For years, progressives have warned that authoritarianism in America probably would not arrive with tanks in the streets or an announcement that elections had been canceled. It would come through executive orders, agency regulations, government databases, threats of prosecution and a president relentlessly testing whether Congress, the courts or anyone else could still tell him no. Donald Trump’s attempt to seize control of mail voting through the United States Postal Service

There is a question I keep coming back to when I think about Donald Trump and the 2026 midterms. It is not simply whether he has the legal authority to interfere with an election. In many of the scenarios now being discussed, he does not. The more important question is what happens if he acts anyway, forcing states, election officials, and courts to sort out the legality while voting is already underway. That is where the danger lives. Not necessarily in some undiscovered con

Most Americans think elections begin when the polls open. They don't. By the time the first ballot is cast, another election has often been underway for months. It's the contest to determine what we'll believe about the outcome before the votes are even counted. Whoever wins that battle starts Election Day with a tremendous advantage. The first vote isn't cast at the polls. It's cast in our minds. Donald Trump's recent speech about election fraud wasn't remarkable because it

There was a time in American politics when scandal actually mattered. Not always fairly. Not always consistently. Politicians have always lied, cheated, postured, and embarrassed themselves in creative new ways. But there used to be a point where public shame still carried political consequences. A major scandal could derail a career. A serious ethics cloud could make party leaders panic. Public embarrassment had weight. When loyalty becomes the only real qualification, scand

Most Americans never think about congressional district maps. They think about rent, groceries, healthcare, gas prices, and whether their job is going to survive the next round of layoffs disguised as “restructuring.” Gerrymandering sounds like one of those dry political science terms buried somewhere between “filibuster” and “appropriations committee.” But district maps quietly determine who holds power long before a single vote is cast. When politicians start choosing their

Who runs elections in the United States? It sounds like a simple question. But judging by recent headlines—and some very loud voices online—there’s a lot of confusion. If your answer is “the President,” you’re not alone. But you’re also not correct. The truth is, the President has—and is supposed to have—very little direct control over elections. Yes, even Donald Trump. That’s not a political opinion. That’s how the system was designed. Fifteen hundred-thousandths of 1% . And

Everybody’s heard about the SAVE Act by now. It’s being talked about everywhere—on TV, online, and in political speeches—usually framed in the simplest possible terms: require proof of citizenship to vote. At first glance, that sounds reasonable. After all, only U.S. citizens should vote in federal elections. That’s not controversial. But here’s the problem: that’s already the law. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act doesn’t create a new rule about who can vote. Ins

Recently, a group of pro-Trump activists and legal allies circulated what they describe as a draft presidential executive order that would declare a national emergency over U.S. elections and grant sweeping federal power to reshape how voting is run. The document, reported by multiple outlets, would give the president authority to mandate policies like banning mail-in ballots or asserting federal oversight of voting equipment and procedures in the name of combating “foreign