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Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Trump is using ‘pure lies' about high crime in US cities to justify federal takeovers
When Donald Trump announced a federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department in Washington DC on Monday, he left room for the possibility of making a similar move in other cities across the US, alluding to their high crime rates. 'You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad,' Trump said. 'We're not going to let it happen, we're not going to lose our cities.' But both experts and elected officials have been quick to counter Trump's claims, pointing out how major cities are in fact experiencing dramatic decreases in violent crime rates since they peaked during the pandemic. Related: Trump will ignore crime reduction data for the political value of a show of force 'Every category of crime and every population group that the FBI covers is reporting a drop pretty much nationwide,' said Jeff Asher, an analyst who studies criminal justice data, adding that there was no disparity in the trend between red and blue cities or states. The downward trend has been consistent nationally since around 2022, as the country began to recover from the pandemic, experts said. 'It's clear that a lot of what we saw during the Covid-19 era has been reversed,' said Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who researches crime trends. While it's impossible to isolate the exact causes of the spike in crime during the pandemic, several experts point to the collapse of social services as one cause. Since then, state and federal agencies poured money into communities for projects like gun violence prevention programs as well as more streetlights on local roads. These programs are the same ones being slashed as the Trump administration has prioritized shrinking federal spending. The Department of Justice canceled hundreds of grants earlier this year that funded violence prevention and victims' services programs, affecting organizations in 37 states. Elected officials were quick to slam Trump for floating a possible federal takeover of police in their cities, citing local data that matched the same trend in the FBI data showing public safety improvements as well as pointing out the recent funding cuts. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson said shootings were down by 40% in the last year alone. 'If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence. Sending in the national guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts,' he said. And in Maryland, local and state officials released a joint statement similarly criticizing the president for painting a false narrative about where they lived and worked. 'As leaders in Baltimore and the state of Maryland, we stand in strong opposition to the president's latest power grab, which is based on pure lies about our communities,' the statement said. Officials pointed to a 40% drop in violent crime since 2021 and said that progress was being made on public safety issues, despite the challenge of facing the Trump administration's funding cuts. Instead of calling in the national guard, Trump should be looking to partner with local officials, they said. 'We know from experience how to improve public safety: empower our community partners and violence interrupters, invest in our young people and prosecute repeat violent offenders in collaboration with law enforcement,' the statement said. In New York, officials also pushed back fast on Trump's rhetoric. 'New York is moving in the right direction in public safety,' the mayor, Eric Adams, said on Tuesday. While he added that he would be happy to accept more federal support, he added: 'We don't need anyone to come in and take over our law enforcement apparatus, we have the finest police department in the globe.' Even Trump's FBI director, Kash Patel, said on Joe Rogan's podcast in June that murder rates were on track to reach a historic low this year. 'If we, the FBI and our government partners, achieve the mission, we'll give the American people the lowest murder rate in decades,' he said. While crime rates are trending in the right direction, there's still work to do to improve public safety concerns, said Rachel Eisenberg, the managing director for rights and justice at the Center for American Progress. But, she said, communities are still best positioned to address these challenges rather than federal troops, echoing the concerns of local officials. 'What Trump is doing now is not about public safety,' she said. 'It's political theater.' Trump doubled down on his claims on Wednesday, suggesting that the crime statistics are a fraud, without specifying which statistics. 'Crime is the worst it's ever been,' he said. As national guard troops arrived in Washington DC this week, Thaddeus Johnson, a senior researcher at the Council on Criminal Justice, said that in the short term, it is likely arrests will go up. 'That can really capture the psyche of people and people can be sensationalized as it really plays on the fears of people,' Johnson said. Ultimately, he said, it's critical to address socioeconomic factors such as access to housing, unemployment rates and income inequity in order to improve public safety. 'Putting the feds in is not going to be the long-term answer,' Johnson said. Meanwhile, Trump has already declared his policy move a victory. 'People are feeling safe already,' he said on Wednesday. 'They're not afraid any more.'
Axios
10-08-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Vance urges "decisive action" on GOP redistricting efforts
Vice President JD Vance said Republicans must take "very decisive action" with redistricting, arguing in an interview aired Sunday that those efforts and a new census will make "the congressional apportionment fair." The big picture: The White House-endorsed push for red states to redraw congressional maps has prompted a fiery response from Democrats, with party leaders threatening to retaliate in kind to nullify Republicans' proposed changes. President Trump ignited the Democrats' reaction when he urged Texas Republicans to set new lines ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Lone Star State's proposed map would make five districts, currently represented by Democrats, more favorable to Republicans. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a special election allowing voters to approve a ballot measure that could ultimately green-light Democratic efforts to redistrict in response to Texas' plan. Driving the news: The vice president argued in a prerecorded interview aired Sunday on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that when blue states gerrymander, it "suppresses the will of the people in states like Indiana," where he recently talked redistricting with state Republican leaders. As noted by the Brennan Center for Justice, both parties engaged in partisan redistricting after the 2020 census, but the bias in maps ahead of the 2024 election favored the GOP "due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest." What he's saying: Vance said in the interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that undocumented immigrants are included in population counts, saying it's "ridiculously unfair" that those tallies factor into reapportionment. "The only real way to fight back against it is for us to redistrict in some ways as aggressively as these hard blue states have done," Vance said. Context: The U.S. Constitution lays out the process of conducting a census each decade, with the 14th Amendment stating apportionment should be determined by the count of the "whole number of persons in each State." The resident population counts, per the U.S. Census Bureau, include"all people (citizens and noncitizens)" living in the U.S. at the time of the census, as well as military and civilian employees of the government deployed outside the country. Last week, Trump called for a "new and highly accurate" census that omits "People who are in our Country illegally." Vance said the administration wants to "re-do the census," as Trump ordered, citing under- and overcounts in the 2020 count. "What we're living with ... is the consequence of 40 years of institutional control of the Democratic Party," he argued, blaming party officials for trying to "rig the game." Vance urged "hard work to reset the scales a little bit." State of play: The U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey (PES) found that there were undercounts in six states and overcounts in eight. But, per the bureau, the census was still "fit for the purposes of apportionment and redistricting." PES data does not say why a state experiences under- or overcounts. Officials emphasized at the time that "no census is perfect" — and that PES findings help inform planning for future counts. Planning for the 2030 census was already well underway when Trump announced plans for a new count. The other side: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Republicans' redistricting efforts as "undemocratic" and "outrageous" in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." That leaves Democrats with "no choice" but to fight fire with fire, he said. "It's pathetic, but I think you have to respond," Sanders told CNN's Dana Bash. Zoom out: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Trump's redistricting push is because "he knows he's going to lose the Congress in 2026." "That's why he's going to his allies and hoping that they can save him. And we've all got to stand up against this. This is — it's cheating. Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he's trying to cheat the American people out of their votes," he said.
Politico
08-08-2025
- Politics
- Politico
It's been 60 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed. Will it make it to 61?
ANXIOUS ANNIVERSARY — The Voting Rights Act was signed into law 60 years ago this week. What the law will look like when it reaches its 61st anniversary next year is a big question. The landmark piece of legislation — which helped usher in an era of increased minority representation across American politics — has slowly been chipped away by the Roberts Supreme Court over the last 12 years. And a pair of court battles over the next year could leave the future of the law even more uncertain. These new cases came 'within the Overton window because of what the justices themselves have done to encourage people to think more aggressively as it relates to the Voting Rights Act,' said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the liberal advocacy organization the Brennan Center for Justice. 'These are radical changes that would do significant damage to voting rights.' Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has predominantly come through Section 2 of the law — which broadly prohibits discrimination in election practices on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group — after the Supreme Court in 2013 rendered the other major pillar moot. Back then, the court struck down the part of the VRA that determined which jurisdictions had a history of discrimination and needed to get federal permission before changing their voting laws. Section 2 has been used to challenge voting practices — like restrictive registration requirements — that have disproportionately affected minority voters. But one of the biggest ways Section 2 enforcement has played out in practice has been the creation of 'majority-minority' congressional and legislative districts in which minority voters make up enough of the electorate to elect a candidate of their choosing. There are dozens of such districts across the country that are drawn to explicitly be majority Black, Latino or Asian — a practice the Supreme Court is now scrutinizing. The first case starts in Louisiana, where a majority Black district that sprawled across the state was challenged by a group of self-identified non-Black voters as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The court initially heard arguments appealing that case in March. But earlier this summer, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of announcing it will rehear the case. In a short order issued last week, the justices called for parties to be prepared to argue whether the 'intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.' The question posed by the court does not explicitly mention either the Voting Rights Act or Section 2. But the implication is fairly straightforward, according to UCLA law professor Rick Hasen: The court's conservative jurists could find that the Reconstruction era amendments — which were passed initially to protect newly-freed slaves — demand a 'colorblind' reading of the inherently race-conscious Voting Rights Act, and either strike it down or significantly limit its scope. The court could find that 'the 14th and 15th Amendments should be read not as providing a way for Congress to protect Blacks and other minorities from discrimination in voting and elsewhere, but instead that it's a command that everything be race neutral,' Hasen, who has been critical of the court's erosion of the VRA, told Nightly. 'A kind of race neutral reading of the Constitution would potentially read out Congress's power to enact race conscious remedies to protect minority voters.' Merely asking the question does not guarantee the court will scrap the practice of drawing majority-minority districts — Chief Justice John Roberts, who has generally looked to roll back the VRA over his career, was the surprise author of a majority opinion in 2023 that upheld a key provision. But at least one conservative justice has written recently that the law should be gutted, with Clarence Thomas writing in June that the court's previous rulings have placed 'the VRA in direct conflict with the Constitution.' The VRA has acted as a restraint in this hyper-partisan era of redistricting, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 federal courts couldn't police so-called partisan gerrymandering. A universe without VRA-protected districts would allow mapmakers of all political persuasions to further push the bounds of remapping. Beyond the Louisiana case, another significant challenge to Section 2 is making its way through the federal judiciary. The vast majority of Section 2 litigation has been initiated by private parties, such as individual citizens or civil rights groups. But in a case out of North Dakota, the conservative 8th Circuit ruled that a 'private right of action' does not exist and that only the federal government can bring these cases. That, in effect, would eliminate most of the enforcement of the VRA and leave the remaining trickle up to the whims of whatever administration is in the White House — particularly under the Trump administration, which has totally overhauled the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. That ruling was stayed by the Supreme Court last month as an appeal is crafted. But that was over the objection of three of the conservative justices — Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. The North Dakota case does not present as direct an attack on Section 2 as the one from Louisiana. But a ruling that kills the right for private parties to sue would render the VRA effectively moot, Hasen said. 'While a ruling that private parties couldn't sue wouldn't look like a death knell, when you've got most cases — the lion's share — being brought by private parties, and you have a Trump Department of Justice that has not and does not appear to be interested in bringing any additional Section 2 lawsuits,' he said, 'it would essentially be rendering Section 2 a dead letter.' Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's author at zmontellaro@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ZachMontellaro. What'd I Miss? — Billy Long out as IRS commissioner: President Donald Trump plans to remove Billy Long as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, a White House official said today. Long was sworn in less than two months ago to lead the tax agency. The former Missouri lawmaker had previously sponsored legislation to eradicate the IRS. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as the agency's acting commissioner, the White House official — who was granted anonymity to discuss personnel moves — said. — Trump to consider Fannie and Freddie public offerings this year: President Donald Trump is considering selling stock in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac later this year, a senior administration official said today. 'The president is weighing all his options,' said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been finalized. The details of a potential public offering, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, would value the two companies at around $500 billion and involve selling 5 percent to 15 percent of their stock. However, there is still debate surrounding whether the entities would go through the initial public offering process separately or together. — U.S. attorney's office subpoenas New York AG Letitia James: The U.S. attorney's office in Albany has issued two subpoenas to New York Attorney General Letitia James stemming from a pair of politically charged civil cases against President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association, according to a person familiar with the matter. The subpoenas are an escalation of the Trump administration's scrutiny of James, who has positioned herself as a ferocious opponent of the president. The Department of Justice earlier this year opened a separate investigation into mortgage fraud allegations against James, which she has denied. — Appeals court panel quashes Judge Boasberg's contempt proceedings over Alien Enemies Act deportations: A divided federal appeals court panel has thrown out U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's bid to pursue criminal contempt for Trump administration officials he says defied his orders in March by sending 130 Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador. The ruling can be appealed further. If it remains in place, it appears to sharply diminish — but not completely rule out — the possibility that lawyers or other officials in the administration could face contempt charges over their conduct during the high-profile deportation showdown. — Trump administration demands $1B from University of California-Los Angeles: The Trump administration is pushing the University of California-Los Angeles to enter a $1 billion settlement that would resolve alleged civil rights violations, restore hundreds of millions of dollars of frozen federal research grants, and force the school to adopt major changes to how it operates. The proposed agreement is certain to be subject to intense negotiations between the University of California and the White House. The administration's opening demand marks a major effort to expand the scope of a monthslong political and policy offensive against higher education institutions — this time against a flagship campus at one of the country's largest public university systems. AROUND THE WORLD LONDON CALLING — Keir Starmer today led international condemnation of Israel over a major military escalation in the Gaza Strip in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to take over Gaza City. Germany suspended arms exports to Israel that could be used in Gaza, Spain 'strongly' condemned the stepped-up Israeli offensive, and the United Nations called for an immediate halt to the Israeli operation. 'The Israeli government's decision to further escalate its offensive in Gaza is wrong, and we urge it to reconsider immediately,' the British prime minister said in a statement early today. 'This action will do nothing to bring an end to this conflict or to help secure the release of the hostages. It will only bring more bloodshed,' he said. Britain and its allies are working on a long-term plan to secure peace in the region as part of a two-state solution, but 'without both sides engaging in good faith in negotiations, that prospect is vanishing before our eyes,' the U.K. leader said. Turkey also lambasted Netanyahu's decision, which was approved by Israel's security cabinet early today. Ankara called on Israel to stop its plans. CIVILIANS OUT — Ukraine is evacuating hundreds of people from Korabel, an island district of Kherson city in southern Ukraine, after Russia last week severely damaged the only bridge connecting the suburb with the rest of the city. 'There are still about 600 people left out of 1,800 who were living there before the strike. At least 200 will be evacuated today. And Russians continue to attack the bridge and the area during evacuation,' Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration, said today. The few people left in Korabel have no gas, no electricity, no shops and no public transportation. The bridge attack prompted fears that Russians are planning to retake Kherson. Russia seized the city of 300,000 in the early days of its full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022, but was driven out later that year. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP HOMEWARD BOUND — Clint Smith's family was one of the first let back into their Gentilly, New Orleans home after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in October 2005. And when he stepped foot back into the neighborhood as a teenager, he saw the extent of the devastation — and also the continued character of the neighborhood. Over the years following, Katrina became more than just a storm for his neighbors — it became a reference point and a 'before/after' moment for those who survived. Twenty years later Smith, now an essayist, reflects on what it meant to return home, and the concept of home after disaster, for The Atlantic. 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07-08-2025
- Politics
How gerrymandering has reshaped the political map for red and blue states
The redistricting battle gripping Texas has put a spotlight on the ongoing debate over gerrymandering and its long-term effects on the electorate. Sam Wang, the founding director of the Electoral Innovation Lab and the creator of the Gerrymandering Project , a research lab focused on creating the most fair district maps, told ABC News that state leaders from both sides of the aisle have changed election boundaries to make it stacked with constituents who vote in their favor. In the last 20 years, with access to advanced computer algorithms, those gerrymandering attempts have become more egregious as whole counties have been divided up with pinpoint precision, resulting in districts with areas with outlandish shapes, he said. "Gerrymander is partisanship maximized above all of the other things," Wang said. The practice was first identified and coined in 1812 when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed a bill that redrew the state's congressional maps to benefit the Democratic-Republican party. Maps are typically redrawn at the beginning of each decade to reflect changes in the population from the latest census. Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Washington D.C. office of the Brennan Center for Justice, who has spent years researching redistricting, told ABC News the redistricting campaigns since the 2000s have led to a systemic cycle of gerrymandering, especially in the South. "States like Florida and Texas have the worst examples of gerrymandering," he said. But Crayton also pointed out that states with Democratic majorities, like Illinois, have responded with their own maps that also skew districts in their favor, leading to an endless cycle. "All of these states are looking around at each other like 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' thinking who's going to fire first," he said, referring to the Western film. "There is no sheriff in town saying this is not helping everyone." While Republican and Democratic leaders in those states have contended they are redrawing their maps to adequately reflect their communities, Wang said the math and geography aren't backing their arguments. Wang's lab created a mathematical algorithm that creates district maps using key demographic factors. Racial demographics from the Census, environmental and geographic information from local data and other public sources are used to create district maps that remove political bias. Those maps are then compared to the district maps currently in place. "That tells us what someone who didn't care about political parties would do," he explained. "We have harnessed the power of computer simulation to see what would be neutral." Texas is one of the 15 states in the map that earned an F grade based on the Gerrymander Project's formula. Although the state legislature and congressional delegation are led by a Republican majority, Texas's current districting map is divided in a way that gives the GOP an advantage, according to the project. The analysis shows that the redistricting negates a challenging vote. Travis County, for example, includes the city of Austin, which has leaned Democratic, but the county includes five congressional districts around it. By not including Austin in the suburban areas, the congressional district will lean Republican, according to the analysis. The Gerrymander Project's analysis found that the county splits in Texas, which is the number of districts within a single county, are higher than the average split per state, based on its analysis. For example, more dense Dallas County is home to five congressional districts, and two of the districts' boundaries extend into the next county. Such division leads to confusion among voters as to what their district is, according to Crayton. Crayton said that such county splits have led to more examples of elected officials running unopposed. "If you're a candidate from an opposing party, you're going to have an uphill battle trying to run in a district where the majority of the voters are registered to the majority," he said. "We've seen it happen all of the time where a Democrat or Republican simply won't put the time and effort to run because the gerrymandered district puts the odds against them," Crayton said. Although the majority of the states that got the project's F grade are in the South and show more of a Republican advantage, the experts warned that blue states in other parts of the country have used gerrymandering as well. Illinois, which is one of the Midwest states with an F grade, is the prime example, they said. Its current map, which was adopted in 2021, contains non-compact districts, which leads to unequal voter density per area, and more county splits than the average, according to the Gerrymander Project. One egregious example is the state's 13th congressional district, which covers a nearly 2,300 square mile boundary that extends from its southern point near the border with Missouri to Springfield, right in the center of the state, and then east to the city of Champaign. The boundaries keep a huge concentration of Democratic leaning voters, according to the Gerrymander Project. Wang noted that the Supreme Court's 2019 decision that ruled gerrymandering for party advantage cannot be challenged in federal court has removed key guardrails for preventing states from taking part in severe party redistricting. The case involved gerrymandering allegations in North Carolina, and while the court's majority ruled that the practice may be "incompatible with democratic principles," federal courts had no jurisdiction in reviewing those cases. Wang said that most states have taken gerrymandering to their limit and made it extremely hard for state legislatures to revert their boundaries to more fair areas. "The lemon has been squeezed dry," he said. However, Wang noted that gerrymandering cases have prompted the public to speak out and take action to turn the tide and rein in gerrymandering in some key states. Virginia, for example, used a special master in 2022 to draw up its current maps following a court case brought by the state's constituents and some local elected officials. The court ordered the special master to create district maps to adhere to federal requirements of population equality, the Voting Rights Act mandates, state constitution and statutes in its districting process. As a result of its changes, the state, which has a slight Democratic majority in its state legislature, has no partisan competitiveness in its congressional districts, according to the Gerrymander Project, which awarded Virigina an A rating. The district's geography is "Fairly compact" and has the national average number of county splits, according to the project's analysis. Wang said ballot initiatives that removed the legislature from the districting process have risen in popularity in many states and have made a huge difference. Arizona, which also has an A rating by the project, has been using an independent redistricting commission after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2000 that changed state regulations. The state, which has a Republican majority in its state legislature, does not have a partisan advantage in its state districts, according to the Gerrymandering Project. Its districts are seen as "fairly compact" and are the average number of county splits, according to the analysis. Crayton and Wang said the state-run solutions to redistricting are a good step forward, but ultimately, it is going to take Congressional legislation to end partisan influence in these maps. Wang said that public opinion has consistently shown that constituents seek fair maps regardless of their political affiliations. "If Congress were to really pursue it, it could be bipartisan and get a lot of support," he said of legislation that prohibited gerrymandering tactics. "And we've seen it work."
Yahoo
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Trump Is Plotting To Disrupt The Next Election
With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers and staffing decisions, President Donald Trump has already put in motion his next effort to subvert upcoming federal elections in 2026 and 2028. Since taking office, Trump has installed loyalists who follow his orders into key positions at the Department of Justice, issued executive orders centralizing decision-making within the White House, attempted to unilaterally change state and local election laws, demanded unprecedented access to voter data, dismantled election security protections, threatened elections officials and workers, law firms and others who have historically stood up to protect elections and defended, hired or pardoned those involved in previous efforts to subvert elections. All of these actions combine into a 'concerted strategy' to undermine federal elections, according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. The report highlights how these actions are being used together to set the stage for future lies about election integrity and attempts by the White House to try to change the outcome of elections altogether. It also details how they are being fought by states, election officials and voting advocates. 'We are seeing this as an unprecedented intrusion by the White House into the way that our elections work in a way that really makes us concerned for our elections moving forward,' said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center. Trump has made the subversion of elections central to his political career, which he launched by questioning whether President Barack Obama was eligible to be president. He has claimed every election since 2012 that did not go Republicans' way was rigged with illegal votes and fraud, even claiming that his 2016 win would have been bigger if not for alleged fraud. This false campaign culminated after his 2020 loss when he illegally attempted to remain in power and sparked an insurrection aimed at stopping the certification of President Joe Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021. That effort was 'haphazard and desperate,' according to Morales-Doyle, but with four years of planning and an even more supine Republican Congress, Trump returned to office with time to put a similar plan into place. 'What we are witnessing now is that Trump, from day one of this administration, has started putting the wheels in motion to undermine elections and to make sure the people who would be carrying out that plan won't say 'no' this time around,' Morales-Doyle said. The most important change from his first administration is that Trump has shied away from hiring experienced eminences into key posts in the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Defense and instead appointed toadies who follow his orders. After the 2020 election, Trump's attempt to steal the election was hamstrung by his appointees, including Attorney General William Barr, who refused to seize voting machines at Trump's request, and other DOJ officials who fought Trump's efforts to appoint Jeff Clark as acting attorney general in order to issue a letter saying the election was marred by fraud. This second Trump administration is instead staffed with people who helped Trump lie about the 2020 election, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Ed Martin, a right-wing attorney who now leads a Justice Department task force on the 'weaponization' of the federal government. The shift means voting rights advocates are now fighting the federal government itself rather than fringe outside actors. 'Many of the strategies and tactics that we've seen developed by the election denier movement are actually coming from within the federal administration,' Morales-Doyle said, 'and that is like nothing we've ever seen before.' Unlike Barr, these appointees may have no qualms with fulfilling Trump's election fraud fantasies by seeking to seize voting machines, publicly claim election fraud or pressure state or local election officials to take actions to undermine the election results. They have already begun this process by targeting and threatening election officials through the Weaponization Working Group headed by Martin and the election integrity task forces set up in the offices of the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, previously held by Trump's former lawyer Alina Habba, and the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., led by former Fox News anchor Jeanine Pirro. 'This Department of Justice has acted differently than every other Department of Justice in every previous administration, including the first Trump administration,' said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. 'They're acting more like a political campaign arm of the White House.' Trump's appointees are aided by many of the president's other actions, which aim to cast a cloud of doubt over the integrity of elections. On March 25, Trump issued a sweeping executive order aiming to allow the president to directly set state election law, despite the president having almost no constitutional role or legal power in the administration of elections. The order directed the Election Administration Committee to mandate that states require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to vote, rescind certifications for almost all voting machines and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Government Efficiency to obtain full voter files from every state, including sensitive data like Social Security numbers. The order also directs the attorney general to target states that count mail-in ballots that arrive after election day for legal action. One judge has already blocked the order's proof of citizenship requirement for voting and another judge blocked most of the order from taking effect. Litigation challenging the decertification of voting machines is still ongoing. DHS has sent letters to election officials in six states seeking their full, unredacted voter files, while DOJ has sued North Carolina and Orange County, California to obtain such access. It is illegal for many states to share sensitive information in these voter files, like Social Security numbers, with the federal government. While the administration has no legal basis to enforce this order, the second Trump administration has not shied away from breaking the law to do what it wants. As the administration has itself targeted election systems, it has also dismantled the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its work to protect elections from interference, including hacks targeting election systems. In addition to dismantling CISA, the administration has attacked private actors who work to protect and defend elections while supporting those who seek to undermine them. Trump's executive orders targeting law firms and the deals some firms have entered into with his administration have cowed Big Law from challenging his policies. The country's top 50 law firms have dramatically scaled back their pro bono legal work challenging the administration even though four of Trump's orders have been emphatically struck down by courts, according to Reuters. The administration has also threatened to strip nonprofits that challenge Trump or are aligned with the Democratic Party of their tax-exempt status, and launched investigations into the election apparatus of the Democratic Party. Where Trump punishes his enemies, he rewards his allies. This includes those who tried to help him overturn his 2020 loss. He issued pardons or commuted sentences for all defendants prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, including those who assaulted police officers or engaged in sedition. Meanwhile, his administration has unsuccessfully pressured Colorado to release Tina Peters, a former election clerk convicted of illegally providing access to voting systems to a Trump ally after the 2020 election. These disparate actions can all come together ahead of or after the next election to disrupt, undermine or actually subvert the outcome in a variety of ways. 'What actually ends up being the lever that needs to be pulled to interfere with the outcome of an election or the outcome of multiple elections depends on where elections are close,' Morales-Doyle said. 'It depends on who is in the position that you need to put the pressure on. You can see a number of different scenarios that could be pressure points in 2026.' Refusal to comply with Trump's executive order could fuel propaganda claiming the results from those states are fraudulent or as a pretext to declare an election-related emergency and seize voting machines. Requests for voter files could lead the administration to demand specific individuals be removed from the voter rolls, both altering the electorate or, if states do not comply, provide propaganda fodder and pretexts for interference. By dismantling CISA, the administration could claim any attacks on election systems, now made easier absent protection, as evidence that the election's integrity has been undermined and as a pretext to seize voting machines or otherwise interfere with the results. The threats and targeting of law firms, election officials, nonprofits and the Democratic Party not only aim to disable opposition, but also to serve as a warning to those who might buck any requests when they come. In 2020, Trump attempted to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to change the election results so that he would win the state. Raffensperger refused to budge. He also pressured local election officials in Wayne County, Michigan, to refuse to certify the county's results. This initially worked, but the two officials reversed themselves and certified the results after public pressure. But others may not, especially now that they know that they could face investigations, prosecutions or other threats and punishments. 'They've seen the reality of what it means to have the sheer force of the executive branch targeted at a perceived adversary,' Morales-Doyle said. One end result of these efforts to cast doubt or subvert elections just played out in North Carolina following the 2024 election. In a crucial state Supreme Court race, Democrat Allison Riggs defeated her Republican opponent Jefferson Griffith by 734 votes. After the election, Griffith filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse his loss with claims that certain registered voters with incomplete information on their registrations should have been removed from the rolls before they cast their ballots. Griffith's allegations mirror some of those raised by the Trump administration in its pursuit of state voter files. In highly partisan decisions, the Republican-controlled state courts sided with Griffith and ordered tens of thousands of votes to be discarded and Griffith awarded Riggs' seat. But Riggs appealed in federal court and won with a judge ruling that valid votes cast by voters who followed the rules cannot be thrown out after the election is run. While the correct result was ultimately reached, the legal process prevented Riggs from taking her seat for over four months. The Trump administration and Republicans could do something similar by using whatever alleged violation of Trump's executive order or claim about voter roll errors to challenge the outcome after the election. If Democrats had won a majority in the House or Senate, it's theoretically possible for Congress to refuse to seat anyone in one of these contested seats. That could allow Republicans to remain in control even if they lost, at least temporarily. As shown by the result in the North Carolina Supreme Court race, federal judges are not willing to overturn election results after the fact on specious claims. The courts dismissed, often with great prejudice, Trump's lawsuits challenging his election defeat in 2020. 'I'm worried about that scenario, but not because I think they'll overcome the line drawn in the sand by courts and get votes thrown out after the fact,' Morales-Doyle said. The Brennan Center's purpose in raising these threats in their report is not to highlight an unavoidable doom scenario, but rather as a warning for institutional actors — from election officials to lawyers to information security experts — and the public to be aware ahead of time about the risks posed by a White House hellbent on undermining elections so that they can work to counter it. 'We have to reckon with the difference when that attack comes from the White House,' Morales-Doyle said. 'That if we're going to survive that kind of attack, it's going to require a lot of actors to show their resistance and strength at an even greater level than they've had to in the past.'
