The Many Ways Trump Is Trying to Tip the Scales for the Midterms
“President Trump is attempting to influence the 2026 midterms and future elections by leveraging federal agencies and personal influence over lawmakers. His efforts, which include nationalizing elections, tightening voting restrictions, and pushing for mid-decade redistricting, have faced legal challenges and opposition. Despite setbacks, Trump’s actions and rhetoric are expected to sow doubt and potentially challenge election results.
President Trump is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.
Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts, stymied by the Constitution or stopped in Congress. But the relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results.
Agencies and officials across the federal government have, at the direction of Mr. Trump, undertaken dozens of actions grounded in novel strategies and aimed at insulating Republicans from potential losses in November. Those actions fall into six major categories (and some fall into more than one).
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Taking steps to nationalize elections
Justice Department
D.H.S.
U.S.P.S.
Issued proposed rule to control mail-in ballots
At least 14 actions
Filed lawsuits against Utah and other states for failing to produce voter registration lists
The United States Constitution puts control over elections in the hands of the states and grants Congress the ability to pass federal election legislation. It gives no explicit authority to the executive branch.
But in early February, Mr. Trump said he wanted the Republican-led federal government to “nationalize” or “take over” the running of elections. “A state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” he said.
Mr. Trump had already, in March 2025, signed an executive order seeking broad authority over elections. The order required documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and mandated the return of mail ballots by Election Day. Those were almost universally blocked by courts, which found that the order clearly violated the separation of powers and exceeded the president’s authority.
But another provision, which instructed the U.S. attorney general to hunt for and prosecute election crimes, has been used to justify sprawling efforts by the Justice Department related to elections.
The Justice Department began demanding the complete voter files — state databases of registered voters that include sensitive personal identifying information — from every state as it worked to compile the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected.
More than half the states — many under Democratic control but some run by Republicans, too — have resisted this effort. In response, the Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and territories, seeking to force them to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. At least 16 states have provided or indicated an intention to turn over their lists, according to tracking from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Election workers sorting mail-in ballots in Phoenix during the presidential primary election in March 2024. Rebecca Noble for The New York Times
In January, Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, requested that Minnesota turn over its voter rolls to “bring back law and order” amid protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Minnesota officials dismissed the request as “outrageous.”
Though the Justice Department has yet to win a single lawsuit — it has lost at least 10 so far, as well as one federal appeal — election officials and Democrats fear the battle over voting records may be used in a post-election effort to challenge, discredit or spread disinformation about midterm results.
Acting on the same executive order, the Department of Homeland Security has been combing voter rolls for noncitizens who have voted. It has not found evidence of widespread fraud, and a federal judge barred the administration from letting states use a federal citizenship data tool to screen their voter rolls.
In March 2026, Mr. Trump signed a second executive order regarding voting policy, this time seeking to create state-by-state lists of citizens that would be used to determine voting eligibility and restrict the use of mail ballots. It was immediately challenged by nearly half the states and multiple voting rights groups. A federal judge sided with the states’ argument, blocking key provisions of the executive order.
Before that court decision, the United States Postal Service proposed a rulethat would allow the agency to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that didn’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government. The postmaster general has said the service will abide by any court order.
Separate from the executive orders, senior Justice Department officials last year began exploring whether they could bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the administration determined they had not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems.
Democrats fear that the president could weaponize federal agencies on or after Election Day. Mr. Trump told The New York Times last year that he regretted not seizing voting machines after the 2020 election.
Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, defended the president’s actions and policies regarding elections.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered noncitizen voters,” she said in a statement. Ms. Jackson also pointed to a few specific examples of noncitizens who were charged with illegal voting and noted other ongoing investigations. She reiterated the president’s desire to pass federal voting legislation that would enshrine many of his voting objectives into law.
“Noncitizens voting is a crime,” Ms. Jackson said. “Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”
Trying to tighten voting restrictions
Justice Department
U.S.P.S.
Dismissed Biden-era lawsuit that accused Georgia of Black voter suppression
Filed voter purge lawsuit in North Carolina
At least 21 actions
While Mr. Trump’s attempts to use executive orders to change elections have been largely blocked by courts, the president and his allies have found other avenues to add new restrictions to voting that are designed to help them win at the ballot box.
Soon after Mr. Trump took office, the Justice Department dropped or halted all of its open voting rights lawsuits that preceded Mr. Trump’s inauguration, easing the path for partisan gerrymanders and voting laws to withstand legal scrutiny. That included dropping a lawsuit against a voting law in Georgia.
The number of lawyers working in the voting-rights arm of the Justice Department, one of the government’s critical bulwarks against civil rights abuses in voting and elections, has dwindled from about 30 at the end of the Biden administration to the single digits after resignations, cuts and reassignments.
Voting during the Nevada primary on June 9, 2026, in Las Vegas. Roger Kisby for The New York Times
Last year, the Trump administration joined a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee against Mississippi that said the state’s policy of accepting mail and absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but arrived in a short period afterward violated federal election law. (Far more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail.)
On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s grace period.
The president has also sought to force Congress to pass voting legislation that would codify many parts of his executive orders into federal law. The legislation, called the SAVE America Act, would, among other things, require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as photo identification to vote. It would also require states to submit their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans lack the votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster and pass the legislation, but the president has continued to pressure Republicans to force a vote, threatening not to sign any nonbudgetary bills until it is passed.
Pushing for mid-decade redistricting
Perhaps no strategy embraced by Mr. Trump was more explicitly designed to prevent a midterm loss than the mid-decade redistricting wars of the past year.
Last summer, Mr. Trump and his allies at the White House began encouraging Texas Republicans to take the rare step of redrawing their congressional maps to try to save the party’s endangered majority.
By November, forcing Republican-led states to redraw their maps was at the center of Mr. Trump’s strategy to win the midterms and prevent Democratic control of the House of Representatives.
Texas, North Carolina and Missouri quickly redrew their congressional maps, netting seven new Republican-leaning districts. Ohio redrew its map as required by state law, adding as many as two new Republican-leaning districts.
State Representative Matt Morgan of Texas, a Republican, holding a map of proposed congressional districts in the state last August. Sergio Flores/Reuters
Democrats responded by introducing aggressive gerrymanders in California and Virginia, which appeared to bring the redistricting wars to a draw — until the Supreme Court weakened a key component of the Voting Rights Act in April. After the ruling, Tennessee redrew its maps to eliminate the lone Democratic-held seat in the state, and Louisiana and Alabama quickly followed with new maps that would each eliminate another Democratic-controlled district.
At the same time, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the Democratic gerrymander in the state, effectively eliminating four new Democratic-leaning districts and handing Republicans a multi-seat structural advantage heading into the midterms.
Cutting election security
Justice Department
D.H.S.
Disbanded F.B.I. task force tracking foreign influence operations
Froze election cybersecurity work
The Trump administration has gutted key elements of the nation’s election security infrastructure. Experts warn that the changes could reduce visibility into nationwide cyberattacks and foreign influence campaigns while making it more difficult for state and local election officials to coordinate defensive operations.
Early in his second term, Mr. Trump signed two directives that administration officials have used to justify the dismantling of these programs.
The administration has weakened the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, terminated an F.B.I. task force aimed at combatting foreign influence in U.S. elections and ended a program responsible for sharing threat intelligence with state and local officials.
The actions are rooted in longstanding grievances from Mr. Trump and his allies, who have argued that, under the guise of fighting misinformation and disinformation, the Biden administration infringed on free speech.
Christopher Krebs, then the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in Arlington, Va., in March 2020. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In his first budget request to Congress, Mr. Trump proposed eliminating CISA’s disinformation offices, accusing them of “conspiring against the First Amendment rights of President Trump and his supporters.”
Mr. Trump’s attacks on CISA also reflect his animosity toward Christopher Krebs, the agency’s former director who oversaw efforts to secure the 2020 election and infuriated Mr. Trump by publicly debunking his lies about that election.
Undermining faith in the electoral system by questioning previous results
Director of National Intelligence
Justice Department
Requested access to inspect 2020 voting equipment in Missouri
Demanded election records from Wayne County, Mich.
At least 19 actions
Mr. Trump refuses to concede that he lost the 2020 election and has used the White House to both legitimize and seek evidence supporting his debunked conspiracy theories.
On his first day back in office, he granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Later, he introduced a page on the White House website falsely accusing Democrats of promoting a “gaslighting narrative” in their efforts to certify the “stolen election.”
Mr. Trump also ordered Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, to help manage an F.B.I. investigation of his baseless claims of voting irregularities in Fulton County, Ga. The move came after a team led by Ms. Gabbard seized voting machines from Puerto Rico to examine them for vulnerabilities.
Members of the F.B.I. entering the Fulton County elections office on Jan. 28, 2026. Nicole Craine for The New York Times
The administration has also issued subpoenas for 2020 election records in Maricopa County, Ariz.; requested access to voting equipment used in Missouri; and, based on disproven allegations about the 2020 election, demanded 2024 election records from Wayne County, Mich. Last month, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles broke with decades of precedent in predicting election fraud charges related to California’s primary races while votes were still being counted.
In May, the Justice Department announced it was setting up a $1.8 billion fundto compensate people who claimed to be victims of government “weaponization,” which would most likely include people who stormed the Capitol in 2021. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on June 2 that the fund would not move forward, but Mr. Trump later said he still loved the idea.
Mr. Trump has stocked his second administration with people who are sympathetic to his denial of the 2020 election results. These officials have been put into positions where they could play a role in undermining this year’s and future elections.
Where Trump has installed election deniers in government
Justice Department
Kash Patel
Harmeet K. Dhillon
Sigal Chattah
Jeanine Pirro
Dan Bishop
Kurt Olsen
Eric Neff
Christopher Gardner
Megan Frederick
Joseph Voiland
Defense Department
Patrick Weaver
Marci McCarthy
Department of Homeland Security
Markwayne Mullin
Heather Honey
Gregg Phillips
On leave
David Harvilicz
Punishing those who have worked against election denialism
Justice Department
Director of National Intelligence
C.I.A.
Fired more than a dozen prosecutors hired to investigate Jan. 6
Revoked security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials
Indicted James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director
At least 15 actions
While Mr. Trump has long used grievance as a political tool, retribution against his perceived enemies has become a centerpiece of his second administration. Much of that retribution has targeted anyone who has investigated the Jan. 6 attack or pushed back on his 2020 election denial.
Within hours of retaking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order asserting that the Biden administration had engaged “in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents” and directing federal agencies to seek evidence that it did so.
The administration has purged F.B.I. agents and government attorneys who worked on investigations of Mr. Trump or his allies, revoked security clearances from dozens of people as punishment for alleged misconduct and opened investigations into Mr. Trump’s supposed “enemies.”
It has also sought to target ordinary citizens. In April, the Justice Department issued a federal grand jury subpoena demanding the identities of every person who worked on the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. The county’s motion to block the subpoena characterized it as intended “to target, harass and punish the president’s perceived political opponents.” The effort remains tied up in the courts.
As the only president in United States history to seek to overturn an election result, Mr. Trump has spent years using social media and campaign rallies to sow doubt about the integrity of U.S. elections. He continues to do so, but now he also wields the authority to direct his cabinet secretaries and other political appointees to implement his agenda. All of Mr. Trump’s directives underlying the above agency actions are based on several debunked election-related conspiracy theories, including:
His claim that undocumented immigrants vote illegally in large numbers.
“They want illegal immigrants to come in, criminals, doesn’t matter because they want to get their votes.”
— Republican fundraiser, March 25, 2026
His spreading of debunked claims of widespread fraud related to mail-in ballots …
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.”
— White House remarks, Aug. 18, 2025
… and voting machines.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
— Truth Social post, Aug. 18, 2025
Broader unsubstantiated claims he has made of widespread voting fraud that include people voting multiple times or assuming dead people’s identities to vote.
“Every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered.”
— White House remarks, April 9, 2025
And finally, his belief in a “deep state” embedded in the government that has worked against him and other Republicans.
“We’re going to find the deep-state actors who have buried into government, fire them and escort them from federal buildings.”
— Campaign rally, Jan. 28, 2023
While many of Mr. Trump’s directives have been blocked or delayed by the courts, election experts say that their potential harm remains significant, and that some of the efforts have already eroded faith in the process.
“The point of so much of this campaign is not actually to change policy because they know they don’t actually have the authority to change policy,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “It’s to inject distrust and confusion into our elections, both to discourage people from participating and to lay the groundwork for calling elections into question after the fact.”
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