How Trump Is Plotting To Disrupt The Next Election

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the National Memorial Day Observance at the Memorial Amphitheatre in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on May 26, 2025. With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers and staffing decisions, US 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 centralising 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.President Donald Trump has made subversion of elections central to his political agenda.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 Defence 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, Defence 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 “weaponisation” 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 Weaponisation Working Group headed by Martin and the election integrity task forces set up in the offices of the US Attorney for New Jersey, previously held by Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba, and the US Attorney for Washington, DC, led by former Fox News anchor Jeanine Pirro.FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi both fueled Trump's lies about the 2020 election and are now in positions of power to fulfill Trump's wishes.“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.North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs was sworn in more than five months after winning her seat in 2024 after her GOP opponent tried to sue to overturn the election results on specious charges.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 January 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.Trump's lies about election results previously resulted in an attempt to steal the 2020 election and an attack by his supporters on the Capitol aimed at helping him do so.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.”Related...New Photos Reveal Trump's Shocking White House Rose Garden MakeoverTrump Was Asked About His Press Secretary’s Performance. 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Watch the critical video evidence used to convict mushroom cook killer Erin Patterson - as CCTV and her police interview is made public for the first time