Stop Trump's meddling in the midterms

Even at this late hour, so close to the national midterms, President Donald Trump is pushing and prodding on multiple fronts to manipulate and destabilize state balloting systems.

It’s a dangerous gambit that should worry everyone.

Fortunately the president’s team so far has drawn a series of adverse court decisions against its chaotic strategies to rig control of the House and Senate in favor of the Republican Party he directs. The states, not the federal government’s executive branch, have the authority to set the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections” for Congress under Article I of the Constitution.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court continued to bar the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out Trump’s pernicious plan to restrict mail-in ballots. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on this dispute, one of three strategies outlined in an executive order to limit voting his fall. The others require the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of U.S. citizens of voting age in each state and for the Justice Department to prosecute state and local election officials who do not comply.

GERRYMANDERING BATTLES

Upending the actual voting process is just the latest effort to stave off Trump’s fear of losing control of Congress. Last year, Trump got red states to proceed with unnecessary off-year gerrymandering. To compete, blue states responded in kind. The full impact of the battle will only be known from the November results. But bizarre last-minute efforts by the Trump team to revise Missouri’s earlier gerrymander hurled the House maps there into legal limbo. Finally, late last week, the Supreme Court rejected another new map pushed by the president’s allies.

These attempts at destabilization from the top are no surprise. Back in February Trump told an ally, podcaster Dan Bongino, who had a short stint as co-deputy director of the FBI: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over.’ We should take over the voting. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

That would allow a selective purging of voter rolls under the canard that noncitizens are casting ballots to skew results. Trump officials have sued 30 states for unredacted voter lists. They have lost 23 cases — including one involving New York — and won none.

Rather than accept judicial decisions, the MAGA feds put intimidation on the docket. On Thursday it was reported that the Justice Department sent threatening letters to top state election officials around the nation to preserve all 2024 election records, telling them they are “under investigation” and subject to litigation.

Some of the targeted states are Republican-run, such as Georgia and Kentucky, where election officials sometimes refuse Trump’s demands. Democrats say the administration is “flooding the zone” with intimidation and harassment to get officials to turn over sensitive private data.

The bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission, which helped states run election operations by certifying voting equipment and providing other support, has been gutted and rendered inoperative by the administration. In July, two Democrats on the panel were fired by the White House and the last Republican quit, leaving no confirmed commissioners in place.

HIGH STAKES FOR PRESIDENT

The messaging is clear. GOP leaders said repeatedly at their midterm convention in Dallas this past week that their agenda will be stymied if they lose control of the House. Much more, however, would be at stake for the twice-impeached, once-convicted and frequently sued president — which may be why he made the outlandish proposal to reward each citizen with a $5,000 check if the GOP remains in the majority.

If Democrats win the House even by a small margin, the executive branch might finally have to start answering questions and finessing official queries about the Iran war, incompetent leadership at Health and Human Services and at the Pentagon, and the Trump family’s foreign cronies and conflicts of interest.

The federal government must allow the states to administer their regular processes. It is abundantly clear there is no time left in the calendar to implement so many changes without disenfranchising many eligible voters. In New York, it would be even more of a disaster as the ballots are jammed with local contests for the first time due to the even-year voting law.

What voters across the nation make of the administration’s pettifogging and gaslighting could be a campaign issue all its own. It would be scandalous if people are intimidated from voting or found the process too burdensome to exercise their rights.

Americans must be free to collectively decide — district by district, county by county and state by state — the direction of the nation. The Trump circle has never disavowed its effort to seize unelected power by trying to nullify the 2020 election. This 2026 vote must be shielded as well simply by leaving the states to run their elections without interference.