| From | Michael Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice <[email protected]> |
| Subject | The Briefing: A voting power grab, with a nod to Putin |
| Date | August 19, 2025 9:58 PM |
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Free and fair elections in 2026 could be at stake.
[link removed]
After his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Trump bragged that the dictator had backed one of his conspiracy theories. According to Trump, Putin said
[link removed]
, “You can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting.” (You don’t need to be a former KGB agent to know how to woo our chief executive.)
Then yesterday, perhaps emboldened by his encounter with a real-life autocrat, Trump announced a major effort to seize control of American elections.
In a Truth Social post, he declared that he would sign “an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections” and “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”
We’ve all grown used to the president’s wild claims about elections. We might be tempted to roll our eyes now, but we shouldn’t. It’s appalling.
The order would likely purport to ban or seriously limit mail voting, a focus of Trump’s since 2020. To be clear, mail voting is a widely popular and long-standing practice
[link removed]
used by about a third of citizens. Every state has well-tested security measures in place to ensure that the process is safe and secure.
Trump claimed in his post that we are the only country in the world that uses mail voting. Putin, whom he called a “smart guy,” allegedly told him that, but it is blatantly false. Dozens of countries
[link removed]
use mail voting, including Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (And of course, Trump himself regularly votes by mail in Florida.)
The order could also target voting machines. “While we’re at it,” he said in the post, we should get rid of “Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” That’s nutty. Machines with a paper record (used by 98 percent of voters) are far more accurate and secure than, say, counting ballots by hand. Ironically, Trump’s blast came the same day that Newsmax paid $67 million to a voting machine company in a defamation suit arising from the last round of false claims about the 2020 election.
Attempting to implement any of these policies via executive order would be flagrantly illegal and flatly unconstitutional — a power grab. Already, earlier this year, Trump tried to seize control of elections with an executive order requiring Americans to produce a passport or another citizenship document to register to vote using the federal form. The Brennan Center and others sued, and judges blocked the worst part of that move. The new threatened executive order, too, could turn out to be vapor, essentially a malevolent press release.
But Trump’s post contained a chilling claim: “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
This statement plainly repudiates the Constitution — the Elections Clause gives states and Congress the power to run elections. Presidents have no authority to rewrite election rules. In a democracy, the states are not personal agents of the president.
If successful, this executive order would be nothing short of an authoritarian takeover of our election system. Imagine the man who demanded that a state election official “find” him 11,780 votes in charge of “counting and tabulating the votes.”
This threat comes as federalized troops and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents patrol the streets of Washington, DC. Last week, ICE agents massed outside a Democratic event on redistricting in California.
Again, Trump’s threatened executive order would be blatantly illegal and blocked by a court. But it’s still important to listen to what he’s saying. He’s making his goal — a federal takeover of elections — explicit. And while this particular tactic won’t work, it’s just one piece of the administration’s emerging, unmistakable campaign to undermine our elections
[link removed]
, a drive that ranges from defunding election security programs to trying to gain access to state voter rolls.
Voters must have the final say in a democracy. If we do not act against these threats, free and fair elections in 2026 could be at stake. So, what can be done?
The courts must uphold the Constitution when it comes to elections, as they did with Trump’s earlier executive order.
State leaders and election officials must also fight back. They must stand firm in their right to oversee elections, continue to provide voters with options such as mail and early voting, resist illegal orders, and keep control over voting machines. The Brennan Center has published information
[link removed]
about how to respond to requests to access sensitive data and machinery.
Ultimately, the integrity of the next election will be up to voters. We must all speak out against these moves to meddle with the vote. It’s harder to take over an election when everyone is watching.
Think again about Trump’s claim that states are his “agents” in tabulating the votes. Vladimir Putin’s great hero had something to say about that: “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how,” Joseph Stalin said, “but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
The Struggle to Vote in Texas
The sweeping voter suppression law that Texas enacted in 2021, Senate Bill 1, has made it significantly harder for people to cast their ballots by imposing a range of burdensome and restrictive rules. As our research has shown, many voters were disenfranchised, and some were discouraged from voting altogether. Brennan Center intern Abigail Martin, a Texas native, shares her experience navigating the confusing and costly process of casting an absentee ballot in the 2022 midterm elections. “Unfortunately, things haven’t gotten any better since then — and there are thousands of other Texans in a similar situation,” she writes. Read more
[link removed]
Silence from the Court
The Supreme Court is increasingly using its emergency docket, often called the shadow docket, to quietly rule on legal challenges against the Trump administration. In nearly every case, it has sided with the administration with little or no explanation. Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently defended the Court’s use of unexplained emergency orders, but Alicia Bannon argues that his “defense of secretive decision-making doesn’t hold water,” especially at a time when “the Court’s failure to explain its rulings has also opened the door to the Trump administration embracing a maximalist interpretation of what the Court has authorized.” Read more
[link removed]
New York Backs Public Campaign Financing
A new poll by Data for Progress and Citizen Action of New York shows that a large majority of New York voters across party lines support the state’s groundbreaking public campaign financing program, launched last year. It’s the strongest legislative response yet to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which largely deregulated political spending. The program has already shown success in New York’s 2024 legislative elections. “With necessary budget resources, the program’s benefits can continue to grow across the state,” Celina Avalos Jaramillo and Marina Pino write. Read more
[link removed]
A New Chapter for New York City’s Jails
For the first time since its founding 400 years ago, New York City will soon no longer run its own jails. Instead, control will shift to a federal judge, who will appoint an independent outside official to address long-standing problems at the Rikers Island jail complex, including poor staffing and security practices and inhumane conditions. Hernandez Stroud explains what’s next for Rikers Island and notes that this federal court takeover “offers a rare opportunity to transform one of the nation’s most troubled jails.” Read more
[link removed]
The Weak Justification for the New Entry Ban
In June, President Trump issued a proclamation blocking nationals of 19 countries from entering the United States. The entry ban applies to nearly all temporary visas — including those for tourists, business travelers, students, and scholars — and claims it is justified on national security grounds. But in reality, Margy O’Herron and former senior immigration policy adviser Doug Rand write, the ban “seems calculated to bar populations the president has stigmatized or vocally vowed to exclude, including Muslims, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Africans.” Read more
[link removed]
Unpacking Trump’s DC Takeover Attempt
Last week, the Trump administration announced a federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, citing an alleged spike in violent crime — a claim contradicted by data showing that crime is significantly declining. So far, National Guard troops and federal agents from agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to DC streets, and the White House is seeking to commandeer the city’s police department. In a Just Security piece, Joseph Nunn and Spencer Reynolds examine the legal questions these actions raise, as well as the guardrails that could prevent similar efforts in other cities. Read more
[link removed]
News
Elizabeth Goitein on the federal attempt to control DC’s Metropolitan Police Department // POLITIFACT
[link removed]
Ames Grawert on the downward trend in crime // THE GUARDIAN
[link removed]
Michael Li on the stakes of an upcoming Supreme Court case on redistricting // CNN
[link removed]
Michael Waldman on the lack of competition in current congressional maps // BLOOMBERG
[link removed]
Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
[link removed]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271
646-292-8310
tel:646-292-8310
[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Support Brennan Center
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After his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Trump bragged that the dictator had backed one of his conspiracy theories. According to Trump, Putin said
[link removed]
, “You can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting.” (You don’t need to be a former KGB agent to know how to woo our chief executive.)
Then yesterday, perhaps emboldened by his encounter with a real-life autocrat, Trump announced a major effort to seize control of American elections.
In a Truth Social post, he declared that he would sign “an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections” and “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”
We’ve all grown used to the president’s wild claims about elections. We might be tempted to roll our eyes now, but we shouldn’t. It’s appalling.
The order would likely purport to ban or seriously limit mail voting, a focus of Trump’s since 2020. To be clear, mail voting is a widely popular and long-standing practice
[link removed]
used by about a third of citizens. Every state has well-tested security measures in place to ensure that the process is safe and secure.
Trump claimed in his post that we are the only country in the world that uses mail voting. Putin, whom he called a “smart guy,” allegedly told him that, but it is blatantly false. Dozens of countries
[link removed]
use mail voting, including Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (And of course, Trump himself regularly votes by mail in Florida.)
The order could also target voting machines. “While we’re at it,” he said in the post, we should get rid of “Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” That’s nutty. Machines with a paper record (used by 98 percent of voters) are far more accurate and secure than, say, counting ballots by hand. Ironically, Trump’s blast came the same day that Newsmax paid $67 million to a voting machine company in a defamation suit arising from the last round of false claims about the 2020 election.
Attempting to implement any of these policies via executive order would be flagrantly illegal and flatly unconstitutional — a power grab. Already, earlier this year, Trump tried to seize control of elections with an executive order requiring Americans to produce a passport or another citizenship document to register to vote using the federal form. The Brennan Center and others sued, and judges blocked the worst part of that move. The new threatened executive order, too, could turn out to be vapor, essentially a malevolent press release.
But Trump’s post contained a chilling claim: “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
This statement plainly repudiates the Constitution — the Elections Clause gives states and Congress the power to run elections. Presidents have no authority to rewrite election rules. In a democracy, the states are not personal agents of the president.
If successful, this executive order would be nothing short of an authoritarian takeover of our election system. Imagine the man who demanded that a state election official “find” him 11,780 votes in charge of “counting and tabulating the votes.”
This threat comes as federalized troops and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents patrol the streets of Washington, DC. Last week, ICE agents massed outside a Democratic event on redistricting in California.
Again, Trump’s threatened executive order would be blatantly illegal and blocked by a court. But it’s still important to listen to what he’s saying. He’s making his goal — a federal takeover of elections — explicit. And while this particular tactic won’t work, it’s just one piece of the administration’s emerging, unmistakable campaign to undermine our elections
[link removed]
, a drive that ranges from defunding election security programs to trying to gain access to state voter rolls.
Voters must have the final say in a democracy. If we do not act against these threats, free and fair elections in 2026 could be at stake. So, what can be done?
The courts must uphold the Constitution when it comes to elections, as they did with Trump’s earlier executive order.
State leaders and election officials must also fight back. They must stand firm in their right to oversee elections, continue to provide voters with options such as mail and early voting, resist illegal orders, and keep control over voting machines. The Brennan Center has published information
[link removed]
about how to respond to requests to access sensitive data and machinery.
Ultimately, the integrity of the next election will be up to voters. We must all speak out against these moves to meddle with the vote. It’s harder to take over an election when everyone is watching.
Think again about Trump’s claim that states are his “agents” in tabulating the votes. Vladimir Putin’s great hero had something to say about that: “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how,” Joseph Stalin said, “but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
The Struggle to Vote in Texas
The sweeping voter suppression law that Texas enacted in 2021, Senate Bill 1, has made it significantly harder for people to cast their ballots by imposing a range of burdensome and restrictive rules. As our research has shown, many voters were disenfranchised, and some were discouraged from voting altogether. Brennan Center intern Abigail Martin, a Texas native, shares her experience navigating the confusing and costly process of casting an absentee ballot in the 2022 midterm elections. “Unfortunately, things haven’t gotten any better since then — and there are thousands of other Texans in a similar situation,” she writes. Read more
[link removed]
Silence from the Court
The Supreme Court is increasingly using its emergency docket, often called the shadow docket, to quietly rule on legal challenges against the Trump administration. In nearly every case, it has sided with the administration with little or no explanation. Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently defended the Court’s use of unexplained emergency orders, but Alicia Bannon argues that his “defense of secretive decision-making doesn’t hold water,” especially at a time when “the Court’s failure to explain its rulings has also opened the door to the Trump administration embracing a maximalist interpretation of what the Court has authorized.” Read more
[link removed]
New York Backs Public Campaign Financing
A new poll by Data for Progress and Citizen Action of New York shows that a large majority of New York voters across party lines support the state’s groundbreaking public campaign financing program, launched last year. It’s the strongest legislative response yet to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which largely deregulated political spending. The program has already shown success in New York’s 2024 legislative elections. “With necessary budget resources, the program’s benefits can continue to grow across the state,” Celina Avalos Jaramillo and Marina Pino write. Read more
[link removed]
A New Chapter for New York City’s Jails
For the first time since its founding 400 years ago, New York City will soon no longer run its own jails. Instead, control will shift to a federal judge, who will appoint an independent outside official to address long-standing problems at the Rikers Island jail complex, including poor staffing and security practices and inhumane conditions. Hernandez Stroud explains what’s next for Rikers Island and notes that this federal court takeover “offers a rare opportunity to transform one of the nation’s most troubled jails.” Read more
[link removed]
The Weak Justification for the New Entry Ban
In June, President Trump issued a proclamation blocking nationals of 19 countries from entering the United States. The entry ban applies to nearly all temporary visas — including those for tourists, business travelers, students, and scholars — and claims it is justified on national security grounds. But in reality, Margy O’Herron and former senior immigration policy adviser Doug Rand write, the ban “seems calculated to bar populations the president has stigmatized or vocally vowed to exclude, including Muslims, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Africans.” Read more
[link removed]
Unpacking Trump’s DC Takeover Attempt
Last week, the Trump administration announced a federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, DC, citing an alleged spike in violent crime — a claim contradicted by data showing that crime is significantly declining. So far, National Guard troops and federal agents from agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to DC streets, and the White House is seeking to commandeer the city’s police department. In a Just Security piece, Joseph Nunn and Spencer Reynolds examine the legal questions these actions raise, as well as the guardrails that could prevent similar efforts in other cities. Read more
[link removed]
News
Elizabeth Goitein on the federal attempt to control DC’s Metropolitan Police Department // POLITIFACT
[link removed]
Ames Grawert on the downward trend in crime // THE GUARDIAN
[link removed]
Michael Li on the stakes of an upcoming Supreme Court case on redistricting // CNN
[link removed]
Michael Waldman on the lack of competition in current congressional maps // BLOOMBERG
[link removed]
Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
[link removed]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271
646-292-8310
tel:646-292-8310
[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Support Brennan Center
[link removed]
View Online
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Want to change how you receive these emails or unsubscribe? Click here
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to update your preferences.
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