#midterms-2026
4 entries with this tag
Trump's Own Justice Department Issued a Memo Declaring He Can Hide His Conversations With Private, Outside Advisers — Billionaires, Fixers, Private Lawyers, Even State Officials — Under "Executive Privilege," Stretching a Doctrine the Supreme Court Already Ruled Isn't Absolute, to Wall Off His Shadow Advisers From Congress Right Before the Midterms
On August 11, 2026, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel published a 21-page opinion, signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, declaring that executive privilege can shield the president's communications with "private advisers" — a category the memo defines to include essentially anyone Trump consults outside the executive branch, "whether they be members of the public, state officials, or employees of other branches of the federal government." It is the first time the Justice Department has explicitly extended executive privilege beyond the president and his immediate White House staff to private citizens. Historically the privilege reached only official advisers, and the Supreme Court held in United States v. Nixon (1974) that it is not absolute and yields in criminal cases. The immediate beneficiary is Boris Epshteyn — the outside Trump adviser and "fixer" whom the American Bar Association subpoenaed, and who coordinated the campaign of pressure that produced nearly $1 billion in pledged free legal work from law firms, and who helped steer the lawyers in Trump's sham IRS-immunity litigation. The memo would let all of that stay hidden. OLC opinions are not binding on courts, but they govern how the executive branch behaves, and this one is transparently timed: issued months before the midterms, it is pre-emptive armor to defeat the wave of congressional investigations the White House expects if Democrats retake the House. It converts a narrow, court-limited doctrine into a blanket secrecy cloak for government-by-crony — a way to keep the public from ever learning which unelected billionaires and operatives are shaping official decisions, and what they said.
After 23 States and Two Federal Courts Blocked It as Unconstitutional, Trump Asked the Supreme Court to Let His Mail-Voting Order Take Effect Before the Midterms — an Order That Would Bar the Postal Service From Mailing Ballots to Anyone Not on State-Submitted Lists, Put DHS in Charge of Screening Voter Rolls, and Prioritize Prosecuting Election Officials
On July 27, 2026, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court — via an emergency "shadow docket" application filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer — to lift lower-court blocks and let a sweeping executive order restricting mail voting take effect in time for the November midterms. The March executive order would: require states to submit lists of eligible mail voters to the U.S. Postal Service, which would be barred from sending a ballot to anyone not on those lists; give the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security new roles screening state voter rolls for supposed noncitizens; mandate individualized barcodes on ballot envelopes; and "prioritize" federal prosecution of state election officials who send ballots to ineligible voters. Twenty-three Democratic-led states sued, noting the Constitution leaves the running of elections to the states, not the White House. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked it as a separation-of-powers violation, and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that block over the weekend, finding the order would "sow confusion" and "threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters." Sauer argued the injunction was "extraordinary" and that the order "merely sets forth general policy guidance." Voting-rights groups called it "plainly unconstitutional... yet another attempt by the president to unlawfully take control of elections from the states, deter eligible voters from casting ballots, and sow chaos as the November midterms approach." It is the same campaign documented here through the FEMA counterterrorism-funding blackmail, the purge of the Election Assistance Commission, and the primetime "China stole 220 million voter files" speech — now escalated to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to green-light federal control over an election the president has spent months insisting will be stolen.
Trump Fired Every Remaining Member of the Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission — Gutting the Agency That Certifies Voting Machines Four Months Before the Midterms — Then Gave a Primetime Address Claiming China Stole "220 Million Voter Files," a Claim His Own Government's Intelligence Flatly Contradicts
On July 16, 2026, Trump delivered a 25-minute primetime address from the White House East Room claiming he was "declassifying intelligence" that revealed "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure" — including the assertion that "The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files." His own government's intelligence contradicts him: a federal report from March 2021 concluded "We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections." FactCheck.org and others found the documents the White House posted did not support the sweeping claims. The speech came exactly one week after Trump fired the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission — Democrats Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland (dismissed by email) and Republican Christy McCormick (asked to resign by phone) — leaving the bipartisan federal agency that certifies voting-machine standards and helps states run elections without a quorum, unable to act, and unlikely to regain one before the November midterms. The White House cited a recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision on the president's power to fire independent-agency members as its justification. Trump also repeated debunked 2020 conspiracy theories and baselessly claimed fraud cost a Republican the Los Angeles mayoral primary. A Reuters analysis found his noncitizen-voting claims unsupported — just 129 prosecutions under the relevant law since 1996, most involving confusion or paperwork errors, not organized fraud. It all lands atop the administration's broader campaign to seize control of election administration: the FEMA counterterrorism-funding blackmail, the SAVE voter-roll purges, and DOJ criminal threats to state officials.
FEMA Will Withhold 20% of a $1 Billion Anti-Terrorism Grant Program — Money for Cybersecurity and Protecting Crowded Public Spaces — Unless States Rewrite Their Elections to Trump's Demands Before the Midterms, a Power the Constitution Gives Him Zero Authority Over
The Trump administration is holding counterterrorism money hostage to force states to change how they run elections before the November 2026 midterms. FEMA's fiscal-year 2026 Homeland Security Grant Program notice says the agency will withhold 20% of each state's total award — from a $1.064 billion program that funds cybersecurity, emergency planning, training, equipment, and protection of crowded public spaces — until the state proves it has complied with new "Election Security" requirements. Those requirements: submit a plan to abandon electronic voting systems that use bar codes/QR codes and move to hand-marked paper ballots (eliminating ballot-marking devices); conduct 5% manual post-election audits; reconcile voters against ballots cast; run the entire voter roll through the DHS "SAVE" citizenship database within 120 days; and verify the citizenship of every poll worker and vendor. In FY2025 the election-related hold was just 3% for three modest actions; FY2026 escalates it to 20% and a far larger list. The 3% election-security set-aside and the 20% holdback are explicitly separate — meeting one does not release the other. The grants flow largely to populous urban states: New York alone expects about $204 million in FY2026. Switching to hand-marked paper ballots would cost states hundreds of millions — Georgia's Republican secretary of state estimated $66 million for his state alone. The Constitution gives the president no authority over election administration; a federal judge recently wrote exactly that while blocking parts of Trump's anti-voting executive order, and another judge blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters, finding the administration "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." The DOJ has separately sued 30 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and warned election officials in all 50 states they could face criminal charges. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: the administration is "once again putting New Yorkers' lives at risk to forward their political agenda." Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: "Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he's terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms."