President Donald Trump raged at Democrats Monday for supposedly cheating in elections in a long and unhinged Truth Social rant—and buried in his tirade is a clear indication of how he hopes to corrupt the 2026 midterm elections at a time when his agenda is nose-diving in polls.
In his screed, Trump rehashed his familiar lies about how mail balloting is riddled with fraud, and promised to lead a new “movement” to abolish it.
But then he added this:
WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.
Trump already unveiled a similar executive order in March designed to change election rules. It would have barred states from accepting ballots mailed on time but that arrive after Election Day and forced state officials to require documented proof of citizenship for everyone who registers to vote in federal elections.
Such changes would have disenfranchised large numbers of voters. Two federal judges blocked it this spring after a coalition of states sued, the plaintiffs successfully arguing that it usurped their authority to set election rules. The administration is appealing.
Trump appears prepared to have a second run at such an executive order. But what’s critical about Monday’s post is he connected this scheme directly to the midterms, inadvertently revealing the real aim behind it.
Trump’s new rant says he’s going to “lead a movement to get rid of” mail balloting, then later says this “movement” will begin with his new executive order—a strong indication he will try to ban vote-by-mail by executive order.
Voting rights advocates have long expected him to attempt something like this, perhaps by arguing that vote-by-mail is a threat to national security. That’s because Trump’s argument for his previous executive order failed in the courts after judges affirmed that the Constitution authorizes states to set the “time, place and manner” of elections.
Now Trump might try something new. “It sounds like he will try to ban all mail-in balloting through executive order, and he’s going to have to find some other rationale for such a sweeping presidential action,” said Pooja Chaudhuri, a lawyer at Democracy Defenders Fund, which represented other clients challenging the March executive order.
For instance, Trump might argue that “mail-in ballots are so fraudulent that they undermine the institutions of this country,” Chaudhuri continued, and that “the president must get involved. This would represent an enormous abuse of power.”
There is overwhelming evidence that any fraud in mail balloting is limited to nonexistent. Indeed, it’s now beyond obvious that the pretext is the thing to watch. Trump is manufacturing a fake justification for nixing vote-by-mail because he believes (probably wrongly, but never mind that) doing so will help Republicans in the midterms. That he openly linked his announcement to the 2026 elections shows he isn’t even bothering to hide the scam any longer.
“If they are going to try to stand for election integrity, it hurts them to point out that this is directly related to the 2026 elections,” said Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy at the Center for American Progress. “It exposes that this is not about election integrity and national security, it’s about election rigging.”
It’s no accident that this comes even as Trump is expanding the use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and other cities, based—again—on a manufactured pretext, this time about crime. At bottom, Trump’s rant clearly signals his intent to use presidential power in every conceivable way he can to swing the midterm elections against Democrats. This could include ramped-up military maneuvers in Democratic strongholds or in swing areas—whether to intimate voters or to fabricate a crisis atmosphere meant to help Republicans—as well as whatever limits on voting he can impose, all justified with pretexts that he invents out of nothing.
We all need to be ready for this. Fortuitously, Trump has told us himself exactly what he intends to do.
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