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voter suppression
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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Ex-Trump Lawyer Says 'We're Screwed' if Trump Pressures New AG Blanche to Subvert Elections
"There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
Aug 09, 2026
One of the many questions swirling around new US Attorney General Todd Blanche is whether he'd go along with President Donald Trump's efforts to subvert the result of another election.
In 2020, when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden, his attempts to claim the result was marred by systemic fraud were met with resistance from then-Attorney General William Barr.
But under Blanche, who served for two years as Trump's personal defense attorney, things may be very different.
That's according to another of Trump's former lawyers, Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel for nearly a year during Trump's first term, as he came under investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller over his campaign's alleged coordination with the Russian government.
Cobb, who has been an outspoken critic of both Trump and his appointment of Blanche, appeared for an interview released Saturday on Zeteo's "Mehdi Unfiltered." Host Mehdi Hasan asked Cobb, "Come 2028, does American democracy survive Donald Trump?"
"I’m not sure they survive it in 2026,” Cobb responded.
Meet the Former Trump White House Lawyer Who Says Our Democracy Could Be ‘Screwed’ in 2026 by Mehdi Hasan
Ty Cobb, who represented the Trump White House during the Mueller investigation, questions whether democracy will survive the midterms and accuses Trump of 'unprecedented' corruption.
Read on SubstackNoting Barr's resistance to Trump in 2020, Hasan asked: "If the midterms don’t go Trump’s way this fall, is there any world in which Todd Blanche stands up to Trump if he’s asked to find some fake evidence of voter fraud, or are we screwed now?”
“We’re screwed,” Cobb said bluntly.
“Great,” Hasan said. “That’s what I suspected.”
Trump has, on multiple occasions, floated the idea of canceling the midterm elections outright and has enacted measures aimed at blocking mail-in voting and seizing voter information from states. He has also said he wants Republicans to "nationalize" elections in Democratic-leaning locales.
Cobb noted that Blanche "has already echoed [former Trump chief strategist] Steve Bannon's view that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should be on the street during the election," adding, "I think we'll almost certainly see that."
Hasan pointed out that the administration has routinely ignored court orders, especially with regard to its immigration enforcement. Cobb predicted that "the level of noncompliance" so far "is nothing compared to what we're about to see."
He said that if Democrats take the US House of Representatives and begin pursuing investigations, he suspects there will be "a number of contemptuous acts" by the administration. "We can count on the Justice Department to pursue zero of those referrals."
"That's assuming that the midterms actually produce a Democratic Congress," he continued, noting that even if one were elected legitimately, "whether they get seated or not by [Republican House Speaker] Little Mikey Johnson and his service to the president, that remains to be seen."
Cobb said that's in addition to other "dangers" around the election, including the presence of ICE agents. "Blanche has suggested that people should be happy to see ICE at the polls."
Where Barr refused Trump's requests to do so in 2020, Cobb said, "There's no circumstance under which we shouldn't expect Blanche to seize ballots and seize voting machines and try to interfere in the process of the upcoming election."
"I think that the president has made it very clear that he doesn't want immigrants or people of color to have the ability to go to the polls," Cobb said. "He's going to do everything he can in blue states and elsewhere to try to prevent this election from going smoothly."
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House Dem Calls for Removal of Postmaster General for Turning USPS Into 'Instrument of Voter Suppression'
Postmaster General David Steiner has said that USPS would not deliver ballots in states that don’t hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration for purging under a since-blocked executive order.
Aug 03, 2026
A Democratic congressman is calling for Postmaster General David Steiner to be removed from office for allowing the US Postal Service to turn into what he called "a partisan instrument of voter suppression" for President Donald Trump.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), a senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Steiner and members of the USPS board of governors on Monday criticizing the postmaster general for refusing to clarify if he intends to follow an executive order signed by Trump in March ordering the Postal Service to halt the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that do not turn over lists of voters to be checked against a federal citizenship list.
A federal judge has blocked the administration from implementing the order's provisions that create federal citizenship lists and allow USPS to condition ballot delivery on states submitting voter information, ruling that Trump had usurped powers belonging to the states and Congress.
Last week, the administration and a group of 12 Republican states filed emergency applications asking the US Supreme Court to allow the order to take effect prior to November’s midterms.
Krishnamoorthi said that this filing contains "a troubling contradiction." It argues that Trump had merely issued “general policy guidance” to agencies rather than concrete directives, and that it's therefore premature for courts to rule on its constitutionality.
"USPS's apparent implementation efforts over the past four months tell a different story," Krishnamoorthi wrote.
He pointed out that USPS had sent the rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review and had begun to create a federal ballot portal, state voter participation lists, and procedures on accepting ballots.
Steiner, meanwhile, said during a hearing in June—while the order was facing litigation but had not yet been struck down—that he fully intended to block mail-in ballots from states that don't hand over their voter rolls.
Krishnamoorthi also wrote that the administration's argument before the Supreme Court that blocking the order would cause "irreparable harm" does not withstand factual scrutiny.
He noted that noncitizen voting, which the administration claims the order is meant to prevent, is not only already a federal crime, but exceedingly rare. One analysis by the Brookings Institution last year found that in general elections between 2016-22, there were approximately four instances of mail-in voting fraud per 10 million mail ballots cast—about 0.000043% of them.
"The administration has not produced evidence of fraud on a scale capable of affecting an election outcome," Krishnamoorthi wrote. "Disenfranchising millions of eligible voters—including military personnel serving overseas, seniors, rural voters, individuals with disabilities, and working families—is not a proportionate response to fraud rates of this magnitude."
He also wrote that Steiner had repeatedly refused his requests for information about how USPS has implemented the executive order and whether it is still doing so despite the court's order to stop.
"A postmaster general who will not tell Congress whether his agency is complying with a federal court order, and who will not appear to answer for that silence, has already forfeited the trust the office requires," wrote Krishnamoorthi. "I am therefore calling on the Postal Service Board of Governors to remove you as Postmaster General, and I will urge my colleagues on the committee to join that call."
There is already evidence that a voter citizenship registry run by the Trump administration could disenfranchise lawful voters.
In June, a federal judge found that states using an expanded version of the federal government's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, which is used by the federal government to track immigration status, led local voting officials to wrongly cancel the voter registrations of naturalized citizens.
In Travis County, Texas, an investigation found that 25% of the people flagged as "noncitizen matches" had already proven their US citizenship.
Jasleen Singh, a senior counsel and manager in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, wrote in June that the administration "has been engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine elections."
"Part of that involves collecting state voter files and using federal data sources to lend pseudolegitimacy to false claims of widespread fraud," she said. "While there may be valid ways to use federal data to support election officials’ efforts to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date, there are notable shortcomings in such data, and it may be misused to spread misinformation."
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Trump Orders GOP Leader to Cancel Recess and Pass Massive Voter Suppression Bill
Experts say the so-called Save America Act would prevent millions from casting ballots by imposing onerous documentation requirements.
Jul 27, 2026
President Donald Trump on Monday pushed Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune to cancel the chamber's upcoming August recess and enact a voter suppression bill that has stalled due inadequate support.
"John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to 'leave town' until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster," Trump wrote on his social media platform.
With the Senate's legislative filibuster intact, the so-called SAVE America Act needs 60 votes to advance—meaning Republicans need some Democratic support for the bill, which they don't currently have. Experts say the legislation would prevent millions of American voters from casting ballots by imposing onerous documentation requirements.
As the Brennan Center for Justice explained in a recent letter to senators, the legislation would "effectively require every American to produce a passport or birth certificate each time they register or re-register to vote." The Republican-controlled House passed a version of the bill earlier this year.
"More than 21 million American citizens do not have those documents readily available. Roughly half of Americans do not even have a passport. Millions lack easy access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. Millions more women whose married names are not on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard," the group wrote in a recent letter to senators. "In addition, the SAVE America Act would eliminate or upend most methods of registering to vote. Mail and online registration would be essentially abolished, as would voter registration drives that add hundreds of thousands of citizens to the rolls every election cycle. Automatic voter registration would be severely limited in states across the country."
Trump's demand came hours after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the SAVE America Act's lead Senate sponsor, urged Thune to cancel August recess, which is set to begin next week.
"The Senate doesn’t need a summer vacation as much as the country needs the SAVE America Act," Lee said. "Let’s cancel recess."
Thune has bristled at the Trump White House's increasingly aggressive pressure campaign, insisting that he simply doesn't have the votes to eliminate the filibuster or pass the SAVE America Act, a top priority of the president ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Last week, after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump's "patience" with GOP leadership in the Senate "is running out," Thune responded, "Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes."
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'This Bill Is a Trojan Horse': GOP Pushes Voter Suppression Under Cover of Insider Trading Ban
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," said US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Jul 21, 2026
Democrats on Capitol Hill and voting rights advocates on Tuesday sounded the alarm about Republicans in the House of Representatives trying to push through voter suppression legislation under cover of passing a ban on congressional stock trading.
According to a Tuesday report from Roll Call, House GOP leaders recently added "unrelated language" to what was a bipartisan bill banning congressional stock trading that would "require voters to produce photo ID at the polls, a signature issue for President Donald Trump."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hammered Republicans for what she said were underhanded tactics that are undermining what had been a serious bipartisan effort to halt congressional stock trading.
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a social media post. "They say we are voting on an 'insider trading' bill, but have snuck in massive SAVE Act-style voter suppression measures to it. This is a GOP effort to sabotage national mail-in voting, disguised as a trading ban. I’m voting NO."
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that the caucus was opposing the GOP's legislation not just for its attacks on voting rights, but because it only forces congresspeople to stop making new stock trades, while not requiring them to divest of their current holdings.
"House Republicans are not serious about enacting a meaningful congressional stock trading ban," said Clarke. "The combined Stop Insider Trading Act and Voter ID Act... would allow members of Congress to continue owning, selling, and, in some cases, purchasing individual stocks while simultaneously imposing stricter voter ID requirements that would make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote."
"This bill is a Trojan horse," Clarke added, "using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) on Monday sent lawmakers a letter opposing the GOP-backed legislation, which it said would "impose onerous new requirements on voting."
Among other things, the group said the proposed legislation would "demand Americans provide ID to cast a ballot but only accept an unreasonably narrow list of acceptable types of documentation," excluding the kind of "widely held and reliable forms of ID that young people and voters of color disproportionally rely on."
The CLC also said the bill doesn't provide "sufficient safeguards" for voters wrongly deemed ineligible to prove they are legally allowed to participate in US elections.
A page on congressional contact portal 5 Calls recommended users oppose the GOP-backed bill, which it described as "partisan legislation" that "uses the guise of much-needed ethics reform to sneak through an unpopular and unrelated attack on voting rights."
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'Trump Is Trying to End Our Democracy': Alarm as President Attacks Elections Ahead of Midterms
"He’s reviving conspiracy theories about mail voting, pushing voter suppression, and laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal takeover of our elections."
Jul 17, 2026
Four months out from the critical November midterms, President Donald Trump delivered a primetime address on Thursday night attempting to sow doubt about the integrity of US elections, repeating well-worn lies about the 2020 contest that he lost and claiming to have uncovered a sprawling Chinese plot to meddle in the voting process.
Trump, who has said his administration should "take over" US elections that are currently run by states, asserted in his speech that the American voting system was "left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen" by his political enemies and accused China of "illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files" in an effort to undermine him. Trump's speech coincided with the declassification of intelligence purportedly revealing China's "sinister" scheme to disrupt US elections as well as attempts by "members of the Deep State" to "suppress and downplay" the scheme.
Experts and critics of the president said his speech cherrypicked intelligence agency findings to concoct a false, self-serving narrative about the vulnerability of US elections and the need for legislation such as the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill that Trump has obsessively worked to push through Congress.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that Trump "selectively declassified intelligence to try to rewrite the history of an election he lost."
"Even his own document release does not support his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It confirms what we’ve long known: Foreign adversaries targeted our democracy, but there is no evidence they changed a single vote or altered the casting or counting of ballots," said Krishnamoorthi. "President Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. If he cared about election security, he wouldn’t be putting unqualified political loyalists in charge of our intelligence agencies or weakening the agencies responsible for protecting our elections from foreign threats."
"Instead," Krishnamoorthi added, "he’s reviving conspiracy theories about mail voting, pushing voter suppression, and laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal takeover of our elections—all while ignoring the real challenges facing American families.”
During his speech, Trump lashed out at major TV news networks for declining to broadcast his speech live and in full, accusing media outlets of being "part of the plot" and calling for the "revocation" of NBC and ABC's broadcast licenses.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called Trump's threat "insane."
"At a time when millions of Americans are finding it harder to pay for groceries, housing, and healthcare, when the climate crisis is causing record heatwaves and forest fires, Donald Trump felt it appropriate tonight to spew conspiracy theories about the 2020 election," said Sanders. "Pathetically, in true authoritarian fashion, he even threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC because they would not cover his speech."
"All of us, regardless of our political views, must stand together against this dangerous president who is seeking to undermine our Constitution and our basic freedoms," Sanders added.
"Trump is laying the groundwork to dismantle our elections, overturn results he does not like, cancel the will of the people, and hold onto power by any means necessary."
Trump's address cited "raw intelligence" that he said shows an attempt by China "to manufacture illegal ballots" for former President Joe Biden. The president claimed, without evidence, that the intelligence was maliciously "buried by rogue bureaucrats."
But, as The Washington Post observed, "raw intelligence reports are often wrong, incomplete, or contradictory, and spy agencies rely on judgments by expert analysts to vet and piece together the information to make conclusions with different levels of confidence."
"Officials in 2020 disagreed about whether China wanted Trump to lose and about whether Beijing took any steps to undermine him—a controversy noted in a declassified 2021 report. That report described consensus on the conclusion that neither China nor any other foreign actors had tampered with any votes," the Post noted. "The hundreds of pages of documents released online by the White House during Trump’s speech did not appear to support Trump’s contention that China interfered in the 2020 election to try to defeat him or that US intelligence officials deliberately hid information about Beijing’s intentions from him."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, characterized Trump's speech as an attempt to divert public attention from his administration's "catastrophic policy failures and plummeting approval ratings."
"Trump is waging an illegal, unconstitutional, and utterly pointless war that continues to put American and Iranian lives in jeopardy and drive up gas prices. Corporations are setting prices out of reach for people being paid too little," said Weissman. "Trump rammed through tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cutting healthcare and food assistance for millions and millions of people. An out-of-control paramilitary force is kidnapping people off our streets and killing them at shocking rates. Trump’s delusional rantings tonight are a transparent effort to distract from these realities."
Living United for Change in Arizona, a pro-democracy organization, warned that "Trump is trying to end our democracy in front of our very eyes."
"Tonight Donald Trump stood before the nation and attempted to rewrite history, erase the will of the voters, and prepare the country for his next assault on American democracy," the group said. "We must call this what it is. Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to dismantle our elections, overturn results he does not like, cancel the will of the people, and hold onto power by any means necessary."
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In Independence Eve Speech, Trump Warns of Communism Then Promotes One-Party Rule
"If we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act then we will not lose an election for a hundred years," the president said.
Jul 04, 2026
President Donald Trump spent his address to the United States the night before its 250th birthday fearmongering about the "communist menace" and suggesting that his Republican Party should govern the nation for a century.
"America will never be a communist country," he said from Mount Rushmore, South Dakota Friday night. "We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise. But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act then we will not lose an election for a hundred years."
His remarks clearly implied a false link between communism and the Democratic Party and promoted a bill that critics say will make it harder for millions of eligible voters to participate in elections. The SAVE America Act claims to address the documented non-problem of noncitizen voting by requiring voters to show documents such as passports and birth certificates, which can be expensive and difficult to obtain, especially for low-income voters. Such requirements would also impose added burdens on rural voters and married women who have changed their names.
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media that with his remarks, Trump was "clearly defining the effects of voter suppression bills."
Trump clearly defining the effects of voter suppression bills. https://t.co/vKOytLxdm0
— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) July 4, 2026
"What message could be more unifying on the nation’s 250th birthday weekend than touting one-party rule?" writer Michael Freeman posted on social media.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11) wrote: "The thing about Trump is he tells us what he wants & what he intends to do. He wants to end democracy. Freeze MAGA in power forever. Have zero accountability to the people. Just seize power & keep it. We are so close to true authoritarianism. We must use every ounce of power & leverage we have to stop them."
Before arguing for 100 years of Republican rule, Trump continued the exaggerated anti-communist rhetoric he has employed in the weeks since progressive and Democratic-Socialist candidates won a series of Democratic primary victories.
"There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success," Trump said on Friday. "These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11."
In fact, the Democratic Socialists who won primary elections in New York City last month ran on a platform of affordable housing, Medicare for All, stronger unions, and an end to US military support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, policies backed by large numbers of ordinary Americans.
Trump doubled down on an opposition between communism and US values and also linked his anti-communist to his anti-immigrant stance, threatening to send communists into "exile."
"You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both," Trump said in a quote later posted from the White House X account.
Apparently, you can be a rapist and an alleged pedophile and become President. https://t.co/aYAMCJQOPO
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) July 4, 2026
"This July 4th, the Trump regime is pushing a new Red Scare. This is an actual White House post. The regime is pretending that communism is a serious threat to America," Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staffer on the January 6 Committee, responded on social media.
MeidasNews editor in chief Ron Filipkowski argued that Trump was leaning on anti-communism to divert attention from his own disastrous policies.
"Trump fucks up the economy with his tariffs, raises gas prices for every American with his foolish war, piles on to the national debt with his budget & wasteful spending on vanity projects, covers up Epstein, makes billions for himself, then starts yelling about communism to distract," he wrote on social media.
Journalist Mark Chadbourn agreed, writing on social media that the speech reflected Trump's "new strategy."
"Now he’s failed completely abroad, he’s looking to the Enemy Within to create new Hate Figures to unite his wavering followers," Chadbourn said. "Can’t stop Iran’s threat so let’s have a 2026 Red Scare to turn neighbour against neighbour. A new HUAC on the way? Very dangerous."
Trump's July 3 remarks contrasted with those of New York Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani earlier that day, who uplifted the country's immigrant heritage, decried greed and racial supremacy, and argued that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”
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Happy 250th Birthday, American Democracy—You're Under Attack!
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it.
Jul 04, 2026
This Fourth of July marks the 250th birthday of a new kind of nation state — based not on ancestral ties to a land or on the territorial reach of monarchs, but on shared principles about the rights of citizens and the purpose of the state.
The Founding Fathers set forth those principles in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal” and have “unalienable Rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To “secure these rights,” Jefferson wrote, the government must “derive just powers from the consent of the governed.”
America has come a long way over two and a half centuries, but today we face a grave challenge from within — and especially from our own leaders.
Of course, those founding ideas have always been more aspiration than reality. In a sense the Declaration of Independence was an invitation to struggle over the inequalities that marred the new nation: slavery and white supremacy, the subjugation of Native peoples, the legal subordination of women, the limitation of voting rights to the well-off.
In the course of 250 years, those struggles have achieved tremendous progress.
A bloody Civil War won what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” Slavery was abolished and the Constitution amended to strengthen the government’s ability to safeguard the rights of African Americans and other people.
Women were eventually enfranchised and achieved formal legal equality. The lawless subordination and genocides of Native Americans were eventually recognized as the evils they are. The Civil Rights Movement repealed American apartheid and restored rights that had been stripped away.
But equality and democracy are openly contested today in a manner not seen in a century. Those who oppose the Founding Fathers’ fundamental values are using our government to attack equality and democracy. The good news is that tens of millions of Americans are fighting back.
America is and always has been a nation of diverse peoples — a multi-ethnic, multi-racial mix — and that is what the Framers and their successors had in mind.
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence complained that the King obstructed the “Naturalization of Foreigners” and failed to “encourage migration hither.” Enslavers brought millions of Africans to our shores, and America became their land as well. National expansion westward incorporated French, Spanish, and Mexican peoples into America, too.
But today the Trump regime seeks to erase the diversity essential to our national character. White supremacy and white nationalism are threads running through nearly every policy — from ending civil rights enforcement to discriminating against African-American military leaders, terminating refugee programs for nonwhites, slandering Haitians, and calling Hispanic migrants “the worst of the worst.”
Free elections, majority rule, and democracy itself are Trump’s targets — from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to his unrelenting assault on voting rights and representation today.
Today, gerrymanders demanded by Trump are likely to eliminate one third of African-American members of Congress. The Supreme Court has erased the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Evidence-free voter suppression laws are making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots, while Trump seeks to outlaw voting by mail and his backers threaten to deploy ICE to intimidate midterm voters.
On this 250th anniversary of our first struggle for American freedom and democracy, Americans are fighting back against this war on what makes America America — in the voting booth, in the courts, in the streets, and in our hearts.
The lesson of 250 years: Democracy is hard won and may be easily lost unless we are vigilant in protecting it. The vision of our Founding Fathers depends on you, me, and all of us to safeguard it.
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