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voter suppression
It's the Corrpution, Stupid: Democrats Need Just One Word to Knock Out the GOP
Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. They won't be hard to spot.
Oct 10, 2026
In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.
And the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.
Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”
From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.
It will work here, too!
Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”
At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:
— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).
— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.
— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.
— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.
— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.
— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.
— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…
— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).
— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.
— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.
— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.
— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.
— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.
— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.
— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.
— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.
— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.
— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.
— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.
— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.
Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:
“Drain the swamp.”
It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.
— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.
— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).
— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.
— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.
— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.
From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.
— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”
— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.
— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.
It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.
Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.
There’s a whole panoply of issues Democrats can and should seize on, from privatization to deregulation to climate change to affordability to healthcare and education, but the core — the foundation — of every one of them is corruption.
Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.
Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.
It’s simple, easy, and powerful: “It’s the corruption, stupid!”
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‘Affront to Democracy’: Trump's National Guard Troops Seen in Front of Ballot Box in DC
"Armed troops do not belong near ballot boxes," the head of the District of Columbia ACLU told Common Dreams.
Oct 09, 2026
Amid fears that President Donald Trump will send armed agents to intimidate voters during the midterms, the DC Board of Elections told Common Dreams on Friday that it is responding to complaints of National Guard troops stationed outside a ballot drop box near downtown Washington shortly before voting was set to open.
On Thursday, Bryan K. Randolph, a Washington, DC-based political and legal commentator, posted a video to TikTok showing what he said were three members of the National Guard stationed in front of a ballot box outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which is located on the campus of George Washington University.
"I stood and watched for a few minutes before I shot this video," Randolph said. "They were there for at least a few minutes. I don't know for how much longer they'd been there before that."
@brynodc 10/8 National Guard at Ballot Box, Washington, DC. Foggy bottom metro.
♬ original sound - BrynoDC
He said that minutes after he began filming, the troops left, possibly because they saw him recording.
Federal law explicitly prohibits the presence of "any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held" unless their presence is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.
Though the statute does not specifically mention ballot drop boxes, legal experts have argued that the phrase "any place" means it should apply not just to traditional polling places, but also ballot drop boxes, election offices, and ballot counting facilities.
While he said it was unclear why the troops were stationed at the ballot box, Randolph noted that it was "a giant white box with the word 'ballot' pretty hard to miss," adding that "they clearly, at best, have not been told to stay away."
A spokesperson for the DC Board of Elections confirmed to Common Dreams that it "has received complaints regarding National Guard personnel posted near a ballot drop box next to the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station."
"We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District," she said.
Joint Task Force-District of Columbia, the military command overseeing National Guard operations in the capital, did not respond to a request for comment.
National Guard Members patrol 14th Street, working with Metro police on August 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation's capital last summer. The troops have remained despite widespread public opposition and a federal judge's ruling that the deployment was unlawful, which an appeals court subsequently put on hold.
Asked about the possibility of deploying troops to polling places earlier this year, Trump did not rule it out. He has also lamented that he did not send National Guard troops to seize election materials while he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Voting rights experts have warned about possible plans by Trump to use federal troops or agents—including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard—to interfere with November's midterm elections. Though elections are administered by states under the Constitution, Trump has said that Republicans should "nationalize" voting.
Dan Herman and Devon Ombres, two national security and legal policy experts at the Center for American Progress, said that "there is little to no safe or democratic way for the military to be involved with the elections process."
"Voters may stay home if they fear military presence. Ballots may no longer be trusted if a machine’s chain of custody is broken. Military deployments elsewhere in a city might prevent voters from reaching their polling site in time," they wrote in a brief published Friday by Just Security.
The recording shared on Thursday is not the first instance of National Guard personnel seen gathered around ballot boxes in DC. In June, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the nonvoting delegate from DC in the House of Representatives, demanded answers about another video in which a resident confronted several troops who were seen outside a drop box.
Asked whether they'd been told to stay away from the boxes, one of the Guard members responded, "No. Not at all."
"The fact that Guard personnel reportedly had not been instructed to avoid ballot drop boxes suggests a troubling lack of awareness by leadership of the impact these deployments are having on the district and its residents," Norton said.
A voter uses a ballot drop box at the Bucks County Administration building voting on demand and ballot drop center in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on October 31, 2024. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
With Republicans in Congress projected to take heavy losses in the midterms, proponents of his efforts to overturn his last election defeat have reportedly met with Trump in recent days, urging him to declare a "national emergency" that they claim would allow him to assert direct authority over the elections, an idea disputed by legal experts.
One plan that has reportedly circulated among election deniers has involved invoking the Insurrection Act, which they claim would allow Trump to flood polling locations with military and federal law enforcement.
While the Insurrection Act would permit some domestic law enforcement by the military, Herman and Ombres emphasized that it would not override the laws restricting troops from polling locations.
"Armed troops do not belong near ballot boxes," Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, told Common Dreams. "At minimum, troop presence at the ballot box creates the appearance of voter intimidation and risks discouraging DC residents from exercising our fundamental right to vote."
"The deployment of National Guard into the District without the consent of our local government is an affront to democracy here and around the nation," she said. "National Guard troops must go home."
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This Midterm Election, Defend Democracy by Practicing It
As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how.
Oct 08, 2026
With less than a month before the midterm elections, attempts by President Donald Trump and his administration to keep certain Americans from voting will likely continue.
Voting is how we get an equal say in the decisions that impact our lives, regardless of race, disability, zip code, language, or income. That’s why we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot free from fear, intimidation, or unnecessary barriers.
Anti-democratic forces might dominate the headlines, but they have not dominated the outcomes. That’s important.
Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.
In the past month, whistleblowers courageously revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be instructing agents to break laws, and potentially “ensnare eligible voters,” in order to find alleged “proof of mass non-citizen voting—shown in studies to be exceedingly rare,” CNN reports.
In Michigan, an effort to get a “show your papers” measure on the November ballot failed to garner enough signatures. The Department of Justice lost 25 consecutive court cases in their quest to obtain private voter information.
Even the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to stifle vote-by-mail nationwide by preventing the US Postal Service from implementing a rule that would have disenfranchised millions of voters.
I spent years as a local election official—I can assure you that election administrators nationwide are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The administration’s attempt to rewrite election rules was wrong, and I applaud those state and local officials who rejected political pressure and sued to uphold the law on behalf of voters.
From courtroom victories to successes in state and local communities, these recent wins are not isolated. They are victories for democracy, for the freedom to vote, and for election officials who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly. They prove democracy can withstand relentless attacks.
And they tell a bigger story: Democracy works when people are willing to defend it by showing up to vote.
Winning for democracy means continuing through the midterms with clear eyes on the multiple attempts to upend the election. These attempts could include deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations and election offices, seizing ballots or voting machines, and further gerrymandering in the future.
From secretaries of state to county clerks in Wisconsin, board of election members in Georgia, supervisors of elections in Florida, and thousands of volunteer poll workers nationwide, election defenders are already working around the clock to protect the freedom to vote. They’re pushing back against demands for our private voter data, resisting federal overreach, safeguarding ballots, and helping voters make plans to vote—whether by mail, drop box, in person during early voting, or at a polling location on Election Day.
This work is not just about ballots and election procedures. It’s about ensuring that every eligible voter can fully participate in our democracy. We cannot sit down. We cannot give up.
As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how:
- Visit your local elections office for voting information. Vote-by-mail remains a reliable way to vote. Early voting remains available. Voters should choose the method that works best for their lives and make a plan to vote as early as possible.
- Promote or participate in upcoming days of action, including National Voter Education Week (October 5-9), Election Hero Day (October 20), and Vote Early Day (October 24).
- Make a plan to vote with your friends and family.
Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.
The fight to protect free and democratic elections has always mattered. What happens next is up to us. Let’s keep the momentum going.
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Indian Supreme Court Demands 'Transparent' Answers From Modi's Government on Voter Purge
Hundreds of people have been arrested in recent days at youth-led protests over the removal of more than 130 million names from voter rolls.
Oct 05, 2026
As one advocate warned India's Supreme Court on Monday that "this country will burn" unless action is taken to stop what thousands of protesters have denounced as an illegal purge of voters by the head of the country's Election Commission, the court demanded accountability from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
Chief Justice Surya Kant said in a hearing that the court had not approved changes to a new form used by the Election Commission of India for registering new voters, contradicting a statement from the ECI last month which said the document had been upheld by the court.
"Modified Form 6 has not been approved by us, let us be very clear," said Kant.
The court called on Modi's government, the ECI, and the head of the commission, Gyanesh Kumar, to answer "in a clear, transparent manner” for the massive upheaval of the national voter rolls, from which more than 130 million names have been removed in recent months.
The changes to the voter list have sparked calls for Kumar's resignation, particularly at protests that have erupted across the country, led by student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a political movement led by young people whom Kant compared to cockroaches earlier this year.
The group's website declares, "Gyanesh, it's done, bro," and thousands of people have joined protests like those that forced the resignation of India's education minister over the summer.
Last week, hundreds of protesters were detained, with journalists reportedly among those who were arrested—prompting outcry from Amnesty International over the government's "blatant attack on the rights to liberty and freedom of peaceful assembly."
In New Delhi in particular, police have been denounced for their aggressive response to the uprising, forcing hundreds of people into police vehicles. Authorities said they were investigating reports that officers had sexually assaulted three journalists at the protests over the weekend.
The Supreme Court took up two petitions Monday, questioning the credibility of the ECI's efforts to "purify" the voter rolls, as the commission has said, and calling for an independent inquiry into Kumar's management of the "special intensive revision" (SIR) process.
Another hearing will be held later this week.
Kant said the court wanted a response from Kumar and the commission about allegations that decisions about the SIR were made unilaterally by Kumar. Media reports last month said the two other ECI commissioners had objected to the revision of voter rolls, which the government has claimed is aimed at eliminating duplicates and the names of dead and ineligible voters, as well as "illegal infiltrators."
People across Delhi and states including Bihar and West Bengal have said they were wrongly removed from voter rolls, and protesters have said the revision appeared to target Muslim voters, who have opposed Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
Protesters on Monday symbolically posed as dead people to show that voters have been wrongly eliminated from voter rolls, despite still being alive and eligible to participate in elections.
“Deletions of voters have been made in the largest democracy,” Menaka Guruswamy, a lawyer for one of the petitioners who brought the cases to the Supreme Court, told The Guardian. “We have grown up with free and fair elections, that is not the case now.”
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'Put a Real Ban on the Floor If You’re Serious': Senate Democrats Block Loophole-Laden Fake Fix to End Lawmaker Stock Trading
"This measure was a ruse, promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, to make it appear that congressional Republicans were tackling an ethical quagmire when, in fact, it would have accomplished very little."
Sep 30, 2026
Democrats in the Senate have blocked what they described as a loophole-laden Republican-led bill to ban members of Congress from purchasing stocks.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blasted his Democratic colleagues on Wednesday after they declined to give the votes necessary to advance the bill—known as the Stop Insider Trading Act—past the Senate filibuster.
"The Democrats who blocked it went back on their word to protect their own wallets—they should be ashamed of themselves," Cotton said.
But Democrats described the bill, which passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in July, as a sham. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the bill "does not adequately ban congressional stock trading," and described it as "meaningless messaging."
While the bill would have prohibited members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from buying stocks, it would not have required them to divest the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock they already own.
It also would have exempted President Donald Trump and other executive branch employees. During his second term in office, Trump has made around 30,000 securities trades since returning to office. Bloomberg estimated, based on public disclosures, that he'd made more than 21,000 trades worth between $600 million and $1.86 billion in 2025 alone.
The bill passed by House Republicans also attached a national photo ID requirement for voting as well as additional identification requirements for vote-by-mail, which voting rights advocates argued could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who do not possess a valid photo ID.
"This measure was a ruse, promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), to make it appear that congressional Republicans were tackling an ethical quagmire when, in fact, it would have accomplished very little," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.
Democrats have argued that the watered-down Republican proposal was meant to sap momentum from stronger bills, amid broad public demand for a stock trading ban.
Holman noted that "there was serious legislation to stop congressional insider trading, but Johnson would not bring up any of the serious proposals for a floor vote."
A bipartisan bill that has stalled in the House would have required members of Congress to divest stock they currently own. Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee blocked a Democratic proposal that would have made the president and vice president subject to the ban.
"Let’s be clear: I support a total ban on Congress members trading stock," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Wednesday. "But Republicans are trying to package a fraudulent version of that with a bill to disenfranchise American voters."
"This is politics at its worst," he said. "Put a real ban on the floor if you’re serious."
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US Citizens 'Could Lose Their Right to Vote' After Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Trump's Voter Purge Database
"The SAVE database has known errors, including incorrectly flagging numerous eligible citizens... as noncitizens," an election security expert told Common Dreams.
Sep 25, 2026
Many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registrations wrongfully canceled just weeks before the midterms after the US Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for the Trump administration to screen voters using a database known for flagging naturalized citizens.
In a 6-3 decision, the court's conservative majority lifted a lower court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using and expanding the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database—whose original purpose was to check if noncitizens qualified for government benefits—to trawl through state voter rolls and link them to information supposedly confirming citizenship.
The expanded SAVE system relied upon by the Trump administration has also incorporated federal immigration and Social Security records that can be outdated.
"Because Social Security data was never intended for verifying voter eligibility, [the Social Security Administration] has no reason to keep people’s immigration status up to date in cases where it isn’t relevant for their benefits," explained Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, on Friday.
"As a result," she said, "US citizens could wrongfully lose their right to vote."
Investigations and court records have documented eligible US citizens being wrongly targeted by voter-purge systems using flawed citizenship data. In Missouri and Texas, for example, investigations have found that the system wrongly flagged hundreds of eligible voters as noncitizens, often those born outside the US who have since become naturalized.
Halting the SAVE system's implementation in June, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote that the Trump administration had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable."
But the Supreme Court's conservatives wrote on Friday, in an unsigned majority opinion, that the lower court's block on the use of SAVE impeded “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
In her dissent, the liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take."
The court did not issue a final ruling on SAVE's legality to scrutinize voting rolls. But the timing—less than six weeks before the November 3 midterm elections—means the administration can potentially use it to direct states to identify and purge purported noncitizens on their voter rolls.
"The Supreme Court’s decision today wrongly lifts the burden from DHS and puts it on the shoulders of voters," Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the election security nonprofit Verified Voting, told Common Dreams. "The SAVE database has known errors, including incorrectly flagging numerous eligible citizens, such as recently naturalized citizens, as noncitizens."
"Now more than ever," she said, "voters must check their registration well in advance of Election Day to ensure they are not swept up in a flawed system through no fault of their own."
Jon Sherman, the litigation director for the Fair Elections Center, told Common Dreams that the court's ruling did contain a "silver lining." It "acknowledged that the National Voter Registration Act cuts off systematic voter removal programs 90 days before a federal election." However, voters could still be individually flagged as potential noncitizens.
The use of citizenship data is part of a larger effort by Trump to "nationalize" voting to clamp down on what he claims, without evidence, is a rash of noncitizens voting. He has used unsubstantiated claims of mass illegal voting to justify his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to let Trump enforce another portion of his voting executive order, which would have had the US Postal Service block mail-in ballots in states that did not turn over information about mail-in voters to the federal government.
There is little evidence that noncitizen voting, or voter fraud more generally, is a significant problem: The right-wing Heritage Foundation's nationwide database of alleged instances of voter fraud identifies just 99 total cases of suspected noncitizen voting dating back to the year 2000.
A Brookings Institution review of that data in 2024 found that across several swing states, all forms of fraud impacted less than one vote for every million, far below what would be needed to swing an election.
"The Supreme Court’s decision to allow DHS and states to use an error-ridden system is completely unacceptable and didn’t need to happen this close to the election," said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the watchdog group Common Cause. "This DHS system, which the federal government itself admits is flawed, has always been part of the Trump administration’s campaign to interfere in our elections and sow distrust—and it will fail."
The legal challenge to the SAVE database was brought by the League of Women Voters and several state affiliates, along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), who are represented by Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Fair Elections Center.
The coalition said Friday's decision was "profoundly disappointing, as it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections."
"However, this case is not over," it said. "The DC District Court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws. We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands."
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said that with Friday's ruling, the Supreme Court had upheld a "Trump administration voter-suppression tactic."
"It's disappointing that the Supreme Court decided to capitulate to and enable an authoritarian, again," she said. "States must hold the line and do everything in their power to protect voting rights and our democracy!"
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Will Trump Allow for a Free and Fair Midterm Election?
Since beginning his second term in the White House, Trump and his movement have taken steps to rig this midterm contest in the GOP’s favor.
Sep 21, 2026
There is no doubt that this will be one of the most consequential midterm elections in recent history. In the past two years, policies enacted by President Donald Trump and enabled by a compliant Republican-led Congress have had, and may continue to have, a corrosive impact on the very foundations of governance and our democracy.
As a result, the stakes are high for both parties in November. For Democrats, the election represents the opportunity to roll back the changes Mr. Trump has imposed on Washington and the nation, to expose questionable business transactions that have benefited the president and his family, and to reestablish congressional oversight and prerogatives, as the Constitution intended. For the president, winning this election represents his only chance to continue to have a free hand in wreaking havoc in Washington and the world and to avoid congressional investigations into his unethical and illegal behaviors.
With just six weeks left before Election Day, the news media and political prognosticators usually turn to pollsters and pundits to better understand what we can expect the outcome of an election to be. In a normal year, there are a few standard metrics that analysts will review to project likely election results. Some of these are: the favorable ratings of the president and the two major parties; whether voters believe the US is on the right or wrong track; and voters’ assessment of which party would better address the issues they believe are most important.
The bottom line is that while all of the factors normally considered in making election predictions point in favor of a Democratic win, the outcome of this year’s elections may be different because President Trump, and his operatives around the US, are taking steps that may impact this election.
If we were to use just these standard measures of electoral success, no one would fault Democrats for anticipating victory in November. The president’s approval and job performance ratings are in the mid-30% range. And while voter confidence in the Democrats is even lower (in the mid-20%’s), when asked which party they trust to do a better job of handling eight different issues (including healthcare, immigration, the deficit, the economy, cost of living, the Iran war, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) majorities or pluralities of voters say they have more confidence in the Democrats.
In addition to these numbers, it’s also important to remember that, more often than not, the party that holds the White House usually loses seats in midterm congressional elections. With President Trump’s very low approval ratings, it would be safe to assume that Republicans face the prospect of significant losses in November.
More disturbing for the GOP is the fact that the president doesn’t seem to get this. From his antics at his recent midterm convention to the hundreds of millions the president says he will spend on this election using a political action committee he personally controls, he is making a determined effort to have this election be about Donald Trump. For example, at that midterm convention, he bizarrely asked attendees to stand and pledge both to the flag and to him, “the greatest president in the history of the United States,” and to commit that they would vote to keep Republicans in control of Congress or, in his words, they could “go to hell!”
Despite Trump’s efforts, many Republican candidates, who read the polls and are listening to their voters, stayed away from the “convention” and have shied away from their election being a referendum on Trump.
The bottom line is that while all of the factors normally considered in making election predictions point in favor of a Democratic win, the outcome of this year’s elections may be different because President Trump, and his operatives around the US, are taking steps that may impact this election more than the quality of the candidates running, or voter perceptions of the performance of the president or their confidence in the two parties.
Since beginning his second term in the White House, Trump and his movement have taken steps to rig this midterm contest in the GOP’s favor. They engineered unprecedented redistricting of congressional seats in several states that may make it easier for Republicans to win five to seven congressional seats in November. The president has also been pushing a number of restrictions on mail-in voting—which, after months of back in forth in the courts, now seem to be on hold, at least for this year. Then there are the concerns that Mr. Trump may send immigration enforcement police or even the National Guard to polling places in heavily Democratic areas to suppress voter turnout. And this past week the Department of Justice sent a memorandum to election officials in all 50 states threatening imprisonment for any official who knowingly allows undocumented individuals to vote.
On a broader level, we are learning that Trump allies have been focusing on filling the ranks of election monitors and poll watchers. In the past volunteers in these positions are stationed at polls simply to observe and to assist if called upon to help solve issues that may occur. These new GOP recruits, however, have been weaponized to see their mission to make, not solve, problems. All of these disruptive tactics appear to be directed toward preparing a case that will pressure the Republican Speaker of the House to refuse to certify the results of the election—something like a replay of January 2021.
It goes without saying that nothing like this has ever happened before. But like so much of what President Trump has already done during his time in office “nothing like this has ever happened before” doesn’t mean it won’t be tried now.
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You Can Fight Trump's Voter Suppression Efforts With One Simple Action: Voting
The effort to undermine the election is failing. It will succeed only if citizens stay home.
Sep 10, 2026
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.” That’s not quite our approach at the Brennan Center. We worry. (Dr. Franklin also advised, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”)
What are we particularly concerned about as we look toward November?
Voter confusion is perhaps the biggest risk. People ask, understandably, can they still vote by mail? Will I need to show a passport or birth certificate to register? It has been many years since the freedom to vote has faced so many proposed challenges, and never before from the federal government. With all the news and noise, citizens cannot be expected to follow the executive edicts and ping-ponging court rulings in minute detail.
In fact, for voters, very little has actually changed. Congress and courts blocked all those bad ideas. The SAVE Act never passed. As a general matter, citizens can cast ballots as before.
After all the push and pull, voters can make their voices heard. Make a plan to vote. Vote early if possible. In person, with a drop box, or if necessary, using the mail.
With less than two months to go, President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the election is failing. Judges, states and counties, and voting rights groups have blocked his moves. If we keep at it, we can have free and fair elections in 2026.
What else keeps us on edge? The Supreme Court, of course. It is now considering whether to undo a trial court’s decision blocking a rule that would allow the US Postal Service to withhold mail ballots. The trial court determined that rule is illegal and unconstitutional.
If the court allows the USPS to implement its rule, it would introduce chaos and disenfranchise many voters just before the election, as a USPS whistleblower explained in a friend-of-the-court brief detailing the agency’s rushed and flawed process to implement the rule. The court will likely rule in a matter of days on the administration’s request to allow the USPS rule. Fingers crossed.
Here’s a third concern: a growing risk of foreign interference. America is at war. (An illegal, unauthorized war, worth noting.) In 1980, the “October surprise” was the notion that Iran would release Americans it held hostage to influence that year’s election. Let’s hope that Iranian hackers do not produce a digital “October surprise” this year.
Iran has shown its ability to break into municipal water systems in Minnesota. In previous elections, Russia and China have tried to sway voters or attack registration lists. Trump’s purge of election security offices means that American elections have less federal protection against malevolent foreign hackers than before.
States have worked hard to get ready. And it’s important to remember that there is no way for even the most sophisticated schemer to change the results. Voting machines are not connected to the internet. And citizens cast ballots with a paper record, which can be audited and recounted.
Some of our worries are decreasing.
First, “ICE at the polls.” That could still happen. But deployment of federal forces is illegal under numerous federal and state laws. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pledged recently not to use federal troops, correctly asserting, “Election administration and security remain the fundamental responsibility of state and local officials.” We have growing confidence that courts would step in fast. At the Brennan Center, we are prepared to sue if necessary. The briefs are written, and the toner is in the printer.
Then there are the Justice Department observers deployed to some states. They are annoying and often seem like a bit of a mess. But they too are subject to the laws that prohibit voter intimidation, and state officials are prepared to speak up if observers are disruptive.
And as for the worry that electoral winners won’t be certified, we are increasingly confident that courts will step in here, too. Judges have been heroes and upheld the rule of law.
But courts are not enough. We need a citizen mobilization to watch polls, help voters, and blow the whistle on abuse. That, too, gives hope.
It’s going to be a busy two months. No doubt Trump and his partisans will fling new charges every few days. All that clatter can confuse voters further. Perhaps that’s part of the goal.
So for all of us who want voters to have their say in 2026, a chief job is to stay calm and make clear that—as of right now, at least—little has changed. That’s a task for the news media. Public officials should be clear and calm. We who fight for voting rights must measure our own tone, so as not to rattle confidence.
After all the push and pull, voters can make their voices heard. Make a plan to vote. Vote early if possible. In person, with a drop box, or if necessary, using the mail. As we’ve said before, the effort to undermine the election is failing. It will succeed only if citizens stay home.
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Trump's DHS Is Preparing To Engage In Voter Suppression and Intimidation
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated.
Sep 06, 2026
On September 1, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to polling sites across the country. He remarked, “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.” Later that day, DHS doubled down on this point. In a statement, the department said that, while ICE is not “planning operations targeting polling locations,” the agency conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”
Missing from those statements, however, is that this “intelligence-driven” enforcement would be based on DHS’ explicit and baseless efforts to amplify President Donald Trump’s election fraud lies. In July, Mullin said, “We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased.” At the time, he also threatened to withhold federal election-related aid to states that failed to comply with the Trump administration’s probe.
That same month, DHS issued a statement alleging that over 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. According to DHS employees and officials familiar with the situation, those numbers were wildly inflated. For instance, while DHS claimed that there were close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list, it only managed to provide state officials with information on 185 voters. DHS failed to disclose what data they used to match those voters to noncitizens.
This is unsurprising. As the Brennan Center for Justice reports, empirical studies, state investigations, and work by journalists have consistently found that cases of noncitizens voting are exceptionally rare. Moreover, claims made by Republicans and their media allies to the contrary have been repeatedly shown to be false.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms.
The reality is that Mullin’s DHS is actively trying to fabricate a pretext for ICE to be present at polling sites, regardless of how illegal it would be. 18 U.S.C § 592 directly prohibits any deployment of military personnel or “armed” federal agents “at any place where a general or special election is held.”
To that end, Mullin is exploiting every resource available to him. On September 1, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) reportedly launched “a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to a federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action from early September through mid October. While HSI ordinarily focuses on crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, it has been repeatedly tasked with investigating voter fraud in Trump’s second term. In February, the White House directed the agency to determine if any naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. HSI has also been directed to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue removal proceedings for noncitizens suspected of or linked to voter fraud.
ICE is also currently seeking vendors to handle “and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” To be clear, as J.B. Branch, the director of Federal AI Governance and Technology Policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, notes, “Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance.” He continues, “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”
That contract would be worth between $2-5 million according to an acquisition forecast document published by DHS on August 31.
This latest data grab is one of several coordinated efforts by ICE and the Trump administration to undermine voter eligibility. A procurement record from July indicated that ICE planned to pay Thomson Reuters, a major data broker firm, $125 million for access to its CLEAR database, which includes “peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information,” to help the agency investigate voter fraud.
On September 3, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with individual voters, filed a motion asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to compile state-by-state lists of people it deemed eligible to vote—“State Citizenship Lists”—and publish them online. The basis for this project is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. While a lower court blocked several key provisions from going into effect in 33 states and Washington, DC, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in August, thus paving the way for the plan to be implemented nationwide. This, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly dictates that only states and Congress—not the president—have the power to control US elections.
All of these escalating efforts so close to the midterms point to one undeniable truth: DHS is readying itself, on behalf of the Trump administration, to engage in nationwide voter suppression and intimidation this November.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms. On August 21, he told supporters that if Republicans lose, he will be impeached. Several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have recently echoed this "warning."
And they are right to be afraid. Democrats are favored to take back control of the House and possibly win control of the Senate. If this happens, Congress should immediately impeach Trump and put him, as well as everyone who enabled his corrupt administration, on trial for their many crimes.
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. This country cannot afford two more years of unchecked Trumpism. While there is still time, we must continue to advocate for progressive candidates as well as calling out and challenging every effort by Republicans to steal our elections.
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Talarico Protests as Texas Swing County Plans to Close 92 Polling Places
“The most powerful people in this county, the most powerful people in this country, don’t want us to be able to vote easily."
Aug 31, 2026
Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is pushing for one of Texas' most important swing counties to drop plans to close nearly a third of its polling places before November's midterms.
Amid public outcry, the Commissioners Court for Tarrant County—which contains Fort Worth and borders Dallas—plans to hold a vote on Tuesday on whether to shutter 92 of the polling places used in the 2022 election, many of which serve the city's poorer and minority populations.
If Democrats flip the Senate this November, the road to that outcome will almost certainly run through Texas. A Democrat has not won a statewide election there since 1994, but Talarico may be in a position to break the trend—leading Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in most polls.
Tarrant County narrowly supported then-Rep. Collin Allred, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2024. Talarico said the closure of polling places was meant to suppress turnout and help Republicans cling to their advantage in the state.
“The most powerful people in this county, the most powerful people in this country, don’t want us to be able to vote easily,” Talarico said at a press event Sunday, during which he argued that the closures would result in longer travel for voters and lower turnout, especially in heavily Black and Latino communities.
"We're here fighting for the rights of everybody," Talarico added. "The problem is when we let voting rights become a partisan issue. That's when we walk down a very dangerous path in this country."
Proponents of the closures have described them as a way for the county to save money, rather than a political tactic.
“We’re clearly not trying to suppress the vote,” state Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-66), the chairman of the Texas House Elections Committee, told the Associated Press. “That’s a silly accusation.”
But Republican officials in Tarrant County have, in the past, explicitly tied closures of certain voting locations to partisan aims. In 2024, Republican County Judge Tim O'Hare attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove several early voting sites on college campuses, a move that the county's GOP chairman said would have been "a serious win for Republicans in Tarrant County."
In 2025's off-year elections, Republicans voted 3-2 to reduce the number of polling locations by more than a third and cut funding for free bus rides to the polls for low-income residents. The previous year, they introduced new rules blocking what they derided as "left-wing" groups from registering voters inside county buildings.
At the state level, meanwhile, Texas has carried out unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to hand more US House seats to Republicans at the behest of President Donald Trump. And following Trump's false assertions that his loss in the 2020 election was marred by fraud, Texas introduced several new restrictions on mail-in voting that were found to have significantly reduced turnout.
Tuesday's scheduled vote in Tarrant County comes after commissioners opted to table an earlier proposal that would have shuttered nearly half the county's polling places.
An analysis of that plan showed that the lowest-income third of ZIP codes would lose nearly 58% of their Election Day polling sites, while the highest-income third would lose just under 22%. Majority-minority ZIP codes would have lost nearly 52% of their polling places, while majority-white ones would have lost just a third of theirs.
A similar analysis has not yet been conducted for the new proposal. But civil rights groups still argue that the proposal will disenfranchise many voters.
"Cutting the number of poll sites, especially at such a large scale, will harm Tarrant County voters and their right to participate in the democratic process—and cause particular harm to Black, Latino, and [Asian American and Pacific Islander] voters who already face significant barriers to exercising that fundamental right," wrote groups including the ACLU, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Texas Civil Rights Project, in a letter to the Commissioners' Court on Friday.
They emphasized that the polling places slated to close under the new proposal were clustered in areas such as south and southeast Fort Worth and central and eastern Arlington, which have predominantly nonwhite populations.
Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat who is running to unseat O'Hare as county judge and spoke alongside Talarico on Sunday, argued that while it was an improvement on the earlier proposal, "dropping 92 Election Day polling places is crazy."
"We should not compare this proposal to the worst proposal," she said. "We should compare it to the access that Tarrant County voters actually had in 2022."
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