What did Donald Trump do today?
He flirted with declaring an "emergency" over people being able to vote as they always have.
Today, a federal judge expanded her injunction against two executive orders that are part of Trump's attack on voting by mail. Nearly a third of all Americans vote by mail—notably including Trump himself—but he continues to insist without evidence that it's part of a conspiracy to rig elections against him.
The injunction, which is now nationwide, bars the United States Post Office from complying with Trump's demand that it not deliver ballots in any state that hasn't agreed to purge voters who don't appear on a list curated by the Trump administration. (States keep their own voting rolls. There is no master database of citizens eligible to vote.)
There's growing concern that Trump won't stop with just unlawful orders to disrupt or defeat the 2026 midterm elections, and not only because he's already tried to overturn the will of voters once. He's been spinning conspiracy theories about American elections being "rigged" since before he was first elected, and in his second term he's turned the full mechanism of the federal government towards punishing "enemy" jurisdictions where a majority of Americans didn't vote for him.
In an interview with far-right podcaster Wayne Root today, Trump hinted that he'd be open to conducting the midterm elections under what amounts to martial law. Root suggested (incorrectly) that Trump had the power to declare a state of emergency and force elections to take place under the rules he wants to put in place, which would instantly disenfranchise millions of legally registered voters.
The Constitution explicitly gives states the power to set the rules for elections and conduct them. No emergency declaration could change that, and any attempt to impose Trump's rules by force would result in chaos—which, this cycle, would almost certainly work to his advantage. Trump winked at Root's suggestion, saying that "stranger things have happened."
Why does this matter?
- The only conspiracy to sabotage American elections was the one Donald Trump was indicted and impeached for.