The One-Sentence Version
Since January 2025, the Trump administration has seized 2020 ballots, sued 30 states for voter data, signed executive orders creating federal voter lists, threatened to send ICE to polls, replaced 75 election officials who protected the 2020 results, announced arrests over the “2020 rigged election,” declared a Virginia vote “RIGGED” within hours of losing it, demanded states cancel elections and redraw maps to add 20 Republican House seats, and shut down the Department of Homeland Security for 40 days to force passage of a voter ID bill that could disenfranchise 21 million Americans.
By the Numbers
| What | Number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 ballots seized by FBI from Fulton County | 700 boxes | [1] |
| States sued by DOJ for voter registration data | 30 (29 states + DC) | [2] |
| DOJ court record on voter roll lawsuits | 0-for-5 | [2] |
| Americans who could lose voting rights under SAVE Act | 21 million | [3] |
| Virginia voters purged as suspected “noncitizens” with zero confirmed noncitizens found | 1,600 purged | [3] |
| Eligible citizens blocked from registering in Kansas under similar law | 31,000 | [3] |
| States challenging the federal voter lists executive order | 23 | [4] |
| Election officials who protected 2020 replaced by deniers | 75 (ProPublica) | [5] |
| Election-denying candidates running for certification offices | 53 in 23 states | [6] |
| House seats Trump publicly projected from coordinated redistricting | 20+ | [7] |
| TSA officers who quit during DHS shutdown over SAVE Act | 1,000+ | [3] |
| Days DHS was shut down as leverage for the SAVE Act | 75 | [3] |
| Fulton County election workers whose personal data DOJ subpoenaed | ~3,000 | [8] |
| Trump judicial nominees who refused to affirm the 22nd Amendment | 4 | [9] |
| EAC voting standards committee seats left vacant | Nearly half | [10] |
The Timeline
2025
January 20: Trump granted blanket clemency to approximately 1,500 January 6 defendants, including leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy.[11]
February 2: Trump told Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans should “nationalize the voting” and “take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places.” He named Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta as targets. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution grants election authority to states, not the president.[12]
Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan responded: “The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with Jan 6. This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy.”[12]
February 3: Steve Bannon declared on his War Room podcast: “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.”[13]
February 4: Asked by NBC’s Tom Llamas whether he would accept the 2026 midterm results, Trump said: “I will, if the elections are honest. If the elections aren’t honest, then something else has to happen.” In the same interview, he denied using the word “nationalize” despite being recorded saying it two days earlier.[12]
February 5: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked about Bannon’s statement, refused to rule out ICE at polling places: “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November.” Federal and state law prohibits federal law enforcement at polling places.[13]
February 13: Trump posted on Truth Social: “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” The Constitution explicitly reserves election authority to Congress and the states. A federal judge had already blocked a previous election executive order as unconstitutional.[14]
February 14: The Department of Homeland Security shutdown began. Trump attached the SAVE Act, a voter ID bill, to DHS funding, holding 240,000 federal workers hostage to a bill unrelated to homeland security. Over the 75-day shutdown, more than 1,000 TSA officers quit. Airport wait times exceeded 4.5 hours. Republican Senator John Kennedy revealed Trump personally killed a bipartisan deal that would have restored TSA pay within days.[3]
February 19: Trump stated that eliminating mail-in ballots means Republicans “will never lose a race for 50 years.” He said this openly, characterizing the goal as permanent partisan dominance rather than election security.[15]
March 2025: Executive order issued attempting to mandate proof of citizenship for voter registration. Blocked by federal courts as unconstitutional.[4]
March 3: Trump allies publicly pushed to invoke emergency powers ahead of the midterms: deploying ICE and potentially National Guard to polling places, seizing state election infrastructure, and overriding state election laws. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits military deployment to polls.[16]
March 12: Senator John Cornyn reversed his longstanding support for the filibuster to push the SAVE Act. Trump privately told Republican senators that banning mail ballots is “the only way to guarantee the midterms.” He conditioned his endorsement of Cornyn on the bill’s passage.[17]
March 15-23: Trump cast a mail ballot in a Florida special election, received by Palm Beach County on March 15. On March 23, at a rally in Memphis, he said: “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” PolitiFact rated the claim “Pants on Fire.” The actual mail voting fraud rate is approximately 4 per 10 million ballots (0.000043%).[18]
March 31: Trump signed an executive order directing DHS to create federal voter lists for each state and ordering the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters on the approved lists. The order was drafted partly by Kurt Olsen, an attorney involved in 2020 election overturn efforts. Twenty-three states and multiple lawsuits challenged the order.[4]
May 2025: DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, claiming to investigate Venezuelan hacking. Three sources confirmed the focus. No evidence of foreign interference was found. Senator Mark Warner: “Absent a foreign nexus, intelligence agencies have absolutely no lawful role in domestic election administration.”[19]
December 2025: Alaska Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom (R) authorized the transfer of the state’s complete, unredacted voter registration list to the Trump DOJ. Elections director Carol Beecher and DOJ Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon signed the memorandum of understanding on December 19, and the data was transmitted on December 23. The DOJ had first requested the rolls in August 2025. The ACLU, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and League of Women Voters filed suit to void the agreement and order DOJ to destroy all copies.[20]
2026
January 2026: Attorney General Pam Bondi granted a Missouri prosecutor special authority to investigate 2020 election matters nationwide, far beyond Missouri’s jurisdiction. Separately, Bondi conditioned withdrawal of federal agents from Minnesota on the state providing sensitive voter data.[1]
January 2026: In an Oval Office interview with Reuters, Trump said: “It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms. When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was “simply joking.”[28]
January 28-29: FBI raided the Fulton County elections office in Atlanta and seized 700 boxes of 2020 ballots, tabulator tapes, voter rolls, and ballot images. Trump personally ordered DNI Gabbard to Atlanta. Gabbard, whose legal role is foreign intelligence, was physically present at the domestic raid. She called Trump during the operation; he spoke to FBI agents on speakerphone, praising them for raiding the election office.[1]
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes: “This administration is weaponizing law enforcement for the purpose of satisfying the president’s obsession with his 2020 election loss.”[1]
January-April 2026: DOJ filed lawsuits against 29 states plus DC demanding complete voter registration records, including full names, home addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers. Courts dismissed the cases in California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Trump-appointed Judge Mary McElroy called it a “fishing expedition.” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter wrote: “The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left.”[2]
February 2026: A ProPublica investigation found that 75 state and local election officials who played key roles in protecting the 2020 election had been removed. Roughly 24 replacements had previously worked to reverse the 2020 results. Ten had been directly involved in overturn efforts. Election experts described the 2026 midterms as an “unprecedented stress test.”[5]
April 2026: The administration’s FY2027 budget proposal eliminates CISA’s election security division entirely. The Election Assistance Commission’s technical standards committee has nearly half its seats blocked, leaving no body to update voting equipment security standards before November.[10]
April 17: DOJ subpoenaed the personal data of nearly 3,000 Fulton County election workers from 2020, including names, home addresses, email addresses, and personal phone numbers. Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts called it “yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and to chill participation in elections.”[8]
April 19: FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Fox News that arrests are “coming soon” related to the “2020 rigged election.” He did not name targets or cite specific crimes. The 2020 fraud claims have been rejected by 60+ courts, Trump’s own attorney general, CISA, the AP, and every major fact-checking organization.[21]
April 20: Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson held a tele-rally the night before Virginia’s redistricting referendum, urging voters to reject it. Trump called it “a blatant partisan power grab” and told listeners to “just say no.”[29] The campaign against the referendum was fueled by approximately $76 million in dark money from 501(c)(4) nonprofits that do not disclose donors, out of roughly $100 million spent total on both sides. Peter Thiel-linked groups contributed approximately $9 million to the “no” campaign through Per Aspera Policy Inc. The Thiel-backed group sent mailers targeting Black Virginia voters that compared the redistricting referendum to Jim Crow-era voter suppression.[30][31]
April 21: Virginia voters approved the redistricting referendum 51.45% to 48.55%, despite the tele-rally and $76 million in opposition spending.[22]
April 22: By the next morning, Trump posted on Truth Social: “A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” He blamed a “massive Mail In Ballot Drop.” No irregularities were reported by any election official or court. Even Virginia Republicans who opposed the referendum made no effort to question its legitimacy. This was Trump’s first “RIGGED” claim about a 2026 election.[22]
April 29: The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, making it nearly impossible to challenge racially discriminatory maps in federal court.[23]
April 29-30: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before both chambers of Congress that Biden had deployed troops to polling locations in 15 states in 2024. CNN fact-checked the claim and confirmed no troops were deployed to any polling location. Thirteen states responded confirming no polling place deployments. Hegseth was laying narrative groundwork for a potential Trump order to deploy troops to polls in November.[24]
May 1: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended U.S. House primaries scheduled for May 16. Over 100,000 absentee ballots had been mailed out, and more than 42,000 had already been returned by voters. Marc Elias (Democracy Docket): “both a redistricting power grab and a dry run for authoritarian election subversion this fall.”[25]
May 4: Trump posted on Truth Social: “If they have to vote twice, so be it. We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done.” He added: “The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming Midterms!” The 20-seat figure would exceed the projected House majority margin, deciding control of the chamber before votes are cast.[7]
May 4: Florida Governor DeSantis signed a mid-decade congressional map giving Republicans 24 of 28 seats (86% of the delegation). The map was approved within hours of the Callais ruling. The map-drawer testified he used partisan data during “final balancing.”[26]
May 4: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey called a special legislative session to redraw maps. House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter and Senate President Garlan Gudger issued a joint statement saying they have “a responsibility to give our state a fighting chance to send seven Republican members to Congress.” Alabama has seven congressional districts. Two are currently held by Black Democrats.[27]
May 4-5: Four Trump federal judicial nominees (Marck, Kuntz, Jones, Hendershot) refused to affirm that the 22nd Amendment bars a president from serving a third term when asked directly by Senator Chris Coons. One said he “would have to review the actual wording.” Trump has repeatedly floated a third term, saying at the February 24 State of the Union: “Should be my third term.”[9]
Ongoing: An NPR/States United Action analysis identified 53 election-denying candidates running in 23 states for offices that certify elections (secretary of state, governor, attorney general). This includes five presidential swing states. In Arizona, election deniers are running for all three critical positions.[6]
What Trump Has Said
| Date | Quote | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | ”When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” (White House said he was “joking.”) | [28] |
| Feb 2, 2026 | ”We should take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” | [12] |
| Feb 5, 2026 | ”I will [accept the results], if the elections are honest. If the elections aren’t honest, then something else has to happen.” | [12] |
| Feb 13, 2026 | ”There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” | [14] |
| Feb 19, 2026 | Eliminating mail-in ballots means Republicans “will never lose a race for 50 years.” | [15] |
| Mar 23, 2026 | ”Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” (Same day he voted by mail.) | [18] |
| Apr 22, 2026 | ”A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” | [22] |
| May 4, 2026 | ”If they have to vote twice, so be it… The byproduct is that the Republicans will receive more than 20 House Seats in the upcoming Midterms!” | [7] |
What the Courts Have Said
Every federal court that has ruled on the administration’s election actions has ruled against it:
| Action | Court Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| DOJ voter roll lawsuits (5 decided) | All 5 dismissed, including by a Trump-appointed judge | [2] |
| March 2025 election executive order | Blocked as unconstitutional | [4] |
| Mass firing of 17 inspectors general | Ruled unlawful; court declined to reinstate | [4] |
| March 2026 federal voter lists EO | Challenged by 23 states, litigation ongoing | [4] |
Judge David O. Carter (California): “The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left.”[2]
Judge Mary McElroy (Trump appointee, Rhode Island): Called the DOJ’s voter data demand a “fishing expedition.”[2]
The Counter-Arguments
”Election integrity is important. What’s wrong with verifying voters?”
Election security is important. The question is whether these specific actions are designed to secure elections or control their outcomes. Seizing six-year-old ballots from a county the president lost, suing 30 states for Social Security numbers, threatening to send ICE to polls, and announcing arrests over claims rejected by 60+ courts go beyond standard election security measures. No previous administration of either party has taken comparable actions.
”Noncitizen voting is a real problem”
The Heritage Foundation’s own voter fraud database documents roughly 85 cases of noncitizen voting out of billions of ballots cast over decades. The system the SAVE Act would create blocked 31,000 eligible citizens in Kansas while catching virtually zero noncitizens. Virginia purged 1,600 voters as suspected noncitizens and has yet to identify a single confirmed noncitizen among them.
”The president has the authority to ensure election integrity”
The Constitution grants election authority to states (Article I, Section 4). Federal courts have already blocked the administration’s executive orders as unconstitutional overreach. The president does not have the constitutional power to create federal voter lists, mandate voter ID by executive order, or deploy federal agents to polling places.
”Both parties challenge election results”
Both parties have filed election lawsuits. The difference is in scale, method, and outcome. Trump filed 62 lawsuits after 2020 and lost 61. He then attempted to overturn the results through fake electors, pressuring the vice president, and a rally that preceded a breach of the Capitol. He is now using the federal government’s law enforcement, intelligence, and legal apparatus to target the election infrastructure of states and counties where he lost. No previous president of either party has seized ballots from a county election office, subpoenaed the personal information of 3,000 election workers, or announced criminal arrests over an election that was adjudicated six years ago.
Where Things Stand Now
Six months before the November 2026 midterm elections:
The DOJ has 25 pending voter roll lawsuits. The FBI director has announced “imminent” arrests related to the 2020 election with no specifics. The administration’s budget eliminates CISA’s election security division. Nearly half the seats on the voting equipment standards committee are vacant.
Seventy-five election officials who protected the 2020 results have been replaced. Fifty-three election-denying candidates are running for offices that certify elections in 23 states. Four Trump judicial nominees have refused to affirm the constitutional limit on presidential terms.
Trump has already declared one 2026 election “RIGGED” and has stated he will only accept results “if they are honest.” He has publicly projected that coordinated redistricting will deliver “more than 20 House Seats” before votes are cast. Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee are redrawing maps to eliminate minority representation.
The administration has described these actions as protecting election integrity. Federal courts, including judges Trump appointed, have uniformly rejected them. The documented record of what has been done, what has been said, and what has been blocked is above.
Sources
1. Atlanta Journal-Constitution: FBI Raids Fulton County Election Office (January 2026)
2. Democracy Docket: Trump DOJ 0-for-5 on Voter Roll Cases (April 2026)
3. Brennan Center for Justice: The SAVE Act Analysis
4. Brennan Center: The Trump Administration’s Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
5. ProPublica: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections (April 2026)
6. NPR/States United Action: 53 Election-Denying Candidates Running for Certification Offices
7. Democracy Docket: Trump Demands States Cancel Elections and Redraw Maps (May 2026)
8. Atlanta Journal-Constitution: DOJ Subpoenas Personal Data of 3,000 Fulton County Election Workers
9. NPR: Trump Judicial Nominees Refuse to Affirm 22nd Amendment (May 2026)
10. Democracy Docket: EAC Voting Standards Committee Seats Blocked (April 2026)
11. NPR: Trump Pardons January 6 Rioters (January 2025)
12. Washington Post: Trump Calls to “Nationalize Voting” (February 2026)
13. The Hill: Bannon Calls for ICE to “Surround the Polls” (February 2026)
14. The Independent: Trump Will Only Accept “Honest” Results (February 2026)
15. ABC News: Trump Urges Republicans to “Nationalize Voting” (February 2026)
16. Newsweek: Warnings on “Nationalizing Elections” and ICE at Polls
17. New York Post: Cornyn on Why the SAVE Act Matters More Than the Filibuster
18. PolitiFact: Trump Voted by Mail, Then Called Mail-In Voting “Cheating” (March 2026)
19. CNN: Gabbard’s Office Obtained and Tested Voting Machines in Puerto Rico (February 2026)
20. ACLU: Lawsuit Over Alaska Voter Roll Transfer to DOJ (April 2026)
21. PBS: FBI Director Patel Announces 2020 Election Arrests (April 2026)
22. Al Jazeera: Trump Calls Virginia Election “Rigged” (April 2026)
23. Slate: Supreme Court Issues Worst Ruling in a Century (April 2026)
24. CNN: Hegseth False Claim About Biden Deploying Troops to Polls (April 2026)
25. Democracy Docket: Louisiana Suspends House Primaries After Callais (May 2026)
26. Tampa Bay Times: DeSantis Signs Florida Redistricting Map (May 2026)
27. Alabama Political Reporter: Special Session to Eliminate Majority-Black Districts (May 2026)
28. Democracy Docket: Trump Says “We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election” (January 2026)
29. The Hill: Trump Makes Last-Minute Pitch Against Virginia Redistricting in Telerally (April 2026)
31. Washington Post: Virginia Redistricting Battle Largely Fueled by Untraceable Dark Money (April 2026)