a potent message. It was also, we now know, a temporary one.
Consider what has happened in just the past week. Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion defence budget for fiscal year 2027 represents the largest military spending request in modern American history, a 44 percent increase over the previous year. As the Washington Post reports, this would be the biggest Pentagon budget in US history. Economists at Fortune describe it as rivaling the wartime mobilization of World War II. Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke put it bluntly: "MAGA was told an untruth by Trump. No foreign wars, no adventurism… This is a massive militarization—completely the opposite of what he told his base."
This is not a defense policy. It is a transaction.
And how is this historic spending increase being paid for? By gutting Medicaid, food assistance, housing programs, climate research, K-12 education, and virtually every program that materially supports the lives of the people who voted for Trump. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates this expansion of the military budget will add more than $3.2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. The president himself acknowledged his priorities plainly at an Easter luncheon this week for Christian religious leaders and Cabinet members: "We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We're fighting wars."
This is not a defense policy. It is a transaction. It is the most expensive political consolidation in American history, aimed squarely at drawing the defense industry and the Pentagon into the corporate bloc that sustains this administration. The Iran war, whatever its strategic rationale, serves that consolidation perfectly. Wars need weapons. Weapons need contracts. Contracts need contractors. The military-industrial complex, once ambivalent about Trump, now has enormous skin in the game.
But there is a second and more chilling dimension to this realignment. The military is not just an economic constituency. It is, historically, the institution most capable of checking an executive that moves to seize unconstitutional power. Trump appears to understand this. Over two days last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, Army General David Hodne, and the chief of chaplains Major General William Green, all with immediate effect. George had been expected to serve until the summer of 2027. According to Axios, a US official described firing the Army's most senior general in the middle of a war as "insane." The general replacing George, Christopher LaNeve, was previously a personal aide to Hegseth himself.
It is... worth considering the possibility that removing independent-minded commanders serves purposes that go well beyond the prosecution of the current war.
These firings did not come from nowhere. Hegseth has now removed more than a dozen senior military leaders across multiple branches since taking office, including Joint Chiefs Chairman General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the Navy's top admiral, and the head of the Coast Guard. The pattern is unmistakable: experienced, independent commanders are being replaced by loyalists. This is not about military effectiveness. It is about ensuring that when the moment comes, the armed forces are led by people whose careers depend entirely on the man in the White House.
Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered his assessment on Friday: "It's likely that experienced generals are telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly." That interpretation deserves to be taken seriously. Yet it is also worth considering the possibility that removing independent-minded commanders serves purposes that go well beyond the prosecution of the current war.
The Contradiction That Cannot Be Resolved
To understand why a broader power consolidation may be coming sooner than most people think, you have to understand the structural trap that Trumpism has always been caught in, a trap that is now visibly closing in around the administration and threatening its political survival.
Trump won his second term, as he won his first, by weaponizing legitimate grievances. The slow strangulation of working-class communities. Decades of wage stagnation. The punishing weight of rising costs in housing, healthcare, and food. He named these things loudly and unapologetically, when much of the Democratic establishment was still insisting that the fundamentals were sound. That naming had real political power. It brought him the votes of people who had seen their lives get harder through multiple administrations of both parties and had concluded that someone willing to say the unsayable was better than another round of managed decline.
It also created a structural problem that no amount of political talent can solve: the conditions Trump identified are not the product of bad leadership or globalist betrayal. They are the inevitable result of capitalism, specifically of four decades of neoliberal restructuring that concentrated wealth, hollowed out labor protections, financialized the economy, and made the cost of living an ever-growing crisis for the majority of Americans. Trump had neither the intention nor the ideological framework to change any of this. His economic program, built on tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation for corporations, and tariffs that function as a consumption tax on working people, does not address the underlying crisis. It accelerates it.
For a time, propaganda could paper over the gap between rhetoric and reality. The enemy was immigrants. The enemy was China. The enemy was the deep state, the fake news, the coastal elites. The culture war was stoked to a rolling boil to keep attention away from material conditions. But propaganda has a shelf life, and the Iran war has accelerated its expiry dramatically. Gas prices have broken four dollars a gallon for the first time in four years. Mortgage rates have risen for five consecutive weeks. Inflation expectations, already elevated, have worsened further.
Propaganda has a shelf life, and the Iran war has accelerated its expiry dramatically.
The polling numbers tell a story of collapse. Trump's approval rating on the economy has fallen to a new career low of 31 percent, according to CNN, with roughly two-thirds of Americans saying his policies have made economic conditions worse. His overall approval has dipped below 40 percent for the first time in his second term, with a net rating of minus 16.9. The University of Massachusetts Amherst poll put him as low as 33 percent overall, with researchers describing the numbers as "brutal" and noting drops of close to 20 points among men, working-class Americans, African Americans, moderates, and independents, the very groups whose support brought him back to the White House in 2024. For a politician who has always operated on the thinnest of margins, that number represents catastrophe.
The midterms loom, and they threaten to be devastating. Democrats have led the generic ballot in every single national poll taken since May 2025. The pattern, if it holds, points toward wave territory for Democrats by November. A significant takeover of the House or Senate would do more than slow Trump's legislative agenda. It would expose him to oversight, investigation, and the kind of accountability that his personal, family, and financial interests cannot survive. The MAGA project, which has always been as much about the enrichment of Trump and his inner circle as about any coherent political program, would face existential threat.
This is the contradiction that cannot be resolved through democratic competition. And that may be precisely why the response to it is ceasing to be democratic.
The Machinery of Electoral Sabotage
The moves are already underway, and they deserve to be named clearly, not as speculation, but as observable, documented fact.
The legislative effort to suppress voting began with the original SAVE Act in 2025 and has now evolved into the far more expansive SAVE America Act, which passed the House in February 2026. As the Center for American Progress documents, this legislation would require voters to present a passport or birth certificate in person to register to vote, disenfranchising potentially millions of citizens. Crucially, these Americans are disproportionately working-class people of color, married women who have changed their names, young people, and low-income voters. The bill would also implement extreme documentation requirements at polling places, restrict mail voting, and require all states to submit their voter registration rolls to the Department of Homeland Security. The Campaign Legal Center estimates that election officials could face criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for registering someone without the required documents, even if that person is a citizen.
The Brennan Center has stated the danger plainly: "The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump's power grab in legislative garb." As the Senate stalls on the bill, Trump has insisted Republicans end the filibuster to force it through, while simultaneously pressuring Republican governors to enact state-level versions. Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah have already complied. In the meantime, Steve Bannon has said aloud what many have thought privately, that ICE deployments to airports in recent months have been a "test run to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm elections."
Then there is JD Vance. This week, Trump formally designated his vice president as the national "fraud czar," heading a federally constituted task force with nationwide jurisdiction. Trump specified that while Vance's focus would be "everywhere," it would "primarily" target California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, New York, and other Democratic-led states. The move closely followed the swearing-in of a new Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement who reports directly to Vance and the president. Whatever the stated rationale of combating healthcare and social services fraud, the political targeting is explicit. The administration is constructing federal law enforcement tools aimed with open precision at the states most likely to vote against it in November.
Taken individually, each of these moves can be rationalized away. Yet together, they describe something coherent and deeply alarming.
And then there is the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi was removed from office this week, not because she was too independent or insufficiently loyal, but because Trump felt she had not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his political enemies. Federal judges had thrown out indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career prosecutors had warned that cases against other Trump targets lacked sufficient evidence. Courts had held DOJ officials in contempt. The president, frustrated, concluded that Bondi had not delivered. As a former DOJ attorney told NPR, Bondi "took a sledgehammer to the Justice Department and its workforce," and yet she was still not compliant enough. Her replacement is expected to be even more willing to use the department as a personal instrument of political retribution.
Taken individually, each of these moves can be rationalized away. Yet together, they describe something coherent and deeply alarming. They describe a government methodically removing or degrading the mechanisms, judicial, electoral, military, prosecutorial, by which a democratic system constrains and, when necessary, removes leaders who have lost public support.
Why Iran, Why Now
Which brings us back to the war, and why it may not be separable from any of this.
Wars do things that are useful to leaders facing political collapse. They activate nationalism. They shift media attention. They generate a rally-around-the-flag dynamic that briefly suspends normal political gravity and makes ordinary voters feel, however fleetingly, that this is not the moment for partisan criticism. They make the argument, always available and always dangerous, that dissent is disloyalty, that the Commander-in-Chief must not be undermined while American forces are in the field and American lives are at stake.
They also, crucially, create conditions of emergency that can be used to justify the postponement or disruption of normal democratic procedures. We have seen this logic deployed before, in other countries, in other eras. The emergency that never quite ends. The election that needs to be delayed, just this once, for reasons of national security. The opposition party that finds itself accused not of political disagreement but of actively aiding the enemy. The president whose wartime authority, he insists, should not be constrained by normal constitutional limits.
We are not there yet. But the distance between where we are and where this logic leads has arguably never been shorter in modern American history.
The budget that funds the war was released simultaneously with the gutting of the domestic programs that might otherwise give Trump's voters a reason to keep faith with his project. The generals who might push back against both the war strategy and the broader authoritarian drift have been fired and replaced by loyalists. The attorney general who was not pursuing political enemies aggressively enough has been removed. The voting restrictions designed to reduce participation by those least likely to support the Republican Party are advancing at the state and federal level simultaneously. The vice president has been handed a law enforcement tool specifically calibrated to target Democratic states in an election year.
None of these things, by itself, constitutes definitive proof of an intention to cancel or subvert the 2026 midterm elections. But the pattern they form, when viewed as a whole, is not ambiguous. It is the pattern of a government that is preparing the ground, legally, institutionally, militarily, for the possibility that it will not accept an unfavorable electoral outcome.
The Coming War on Democracy
Critics of Trump have spent nearly a decade describing him as an existential threat to democracy. That characterization has sometimes felt abstract, a warning about norms, institutions, and long-term trajectories that serious people took seriously but that never quite seemed to crystallize into something immediate and irreversible.
It no longer feels abstract.
What appears to be taking shape is a deliberate, multi-front effort to construct the conditions under which electoral democracy in the United States can be formally or informally suspended, and to build, through the military budget, through institutional purges, through legal mechanisms, through the systematic targeting of opposition strongholds, the structural supports that would make such suspension survivable for those carrying it out.
The Iran war may be reckless. It may be destabilizing. It may ultimately prove to be a catastrophic foreign policy blunder with devastating consequences for the region and the global economy. All of that can be true. It probably is true.
What appears to be taking shape is a deliberate, multi-front effort to construct the conditions under which electoral democracy in the United States can be formally or informally suspended...
But it may also be something else simultaneously. It may be a cornerstone, laid deliberately, at precisely this political moment, in a project whose ultimate aim is not victory in the Middle East, but the elimination of the political threat that a free and fair American election now represents to the people currently in power. A government that has lost public confidence, that faces the prospect of a wave election, and that has spent more than a year systematically hollowing out the institutions that might constrain it, does not need to announce its intentions in order for those intentions to become clear.
History is full of democracies that ended not with a single dramatic coup, but with a long sequence of individually explicable steps that combined proved irreversible. Each step seemed manageable. Each step could be rationalized. Each step was followed by warnings from critics that were dismissed as alarmism, right up to the moment when the warnings turned out to have been, if anything, not alarmed enough.
The question is no longer whether American democracy is under sustained and serious threat. The evidence for that is overwhelming and on the record. The question is whether enough people, in Congress, in the courts, in civil society, and in the streets, recognize the full scope of what is happening, and whether they are willing to act on that recognition before the window to act closes. That window, history suggests, does not stay open forever.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Supreme Court Appears Poised to Allow ‘Brazen Republican Effort to Disenfranchise Millions’ Ahead of Midterms
Mail-in voting "is relied upon by nearly one million Americans serving in the military abroad and nearly 50 million Americans living in the US," noted one expert.
Mar 23, 2026
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case in which Republicans are trying to ban states from accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day—a development that opponents warned could disenfranchise many of the roughly 50 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024.
Watson v. Republican National Committee challenges Mississippi's grace period for accepting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. While most states require mailed ballots to arrive by that date, 14 states provide extra time ranging from days to weeks. Such grace periods allow the votes of people including US troops stationed overseas, Americans living abroad, disabled people, and others to be counted.
The case is partly driven by President Donald Trump's unfounded assertion that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. Following Trump's 2020 election loss, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—created by the president in 2018—called the contest “the most secure in American history.” Trump promptly fired the head of the agency before leaving office.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a GOP effort to dramatically restrict mail-in voting Monday, when it hears oral arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
[image or embed]
— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) March 22, 2026 at 8:31 AM
Legal experts observing Monday's oral arguments said that some of the six Republican-appointed justices appeared sympathetic to arguments for restricting mail-in voting.
University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman said on Bluesky that Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas "sound like complete MAGA-pilled 'absentee voting/mail in voting is fraudulent' brains" who are "open to invalidating state laws allowing vote counting after Election Day—and perhaps more voting forms."
"They are doing what they often do in these cases with unhinged theories—invent far fetched hypos (could a state allow you to retract your vote, or say your vote is cast when you give your brother a ballot) to distract from what the case is about (is mail-in absentee voting going to be banned)," Litman added.
Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern said on Bluesky that Justice Samuel Alito "strongly implied that vote-by-mail, as practiced in most of the country today, is highly susceptible to fraud," adding that Gorsuch and Thomas "leaned in that direction as well," while Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts "are harder to read."
"SO many questions from the Republican-appointed justices so far having little or nothing to do with the law—they're venting their evident frustrations about modern election laws that broadly authorize mail voting and fretting that they're spoiling elections with distrust and fraud," Stern continued. "Really bad!"
"It's also pretty clear that the Republican-appointed justices do not understand a great deal about how elections are actually administered," he added. "Their questions (and especially hypotheticals) are built on weird, paranoid fantasies that do not align with reality."
Others warned of the high likelihood of voter disenfranchisement should the justices limit mailed ballots.
“Watson v. RNC is a brazen Republican effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans seeking to vote in the midterm elections," said Court Accountability co-founder Lisa Graves. "Mail-in voting has been part of the American election system since the Civil War, and this method of voting is relied upon by nearly one million Americans serving in the military abroad and nearly 50 million Americans living in the US."
“Of course, the hyper-partisan Roberts Court is considering using the power of the nation’s highest court–again–to put its thumb on the scale of justice in ways sought by the Republican Party," Graves continued. "Three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court are poised to join three other Republican appointees to side with the radical ruling of a trio of operatives Trump appointed to the Fifth Circuit."
Last November, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law that allowed mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days, setting up the Supreme Court showdown.
“Vote-by-mail is a secure and widely used way to participate in our elections," Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey said Monday. "It’s a lifeline for military and overseas voters, voters with disabilities, elderly voters, and rural voters living far from their polling places. Nearly one-third of the votes cast in the 2024 election were cast by mail, proving just how essential this option has become."
“Watson v. RNC is part of a broader effort to dismantle voting options ahead of this year’s midterms," Harvey continued. "After pushing congressional Republicans to eliminate vote-by-mail and adopting [United States Postal Service] policy changes that could disqualify ballots sent on time, Donald Trump and his allies are asking the Supreme Court to finish the job."
"If the court rules in their favor, they’ll be making it easier for politicians to hold onto power without answering to voters," she added.
Critics allege that disenfranchisement is the point of policies like limiting mail-in voting or requiring voter ID. Republicans have implied—and even admitted outright—that these policies help Republicans win elections. During a 2020 interview, Trump said he opposed expanding mail-in voting, saying such a move would mean the country would "never have a Republican elected... again."
Last year, Trump signed the Orwellian-named “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” executive order, which critics argued would do just the opposite by making it more difficult for millions of voters to cast their ballots. Among other things, the decree pushes states to require proof of citizenship when voting—a policy that opponents warn disproportionately disenfranchises lower-income individuals, elderly, and adopted people without easy access to their birth certificates and those born at home in rural areas whose birth records were never officially filed.
Congressional Republicans are also pushing the SAVE Act and Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, the latter of which was described by one analyst as the “most dangerous attack on voting rights ever" proposed in Congress. The SAVE Act—which would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of US citizenship—passed in the House last month.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Understanding MAGA's Plot to Rig the Midterms and Destroy Democracy
Here is a list of the plot’s main elements to help you stay informed, connected, and, above all, engaged.
Mar 12, 2026
The ongoing Trumpian plot to rig the midterms and end democracy is getting crazier and more dangerous by the day. The plot is also becoming increasingly layered and will likely continue all the way to next January 3, when newly elected members of the Senate and every member of the House will be sworn into office.
Keeping abreast of all the twists and turns as the scheme unfolds can be exhausting and overwhelming, and that’s exactly how our narcissist-in-chief and his assorted obergruppenführers want you to feel. But don’t give in. The plot is inherently flawed and, although we can never be certain, it will ultimately fail in the face of the president’s plummeting poll numbers, the deepening affordability crisis, and the growing popular resistance movement.
In the meantime, here is a list of the plot’s main elements to help you stay informed, connected, and, above all, engaged.
Nationalizing Elections by Executive Order, Declaring a National Emergency, and Going to War
In a February 2 appearance on former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino’s podcast, President Donald Trump called on Republicans to “take over“ and “nationalize“ voting in at least 15 states. As if on cue, the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative Washington, DC think tank, convened an “election integrity summit” on February 19. The confab was highlighted by a 30-person roundtable discussion on the need to persuade Trump to issue a new executive order that would give him unprecedented control over how federal elections are run.
There is nothing more dangerous than an autocrat afraid of losing power, and there is no autocrat on the world stage today more fearful and paranoid than Donald Trump.
A who’s who of high-profile election deniers attended the summit, including Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser; attorney Cleta Mitchell, who directs the aptly misnamed Election Integrity Network; and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Also in attendance, according to ProPublica, was Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer who is reinvestigating the 2020 election, along with other administration officials.Initially drafted in 2025 and currently being updated, the proposed order totals 17 pages. It would authorize Trump to declare an emergency under the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to counter alleged foreign interference in elections by requiring strict voter ID procedures, accelerating voting roll purges, banning mail-in ballots, and getting rid of voting machines in favor of hand-counting all votes.
The order doesn’t specify which countries have meddled in our elections. But Trump has targeted China in the past, and is currently accusing Iran, complaining in a 1:35 am Truth Social rant on February 28 that Iran interfered in the “2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States.” This serves the dual purpose of adding another justification for the war and, as election lawyer Marc Elias has noted, another rationale for Trump’s midterm power grab.
Like the executive order on voting rights Trump issued in March 2025, the new proposed order should be overturned by the courts, but only after costly and protracted litigation. Under Article I of the Constitution, the states determine the “times, places, and manner of holding elections.” Congress can pass legislation to regulate state voting procedures, but the president has no independent authority to do so.
Still, there is considerable peril ahead. No court rulings can prevent red states from voluntarily complying with Trump’s demands and affecting down-ballot races that might favor Democrats. Thus far, at least 10 states, including Texas, have handed over their full voter files to the Department of Justice, and the DOJ has sued more than 20 states that have refused to do the same. Even worse, on January 28., the FBI seized voting records from an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rebuffed the administration’s records request. The specter of similar raids in noncomplying states looms as the midterms approach.
The SAVE Act and Its Successors
Realizing the limitations of unilateral executive action, Trump loyalists have introduced legislation to accomplish what his executive orders cannot.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act passed in the House on April 10 and is pending before the Senate. If enacted, it would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or some other documentary proof of citizenship in person every time they register or re-register to vote, and require each state to ensure that only US citizens are registered to vote and to remove noncitizens from their voter lists. It would also create a private right of action, after the fashion of the Texas antiabortion law, to allow disgruntled individuals to sue election officials who register voters without obtaining proof of citizenship and establish criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for election officials who violate the act.
Fortunately, the act has stalled in the Senate, blocked at least temporarily by the filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote majority to advance legislation. However, two new bills—an amended version of the SAVE Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act—have been introduced in the House with strong backing from Trump, who claimed in his recent State of the Union address that “cheating [by Democrats in elections] is rampant.” Should any of the bills reach the Resolute Desk, the courts will be hard-pressed to block them, although legal challenges will no doubt be filed. And in yet another Truth Social rant posted in the early hours of March 8, Trump threatened not to sign any legislation until the act passes the Senate.
Mid-Decade Gerrymandering
Every 10 years, after the census, the Constitution requires the states to redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts to reflect population changes in a process known as reapportionment, or redistricting. If done fairly, the process provides equal representation for all voters regardless of race, gender, or party affiliation, guided by the ideal of “one person, one vote.”
Sadly, the process is deeply flawed and often yields to gerrymandering. A portmanteau coined after the salamander-like image that resulted on a map of the voting districts created by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812, gerrymandering today refers to the abusive practice of drawing electoral boundaries to give an advantage to a dominant party, group, or socioeconomic class.
Until now, states have typically redistricted only once per decade. But last July, under intense pressure from Trump, Texas broke the norm, drafting a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional House seats. Since then, other states have followed suit, touching off a mid-decade gerrymandering war that has spread to California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, and soon to other states. On balance, the math slightly favors the Republicans. But the war could easily backfire as a new blue wave appears to be building, and more voters, even in red states, come to realize they have been duped by the con man from Queens.
Deploying ICE at the Polls
In a February 3 podcast, former White House strategist Steve Bannon called on Trump to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to polling sites to prevent noncitizens from voting. Echoing the president’s own oft-repeated conspiracy theory, Bannon said:
We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.
Asked about Bannon’s comments two days later, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November… but what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.”
Leavitt’s remarks were anything but reassuring for an administration that thrives on deceit. It is a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place. It would not be illegal, however, for ICE to deploy to blue state cities on Election Day in the general vicinity of polling places with the goal of intimidating newly naturalized citizens from voting. In fact, it would be astonishing if ICE stayed home.
January 3, 2027
If all other tactics and any lawsuits the GOP launches fail, Trump and his most die-hard adherents will have one last opportunity to stop the Democrats from taking over the House and possibly the Senate on January 3, 2027, when the next Congress is sworn in.
The 20th Amendment mandates that every new Congress convene at noon on January 3. The first session of each chamber is supposed to be purely ceremonial in nature, just like the joint session of Congress that convenes on January 6 to count Electoral College ballots after a presidential election. But as we saw on January 6, 2021, ceremony can quickly give way to chaos, and even outright insurrection. This is especially true when given a patina of legality, as the 2020 election deniers concocted the theory that Vice President Mike Pence had the discretion to reject swing-state electoral votes cast in favor of Joe Biden.
If anything, there is even more opportunity for disruption and potential chaos on January 3. Each chamber has its own rules for the swearing-in process. In the House, the members elect vote to select a new speaker, who is sworn into office by the dean of the House—the most senior (longest-serving) member, regardless of party. Once sworn in, the new speaker administers the oath to the members elect.
The American people, on the other hand, are waking up and rejecting the neofascist horrors their president is offering them and their children.
But what happens if the dean refuses to swear in a new speaker, alleging election fraud? The current dean of the House is Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, an election denier who voted against the certification of the 2020 election. If Trump demands, would Rogers delay or decline to swear in a Democratic speaker? Would he defy the president?
In the Senate, each newly elected member is sworn in by the vice president of the United States, who serves as president of the Senate. What happens if JD Vance, following instructions from his boss, refuses to swear in a critical number of Democrats?
Each chamber has procedures for resolving election disputes, but they are rarely invoked, and it remains to be seen how Trump would exploit them.
There is nothing more dangerous than an autocrat afraid of losing power, and there is no autocrat on the world stage today more fearful and paranoid than Donald Trump. He is prepared to do anything he can to stave off defeat, but his age and incompetence have finally caught up with him, and his aura of invincibility has been pierced. The American people, on the other hand, are waking up and rejecting the neofascist horrors their president is offering them and their children. In the end, they will see to it that the plot to rig the midterms and end democracy fails.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'So Be It,' Says Schumer After Trump Issues Unhinged Threat Against 2026 Voting Rights
"Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances," vowed the Senate Minority Leader.
Mar 08, 2026
The extremes to which the Republican Party will go to sway the 2026 elections in their favor was highlighted again on Sunday after US President Donald Trump said he will sign no other legislation into law this year until the SAVE Act—a bill that would deeply erode voting rights and threatens ballot access for tens of millions of Americans—is passed by Congress.
"It must be done immediately," Trump declared in a characteristically unhinged social media post on Sunday, referring to the SAVE Act, versions of which have passed the Republican-controlled House but so far stalled in the Senate.
"It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE," Trump continued in an all-caps tantrum. "I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION - GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY - ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!"
Voting rights experts and Democratic lawmakers have denounced the SAVE Act as a dangerous threat to millions of eligible voters, calling it a clear effort by the GOP to tip the scales in their favor by depressing voter turnout in 2026 and beyond.
"In every form, the SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Our research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents," warned Eliza Sweren-Becker and Owen Bacskai of the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for robust voting rights, in a blog post last week.
"Roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport," Sweren-Becker and Bacskai continued. "Millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard."
In response to Trump's threat on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) characterized the SAVE Act as "Jim Crow 2.0" as he condemned the president and his GOP allies.
"If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate," said Schumer. "Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said Sunday that the SAVE Act—which Trump said last week must be passed "at the expense of everything else"—is not a voter ID bill, but rather "voter suppression" legislation bill masquerading as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
"If it was a voter ID bill, it would provide people with the proper IDs to vote, with no barriers — but it doesn’t," noted D'Arrigo. "The voter fraud rate is .0001%, and this bill would potentially prevent up to 69 million women, 40 million who don’t have access to their birth certificate, and 140 million without a passport, from voting."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Calls for GOP to Pass Major Attack on US Voting Rights 'At the Expense of Everything Else'
The SAVE America Act and related bills "aren't about keeping our elections free and fair," warned the ACLU. "They're about politicians setting the stage to interfere with election results they don't like."
Mar 05, 2026
In a pair of Truth Social posts on Thursday, President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to pass the voter suppression bill that is stalled in the US Senate after being advanced by the House of Representatives last month.
"The Republicans MUST DO, with PASSION, and at the expense of everything else, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT—And not the watered down version. This is a Country Defining fight for the Soul of our Nation!" Trump wrote Thursday morning.
In a separate post about an hour later, the president added:
THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!
1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. (IDENTIFICATION!).
2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP IN ORDER TO VOTE.
3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).
4. NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS.
5. NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION SURGERY FOR CHILDREN, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN APPROVAL OF THE PARENTS
The posts came just eight months ahead of the midterms that will determine which party controls each chamber of Congress for the rest of the president's second term—which is also supposed to be his final, under the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, but the 79-year-old with a history of lying about election results and voter fraud has repeatedly teased trying to stay in power.
Trump and other advocates of the SAVE America Act—and its state-level copycats—have claimed that the bill is necessary to prevent immigrants from participating in elections, even though noncitizen voting is already illegal and research has made clear that voter fraud is incredibly rare in the United States.
The House-approved version of the bill, led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would require states to regularly submit voter rolls to the US Department of Homeland Security, and to obtain proof of citizenship, in person, when registering someone to vote. It would also force voters to present eligible photo identification at the polls.
Critics of the bill have argued that rather than tackling the nonexistent issue of noncitizen voting, the SAVE America Act would disenfranchise eligible voters who don't have access to proof of citizenship documents—such as people who have lost paperwork, can't afford replacements, or have changed their names.
The ACLU has a tool to help Americans contact their senator to oppose the SAVE Act, SAVE America Act, and Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act. The automatic message says in part that "these bills aren't about keeping our elections free and fair. They're about politicians setting the stage to interfere with election results they don't like. Please reject these dangerous, anti-voter bills."
The SAVE Act and its more extreme version, the SAVE America Act, could shut millions of eligible citizens out of our democracy.Tell Congress to reject these attacks on our freedom to vote at aclu.org/stop_anti_voter_
[image or embed]
— ACLU (@aclu.org) March 3, 2026 at 1:29 PM
While House Republicans were able to approve the legislation mostly along party lines—the only Democrat who supported it was Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who notably received a pardon from the president recently—the Senate GOP's majority is too slim to get most bills past the 60-vote filibuster without some Democratic support.
Trump also renewed his call for passing the legislation in his State of the Union address last month, specifically calling out Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). The following day, the Associated Press reported that Thune backs the bill, and Republicans were discussing how to send it to the president's desk.
According to the AP:
Senate Republicans "aren't unified on an approach," Thune said on Wednesday after Trump's speech.
In an effort to get around Democratic opposition, Trump and others have pushed a so-called "talking filibuster," which would bring the Senate back to the days of the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, when senators talked indefinitely to block legislation. Today, the Senate mostly skips the speeches and votes to end debate, which takes 60 votes in the Senate where Republicans have a 53-47 majority.
Republicans wouldn't have to change the rules to force a talkathon. They could simply keep the Senate open and make Democrats deliver speeches for days or weeks to delay taking up the legislation. But Thune would still need enough support from his caucus to move forward with that approach, and he said this week that "we aren't there yet."
Absent progress in the Senate, several state legislatures are considering similar bills. Citing the Voting Rights Lab tracker, Talking Points Memo reported Tuesday that 15 states have 26 active election bills with proof of citizenship requirements.
"I think what we're often seeing in these states is that there's an effort to send political messages that don't necessarily comport with the reality of election integrity or the needs of election officials," David Becker, a former US Department of Justice lawyer and executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told TPM.
"Like the SAVE Act, this would require citizens to regularly work to make up for government deficiencies, digging out and showing their citizenship papers over and over and over again when they've already shown them," Becker said of state-level proposals. "Why are we insisting that citizens have to work for government, rather than government working for us?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Graham Platner Warns 'Susan Collins Wants to Make It Harder to Vote’ With SAVE Act
"Under this terrible bill, if you get married and change your name, or if you can't find your passport—you could be turned away from the polls."
Feb 18, 2026
In her home state of Maine for the first time since officially announcing she is running for reelection in the November midterms, US Sen. Susan Collins has been explaining to local media outlets why she is supporting President Donald Trump's bill that would impose new restrictions on voter registration and could prevent tens of millions of Americans from casting ballots.
But Graham Platner, the progressive veteran and oyster farmer running in the Democratic primary, provided his own analysis of the Republican senator's planned vote.
"Susan Collins is never there to protect Mainers and she's never there to protect our democracy, but she is always there to help Donald Trump," said Platner in a video he posted to social media.
Susan Collins wants to make it harder to vote.
She just bailed out Trump and cosponsored the "SAVE Act.” Under this terrible bill, if you get married and change your name, or if you can't find your passport — you could be turned away from the polls. pic.twitter.com/QYrQLmQmsf
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) February 18, 2026
Collins announced her support for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act days after it was narrowly passed in the US House.
If signed into law, the SAVE Act would require Americans to provide proof of US citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in person when they register to vote.
The proposal is part of the Trump administration's long-term effort to spread misinformation about noncitizens trying to vote in US elections—which is already illegal.
Collins on Monday suggested the SAVE Act would prevent fraud at the polls, telling News Center Maine that the bill "is important to ensure confidence in the results of our elections."
"There is no evidence that unauthorized immigrants, green-card holders, or immigrants on temporary visas are voting in significant numbers, despite some claims that 'millions' of noncitizens are voting in US elections," according to the Migration Policy Institute. "In fact, audits by election officials and numerous studies reflect that voter fraud by noncitizens is extremely rare."
Instead of stopping noncitizens from engaging in fraudulent voting, the Brennan Center for Justice warned last week, the SAVE Act is projected to stop an estimated 21 million citizens from casting ballots lawfully.
That's the number of Americans who don't have ready access to the documents they would need to register, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
"Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example, and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote," said the group.
Collins insisted in an interview with ABC News affiliate WMTW that showing proof of citizenship one time when registering would not be "burdensome," and said she would not support the SAVE Act if it required showing a passport or birth certificate every time a person voted.
But Platner emphasized that "under this terrible bill, if you get married and change your name, or if you can't find your passport—you could be turned away from the polls."
"Susan Collins wants to make it harder to vote," he said.
Collins' own constituents overwhelmingly rejected a state proposal to require a photo ID to vote, with 64% of Mainers voting against the referendum in November.
Platner, who has been leading Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in numerous polls as well as in small-dollar fundraising in recent months ahead of the June 9 primary, pointed to Collins' history of portraying herself as an independent-minded moderate Republican while joining the president in supporting some of his most consequential political moves, such as the appointment of right-wing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
"In classic Susan Collins fashion," said Platner, "she is yet again showing up for Donald Trump when he needs her most."
The SAVE Act has little chance of passing in the Senate, as it needs support from 60 senators to advance to a final vote. Collins was the 50th Republican to back the SAVE Act in the Senate.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Arizona GOP Pushes 'Fascist' Bill Requiring ICE at the Polls on Election Day
It comes shortly after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went to Arizona and said her agency would "make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders."
Feb 18, 2026
As the Trump administration threatens to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement to menace voters on election day, Arizona Republicans are pushing for a bill that would require every county to allow federal agents at polling places to “observe election activities.”
The Arizona state Senate is expected to take up the proposal this week, which would require all 15 counties in the state to sign an agreement with ICE “to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location within this state where ballots are cast or deposited.”
Following federal agents' killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis and a wave of violence and civil rights violations, including racial profiling, approval of ICE is at an all-time low among the American public, with more Americans now saying they want to abolish the agency than keep it around, according to polls.
Nearly half of all Arizona residents are nonwhite. Under this proposal, there will be virtually no way for them to vote without a federal immigration agent potentially watching.
The memo introducing the text to Senate Bill 1570 "requires such an agreement to provide for the presence of federal immigration law enforcement personnel during all hours in which voting is conducted, or ballots are deposited, including early voting locations, election day polling places, and ballot drop box locations."
It also "allows federal immigration law enforcement personnel to observe election activities and perform lawful duties within the scope of their federal authority."
As Jerod MacDonald-Evoy noted for the Arizona Mirror, monitoring elections is explicitly considered to be outside the "lawful duties" of ICE agents.
The proposal... seems to directly run afoul of federal law, which bars “any troops or armed men” who are part of “the civil, military, or naval service of the United States” from being deployed to polling locations. The only exception is if doing so is needed to “repel armed enemies of the United States.”
The proposal was introduced by Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-15), the chairman of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, whose page on the official website of the Arizona state legislature states that his "mission" is to "destroy the progress of Marxist communists at every level."
His bill prohibits agents from "interfering with the casting or depositing of ballots, except as otherwise authorized by law." However, Hoffman has suggested that agents are intended to verify who is and is not allowed to vote.
“The intent is to deter violations before they happen, ensure existing laws are followed, and protect the rights of every lawful voter,” Hoffman said Tuesday. “Just as importantly, the legislation makes clear that voting cannot be disrupted and that no one may be targeted simply for participating in an election. When voters see the rules applied fairly and consistently, confidence in the outcome follows.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has given agents directives to detain people without judicial warrants and perform "roving patrols" that take people's ethnicity and spoken language into account. There are many documented cases in which agents have stopped and detained US citizens purely based on their accent.
After previously floating the idea to outright cancel the 2026 midterm elections for fear of losing, President Donald Trump has more recently called for Republicans to "nationalize the voting" in certain Democratic strongholds in violation of the Constitution.
A top ally of the president, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, said earlier this month that Trump should "have ICE surround the polls" on election day so Democrats don't "steal the country again"—a reference to the baseless claim, disproven by numerous investigations and court cases, that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.
The White House has since sought to downplay fears that agents may swarm the polls later this year.
At a press conference last week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said deploying ICE to polling centers was "not something I’ve ever heard the president consider.” But she also hedged, saying: “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November.”
Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, assured members of Congress during a hearing last week that "there’s no reason to use ICE officers" at polling stations.
However, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has hinted that her agency, which oversees ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will have a role in determining who is allowed to vote.
“When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country,” she said on Friday.
Those comments were made as Noem paid a visit to Arizona to promote the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act.
This bill, proposed by Republicans in the US Congress, would require voters to prove their citizenship—not just provide a voter ID—in order to vote, which advocates have warned would lead to the potential disenfranchisement of millions of eligible voters. Noem said she discussed elections with Arizona officials.
Arizona's bill to allow ICE in the polls, which will receive a hearing in the Senate on Wednesday, suggests that Republicans there expect Trump's troops to be on their way in November.
Garrett Archer, a data analyst and reporter at ABC15 Arizona, said that Republican operatives in the state view the bill as a "telegraph of the potentially incoming Trump executive order."
"An executive order cannot force states to compel voters to show ID to vote," he wrote on social media. "But what they can try to do is station federal agents at polling places who would conduct the ID check."
Republicans control both houses of the Arizona state legislature and could theoretically pass the bill without Democratic support. However, it is unlikely to be signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Elvia Díaz, a former editorial page editor and contributor at the Arizona Republic, said that although the requirement is unlikely to become law, "the mere idea is chilling."
"It signals, once again, that Trump Republicans are laying the groundwork to militarize the electoral process," she wrote in a blog post. "Placing armed immigration agents at the very locations where citizens exercise their right to vote resembles the kind of intimidation tactics seen in authoritarian regimes."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The SAVE Act Is Latest Salvo in Trump's Voter Suppression Arsenal
The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.
Feb 12, 2026
For months, we have warned of a drive by President Donald Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent—and over the past week, the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape, especially after House Republicans on Wednesday night passed the euphemistically named SAVE Act.
Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.
Effectively, the bill would require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register and thus to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example. and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote.
With passage in the House (not for the first time), it will be up to senators to block it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival.” But this time around, a mobilized outside drive is pushing lawmakers to restrict voting. “It must be done or democracy is dead,” instructed Elon Musk. The SAVE Act will not expire quietly, surrounded by loved ones. It’s on all of us to stand up and speak out, once again.
Each time Trump declares that his goal is to “nationalize” the election—not for the greater good, but for his own political interests—the stakes become clearer.
And now we see how it fits into the broader strategy.
In recent days, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Republicans “nationalize” the elections on behalf of his political party. Each time his aides try to clean up his remarks, he doubles down. “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” he wrongly insisted.
Constitutionally, that’s upside-down land. The Constitution is unambiguous: States run elections. Presidents have no role.
Congress, appropriately, can enact national legislation. It should use that power to pass national standards to protect the freedom to vote, not restrict it.
Then there’s the appalling abuse of federal law enforcement. We still do not know why Kash Patel’s FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia nearly two weeks ago. A judge has ordered that the underlying legal papers, secret until now, be released. ProPublica reports the raid may be linked to agitation by a “conservative researcher” who has peddled discredited conspiracy theories.
Intelligence chief-gadfly Tulsi Gabbard showed up at the Atlanta raid. FOMO? Amid Justice Department ducking and a denial by Trump, Gabbard wrote to Congress that in fact the president ordered her to go even though her office plays no part in elections. Now it turns out that Gabbard last year obtained voting machines in Puerto Rico. And Trump’s allies in 2020 claimed that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, long dead, had masterminded a plot.
This is comic opera stuff. But it’s deadly serious, too—certainly for the public servants in Fulton County. It all aims to send a message to intimidate election officials around the country. If you preside over an election and we don’t like the result, we may come after you.
Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who served prison time for defying a congressional subpoena, declared on Tuesday, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.” When we see how politicized and aggressive immigration forces have become, that threat becomes more than a podcaster’s bombast.
Here, the law is clear: That would be a federal crime. My colleague Sean Morales-Doyle explains: “Can the president send troops or ICE agents to polling places? No—both federal and state laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from carrying out these implied threats.” It’s a federal crime to intimidate voters, too.
In coming months, if we see abuses of power like this, what can we all do to ensure that voters have their voice?
So far, we and others have staved off Trump’s worst impulses. After Trump signed an executive order last year purporting to unilaterally rewrite election rules, we sued the administration, and we won. And as the Trump administration continues to sue states for sensitive voter information, courts in California, Michigan, and Oregon have reaffirmed states’ right to refuse.
State and local governments, too, must be ready to act to protect the polls.
And voters will need to know that, despite all the noise and drama, we can make sure the 2026 elections are free, fair, secure, and, yes, uneventful. It may require voting early or by mail, for example.
In an election year, voting rights advocates often ponder whether pointing to threats risks demobilizing citizens. At some point, warning about voter suppression can accidentally dampen participation.
Not this year, it seems. Each time Trump declares that his goal is to “nationalize” the election—not for the greater good, but for his own political interests—the stakes become clearer. When he wrongly insists American elections are “rigged,” as he did over the weekend, it’s more than bluster. He’s saying the quiet part out loud.
In 2026, the right to vote will demand a fight to vote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Our Democracy Depends on Rejecting This Charade': GOP Pushes Bills to Prevent Millions From Voting
"It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb," said one expert.
Feb 11, 2026
Congressional Republicans on Tuesday held hearings on a pair of bills that watchdogs, election experts, and Democratic lawmakers characterized as brazen and dangerous efforts to suppress voter turnout in service of President Donald Trump's broader assault on democracy—which has included a call for the GOP to "nationalize the voting."
Tuesday's hearings, held by the House Committees on Rules and Administration, featured a revived version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act and Rep. Bryan Steil's (R-Wis.) newly introduced Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which one analyst described as possibly the "most dangerous attack on voting rights ever" unveiled in the US Congress.
During his opening remarks at the House Administration Committee hearing on the MEGA Act, the panel's ranking member, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), said that "this scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it's how they plan to take over our country."
"Republicans know that they have one hope at winning the next election: change the rules of the game, destroy the rule of law, and desert any last remaining shred of allegiance to the United States Constitution," Morelle added.
@RepJoeMorelle on the anti-voting MEGA Act:
“This scheme is not just how Republicans plan to take over our elections, it’s how they plan to take over our country.”
👇Learn more:https://t.co/kkm6ISuedX pic.twitter.com/g2kRbLIxGX
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) February 10, 2026
Both the SAVE Act—which is expected to get a House vote this week—and the MEGA Act would impose severe restrictions on voting access by effectively eliminating voter registration by mail, implementing nationwide photo ID requirements, banning universal mail-in ballots for federal elections, allowing massive voter roll purges, and threatening nonpartisan election officials with imprisonment if they fail to uphold the bills' strict voter documentation requirements.
If passed, the SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to furnish documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in person. The Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that 21 million people in the US "lack ready access to these documents," noting that "half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example, and millions of married women who have changed their names might need to jump through extra hoops to vote."
"Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting," the Brennan Center wrote in an analysis of the legislation on Tuesday. "It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb."
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law Coalition placed the voter suppression bills in the context of Trump's "yearslong campaign of election lies and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 results" as well as "his recent attempts to nationalize election administration, and weaponization of the Department of Justice to intimidate voters and officials."
"Republicans are falling in line by attempting to silence American voters under the guise of 'election integrity,'" the coalition said. "House Republicans are doing Trump's bidding instead of holding him accountable. The real threats to election integrity sit in the White House and among those enabling his authoritarian agenda. Our democracy depends on rejecting this charade and confronting Trump's documented attacks on free and fair elections."
The Trump White House has publicly endorsed the SAVE Act amid mounting fears that the president—animated by false claims of large-scale voter fraud—is moving to undermine the midterm elections later this year.
"It will be up to Democrats to hold their ground and ensure the SAVE Act’s ultimate defeat. It will be up to all of us to not be fooled by the myths and the lies—and protect our elections so they remain free and fair," wrote Brennan Center president Michael Waldman. "And we should stand with election officials who now face threats of groundless criminal prosecution for doing their jobs."
"For voters, who must have the most powerful voice in our democracy," Waldman added, "the stakes are high, and getting higher."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why Trump's Attack on Minneapolis Is Also an Attack on Our Elections
This armed assault on a major American city, coupled with a thuggish offer implying that the bully boys might be pulled back if state officials will betray their voters, shows the damage that can be done without outright canceling the midterms.
Jan 29, 2026
The nation has been convulsed by the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Millions now see with sickening clarity a lawless assault by federal officers on an American city and its people. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized, it is a “moral and political debacle for the Trump presidency.”
The videos were followed by a fusillade of lies from senior government officials. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti had engaged in “domestic terrorism.” White House aide Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who tried to “murder federal agents.” Border official Gregory Bovino declared, “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” The instant impulse by these high officials was to bully and smear.
Another outrageous statement by a cabinet official has not gotten enough attention.
On Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz linking the violence in Minneapolis to a demand that the state give the Justice Department complete access to the state’s sensitive voter rolls, among other things. There’s no explicit quid pro quo offered—but anyone familiar with Grade B gangster movies won’t miss the implication. Certainly that’s how state officials have read it. Let that sink in: Federal agents have killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And the response of the attorney general of the United States is to use it as leverage to illegally access voter data. That is an unambiguous abuse of power.
That sense of crisis, consciously instigated, can create opportunities to undermine the election and sow doubt and division.
As my colleague Wendy Weiser has written, “What do voter rolls have to do with ICE? Nothing. But they have a lot to do with the administration’s ongoing efforts to meddle in elections.”
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon provided Bondi with the only legal and responsible answer (a simple “no”), describing her offer as “an apparent ransom.”
Make no mistake: The federal government has no authorization to demand confidential voter information from the states. In our constitutional system, states are responsible for maintaining and protecting voter rolls. Indeed, various state and federal laws limit how much data the federal government can collect.
But that hasn’t stopped it from trying. Bondi’s Justice Department has demanded access to the voter records of 44 states and Washington, DC, and it has sued more than 20 states for not complying. Two courts have already ruled on the side of the states.
Why would the administration want to hoover up this data? It would give election deniers new ammunition to push false claims of voting by people who are not US citizens. It would help the federal government pressure states into reckless voter purges, which would kick eligible citizens off the rolls just as November rolls around.
Plainly, it’s all part of a broader strategy to meddle with our elections. Last weekend, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Republicans are looking into yet another version of the unpopular SAVE Act—the bill that would require American citizens to produce a birth certificate, passport, or similar document to register to vote. At least 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents, according to our research. The bill narrowly passed the House but stalled in the Senate last year after massive public pushback.
Bondi’s letter is a gross escalation of this effort—an explicit abuse of this moment to coerce Minnesota to step into line.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) worries that this escalation is by design. Over the weekend, he warned that the “Trump administration is creating this mayhem, particularly in cities in swing states, in order to take control of the election.”
When Donald Trump took office the first time in 2017, he talked of “American carnage.” Shooting of bystanders, squads of masked armed men, terrorized immigrants, clouds of tear gas, vague claims of conspiracy, and more—all bring that “carnage” to life. That sense of crisis, consciously instigated, can create opportunities to undermine the election and sow doubt and division.
To be clear (and I get asked this a lot): Donald Trump cannot cancel the midterms. Presidents have no power to do that.
But this armed assault on a major American city, coupled with a thuggish offer implying that the bully boys might be pulled back if state officials will betray their voters, shows the damage that can be done nonetheless.
The dignified and angry public response from around the country to the latest killing suggests maybe something has snapped. It would not be the first time in our history that government violence kindled an even more powerful reaction.
It’s not only the safety and sanity of people in Minnesota that’s at stake. As we are reminded once again, our democracy is on the line.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy