Roundup: Trump Has Been Actively Undermining American Elections For Months

NYT - Trump Administration Fires Members of Independent Election Group

Politico - 'Death By A Thousand Cuts': Inside Trump's Remaking Of American Elections

NPR - Voting Officials Fear DHS May Actually Be A Threat To Elections This Year.

Politico - The Trump Admin Cut Election Security Funds. Now Officials Fear Future Elections May Be 'Less Secure.'

While President Trump's primetime address will undoubtedly spread debunked and disproven lies about the 2020 election to sow doubt about the upcoming midterms, the truth is that Trump and his administration started dismantling election infrastructure, security, and oversight months ago.

Just last week, Trump fired members of the Election Assistance Commission. Trump's Department of Justice has requested states share voter registration lists, undermining states' Constitutional right to govern their own elections. When Trump took office, DOGE led efforts to cut election security programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And this is just the tip of the iceberg:

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Politico- 'Death By A Thousand Cuts': Inside Trump's Remaking Of American Elections. "President Donald Trump seemingly has a plan for the nation's election apparatus: Dismantle the existing system with a series of cuts, firings and threats, rather than a sledgehammer blow. Just last week Trump eviscerated the relatively obscure Election Assistance Commission, alarming state election officials across the country who warned it could undermine cybersecurity resources for states and localities. That was just one of the moves the White House has made since Trump returned to office." [Politico, 7/16/26]

WESA-Feds Withhold Pa. Counterterror, Cybersecurity Grants Amid Election-Security Demands. "Pennsylvania officials say President Donald Trump's administration is withholding nearly half of the state's allocated Homeland Security dollars from last year. And grants for the year ahead come with new voting-related requirements attached at a time when the president is expected to continue questioning states' election security. (Trump plans a primetime speech Thursday night that will reportedly focus on election interference.) Critics say the move could be the latest attempt to pressure states to adopt more rigid election measures ahead of consequential fall midterms." [WESA News, 7/16/26]

NYT-Trump Administration Fires Members of Independent Election Group. "The Trump administration has forced out the three remaining members of an independent, bipartisan commission that supports states in administering their elections, the White House confirmed on Thursday. The move comes as President Trump seeks to cast doubt on the outcome of the upcoming midterms and impose control over how ballots are counted. Mr. Trump terminated, effective immediately, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, two members selected by congressional Democrats to serve on the Election Assistance Commission, and accepted the resignation of a Republican member, Christy McCormick. The board has no other remaining members, as its fourth commissioner resigned this spring." [NYT, 7/10/26]

Reuters-Trump Officials Sought Ways To Sidestep Election Agency Before Firings, Sources Say. "The White House spent months looking for ways to bypass a federal election agency and use emergency powers to force changes to voting machines, before President Donald Trump ousted its leaders on Thursday, four people familiar with the matter said. Some officials were frustrated with what they saw as the Election Assistance Commission's slowness in updating guidelines for states on voting machines, the sources said, while some also wanted it to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to its national mail voter registration form and address other election-related priorities of the administration." [Reuters, 7/10/26]

The Guardian-Trump Accused Of Trying To 'Rig' Elections After Firing Federal Commissioners. "Donald Trump has been accused of trying to "rig" the upcoming US midterm elections after he fired the last three members of an independent federal commission. Trump's extraordinary move to paralyze the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) wipes out the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration months before the US midterm elections." [The Guardian, 7/10/26]

Reuters-Trump Administration Ties States' Anti-Terrorism Grants To Election Security. "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that states must adopt "common-sense election security measures" to receive certain funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. To qualify for three grant programs related to preparing for terrorist attacks and other threats, states must use a federal system for verifying voters' citizenship and accept hand-marked paper ballots in elections, the DHS said. FEMA will withhold 20% of a grant recipient's total award until the state shows it has complied, the department said." [Reuters, 7/10/26]

Reuters-US Justice Department Tells State Officials They Could Be Prosecuted Over Noncitizen Voting. "The U.S. Department of Justice has sent letters to all 50 U.S. states warning that election officials could face criminal charges for allowing noncitizens to remain on their lists of eligible voters. The letters, sent on Tuesday, are the latest attempt by Republican President Donald Trump's administration to pressure states ahead of November's midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress." … "The Trump administration has attempted a series of maneuvers to take greater control of elections, which are administered by states under the U.S. Constitution." [Reuters, 7/8/26]

NPR-Voting Officials Fear DHS May Actually Be A Threat To Elections This Year. "Numerous local election officials, across the political spectrum, have told NPR they are avoiding sharing voter data or other security information with the federal government for fear that information could be used against them in some way." … "It's hard to overstate how different the federal election security landscape looks heading into this year's midterms, compared with two years ago prior to the last federal campaign. The Trump administration has taken unprecedented steps to investigate local election administration, including taking states to court in an effort to get their private voter registration data and attempting (and in some cases succeeding) to access voting machines and ballots." [NPR, 6/16/26]

Spotlight PA-2026 Midterms Poised To Have Less Federal Oversight As Trump Admin Defangs Election Watchdog. "President Donald Trump says "if you don't have honest voting, you can't really have a nation." But five months out from the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, his Justice Department has canceled election-integrity training sessions for prosecutors and FBI agents, deleted a 281-page guide to prosecuting election offenses, fired most of the lawyers in its Public Integrity Section and failed to replace the director of its Election Crimes Branch. Moreover, the DOJ has not taken the usual steps to establish a "command center" to monitor and address the typical emergencies that pop up around Election Day, three sources with knowledge of the situation told NOTUS." [Spotlight PA, 6/8/26]

NYT-Trump's Gutting Of Election Security Fuels Worries For Midterms. "When election officials in Arizona opened their online candidate portal last summer, it was immediately clear that it had been hacked."… "Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has tried to bend election mechanics to his will, kicking off a redistricting war with little precedent, bombastically calling for elections to be "nationalized" and having the F.B.I. seize materials from the 2020 election in Georgia and Arizona. Outside the spotlight, his administration has effectively gutted election security infrastructure that Mr. Trump himself created in his first term, including CISA's election team and a program responsible for sharing threat intelligence with state and local officials." [NYT, 3/17/26]

Stateline- In Bid For Voter Data, Trump's DOJ Lays Groundwork To Undermine Confidence In Midterms. "The U.S. Department of Justice has begun connecting its push to obtain sensitive personal data on millions of voters to whether the upcoming midterm elections will be fair and secure, laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to potentially cast doubt on the results. The Justice Department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their refusal to provide unredacted voter rolls that include the driver's license and partial Social Security numbers of voters. The department has lost three of those lawsuits so far this year. But as the Justice Department begins appealing the losses, it has filed emergency motions warning the "security and sanctity of elections" would be questioned in those states - California, Michigan and Oregon - without immediate rulings." [Stateline, 3/13/26]

NYT-Trump's Push for Election Power Raises Fears He Will 'Subvert' Midterms. "Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened President Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will. With his words and deeds, the president - who pushed to overturn his 2020 defeat but declared his 2024 victory legitimate - appears to be undermining Americans' trust that the midterms will be free and fair." [NYT, 2/25/26]

Politico-The Trump Admin Cut Election Security Funds. Now Officials Fear Future Elections May Be 'Less Secure.' "The Trump administration's recent efforts to gut funding and personnel that support state and local election security efforts have left officials deeply concerned about their ability to guarantee physical and cyber security during the voting process. This swift overhauling of funds means that states could lose access to information on emerging threats and election officials may be left without funding for key security services, which could leave certain states and localities more vulnerable to interference efforts than others." … "The lack of support from the cyber agency was further complicated this week when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would completely overhaul the election process across the country and require DHS and the Election Assistance Commission - a federal organization that helps with election administration - to review the security of voting machines across the nation." [Politico, 3/31/25]

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