Michael Waldman, Common Dreams

A truly terrifying plot lies hidden in this empty Trump threat

After his Friday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump bragged that the dictator had backed one of his conspiracy theories. According to Trump, Putin said, “You can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting.” (You don’t need to be a former KGB agent to know how to woo our chief executive.)

Then on Monday, perhaps emboldened by his encounter with a real-life autocrat, Trump announced a major effort to seize control of American elections.

In a Truth Social post, he declared that he would sign “an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections” and “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”

We’ve all grown used to the president’s wild claims about elections. We might be tempted to roll our eyes now, but we shouldn’t. It’s appalling.

If we do not act against these threats, free and fair elections in 2026 could be at stake. So, what can be done?

The order would likely purport to ban or seriously limit mail voting, a focus of Trump’s since 2020. To be clear, mail voting is a widely popular and long-standing practice used by about a third of citizens. Every state has well-tested security measures in place to ensure that the process is safe and secure.

Trump claimed in his post that we are the only country in the world that uses mail voting. Putin, whom he called a “smart guy,” allegedly told him that, but it is blatantly false. Dozens of countries use mail voting, including Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (And of course, Trump himself regularly votes by mail in Florida.)

The order could also target voting machines. “While we’re at it,” he said in the post, we should get rid of “Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” That’s nutty. Machines with a paper record (used by 98% of voters) are far more accurate and secure than, say, counting ballots by hand. Ironically, Trump’s blast came the same day that Newsmax paid $67 million to a voting machine company in a defamation suit arising from the last round of false claims about the 2020 election.

Attempting to implement any of these policies via executive order would be flagrantly illegal and flatly unconstitutional—a power grab. Already, earlier this year, Trump tried to seize control of elections with an executive order requiring Americans to produce a passport or another citizenship document to register to vote using the federal form. The Brennan Center and others sued, and judges blocked the worst part of that move. The new threatened executive order, too, could turn out to be vapor, essentially a malevolent press release.

But Trump’s post contained a chilling claim: “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

This statement plainly repudiates the Constitution—the Elections Clause gives states and Congress the power to run elections. Presidents have no authority to rewrite election rules. In a democracy, the states are not personal agents of the president.

If successful, this executive order would be nothing short of an authoritarian takeover of our election system. Imagine the man who demanded that a state election official “find” him 11,780 votes in charge of “counting and tabulating the votes.”

This threat comes as federalized troops and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents patrol the streets of Washington, DC. Last week, ICE agents massed outside a Democratic event on redistricting in California.

Again, Trump’s threatened executive order would be blatantly illegal and blocked by a court. But it’s still important to listen to what he’s saying. He’s making his goal—a federal takeover of elections—explicit. And while this particular tactic won’t work, it’s just one piece of the administration’s emerging, unmistakable campaign to undermine our elections, a drive that ranges from defunding election security programs to trying to gain access to state voter rolls.

Voters must have the final say in a democracy. If we do not act against these threats, free and fair elections in 2026 could be at stake. So, what can be done?

The courts must uphold the Constitution when it comes to elections, as they did with Trump’s earlier executive order.

State leaders and election officials must also fight back. They must stand firm in their right to oversee elections, continue to provide voters with options such as mail and early voting, resist illegal orders, and keep control over voting machines. The Brennan Center has published information about how to respond to requests to access sensitive data and machinery.

Ultimately, the integrity of the next election will be up to voters. We must all speak out against these moves to meddle with the vote. It’s harder to take over an election when everyone is watching.

Think again about Trump’s claim that states are his “agents” in tabulating the votes. Vladimir Putin’s great hero had something to say about that: “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how,” Joseph Stalin said, “but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”

Trump's Supreme Court is raising specters of racial division

The 14th Amendment guarantees that all children born in the United States are citizens. It aimed to undo the notorious Dred Scott ruling, which held that some people born here — Black people, to be precise, free and formerly enslaved — nevertheless were not citizens. As you’ll recall, just hours into his term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship. The order was, and remains, unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court chose this case, out of all the possible cases, to strip judges of a key power used to stop illegal actions.

Instead of ruling on the merits in Trump v. CASA, the justices chose to rule on the legality of universal injunctions, among the strongest tools that lower courts use to block flagrantly unconstitutional policies like these from taking effect while cases play out.

These injunctions grant relief not only to the person who brought a lawsuit, but to all affected by the ruling. Instead of every soon-to-be parent affected by the order having to bring a lawsuit to secure citizenship for their baby, only one litigant would have to obtain a universal injunction — guaranteeing relief from an unconstitutional order for all. The six justices of the conservative supermajority decided that such rulings go beyond the power of federal courts when they’re not necessary to give the plaintiffs themselves full protection of the law.

By allowing Trump’s order to partially take effect in 30 days absent further action by the lower courts, the court has effectively resuscitated Dred Scott, at least for some people, at least for now.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned, “No right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

We at the Brennan Center are still analyzing the ruling. It’s vague at key points. In some respects, it is as great a gift to executive overreach as last summer’s ruling on presidential immunity. On the other hand, alternative avenues to obtain nationwide relief from illegal conduct remain.

Let me share several thoughts.

First, and most obviously: This is one more example of the Supreme Court enabling executive overreach at a time when checks and balances are profoundly strained.

These nationwide injunctions pose complex issues. I have warned about the damage a single judge can do with a gavel and a grudge. Nationwide injunctions blocked key Biden administration initiatives, such as on student loan relief and climate change, and many of Trump’s actions in his first term. Oddly, the Supreme Court had never before ruled on the practice, despite many opportunities to do so during the Biden administration. One could have imagined a decision now that set out sharp limits. Instead, with this decision, these justices have once again gone much further than the case required.

Second, the court purports to give litigants other ways to broadly challenge illegal actions — but these may be flimsy, even sneaky. People can file a class action lawsuit, for example. Maybe. I was a class action plaintiffs lawyer before I came to work at the Brennan Center. Those lawsuits are cumbersome, expensive, and slow, and they must overcome barriers erected by very conservative judges (and the business lobbyists who backed them for their jobs).

Then there is the question of which judges have had their power stripped. The ruling seems to apply only to lower court judges … but does it? For example, if the administration were to defy the Supreme Court, would the court itself still have the legal authority to enforce its own orders to protect everyone affected? That would, after all, require a universal injunction.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion, which sought to reassure: Of course the Supreme Court could still take bold action when needed. Some read that as reassuring. Others note that he is just one justice. There’s a reason this appears in a concurring opinion. Kavanaugh may not have been able to bring any of his supermajority colleagues along with him. Even if true, as Ruth Marcus explained in The New Yorker, that means the court “sided with Donald Trump over the judiciary.”

All of which brings us to the third point: The courts, alone, will not save us. In banning universal injunctions, the Supreme Court relied on an originalist interpretation of the Judiciary Act of 1789. (Sotomayor noted that it amounted to “freezing in amber the precise remedies available.”)

Congress, in other words, wrote the law being interpreted — and could write a new law to clarify what powers federal judges hold when confronted by executive branch lawlessness.

Presidents of both parties have pushed to expand their power, though none as brazenly as Trump. And Congress has settled into torpor, failing over and over to perform its constitutional role.

After this period of institutional demolition will come a moment of reform and renewal. When it does, we should ensure that remedies make it possible to hold lawless presidents accountable, along with addressing issues such as campaign finance and voting rights.

While this Supreme Court may be frozen in 1789, we must think anew and act to ensure the protection of birthright citizenship and so many other constitutionally recognized rights. In the meantime, we must give our full support to efforts to hold this administration accountable through the courts, using any and every tool that remains.

Michael Waldman is president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Executive grift: Trump’s presidency becomes a personal profit machine

Eight years ago, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington became the symbol of influence peddling. Tourists giddily mingled with lobbyists and campaign donors. The cheapest cocktail went for $24. How quaint.

This term, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he is opening a private, members-only club in Georgetown called Executive Branch. Members of the Trump administration, CEOs, and tech executives are among those who have signed up. The membership fee is currently $500,000.

That is the context for the controversy now erupting over Qatar’s gift of a roughly $400 million airplane for use as the new Air Force One, a 747 that would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library when he leaves office, potentially making it available for his personal use (although he denies he would use it). It’s outlandish on its own terms. And it is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.

Days before his return to office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, which immediately enriched him by an estimated billions of dollars (although the coin’s worth has since dropped). Since crypto is a purely speculative vehicle, this gave “investors” a chance to send funds straight to Trump, without disclosure or pretense. Sure enough, the United Arab Emirates, another country where he visited this week, gave him... sorry, “invested” $2 billion.

Trump’s family enterprise already owns a crypto mining company, World Liberty Financial, which benefits from his shift from skeptic to deregulator.

Then there are the transactions that all seem to end up with the first family being paid—starting with the $28 million paid by Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary.

Now, let’s not romanticize a past golden age of government ethics. The White House saw the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson used the Federal Communications Commission to give preferential treatment to radio stations he owned. In more recent decades, presidents of both parties conducted a grueling schedule of nearly nonstop campaign fundraising. (My old boss Bill Clinton certainly got grief when party donors slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.) Hunter Biden was accused of peddling influence for personal gain before his father pardoned him on the way out of office.

What’s different here is that the funds are flowing not to a political party or campaign but to the officeholder as an individual. The transaction is direct, naked.

The founders were very concerned about an individual using the power of the presidency to enrich themselves and their family members. They focused sharply on the risks of corruption and were well aware of the myriad ways the system could be abused. And they were especially worried that foreign governments could influence American presidents.

At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris feared the possibility of the president receiving foreign bribes: “One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” The founders wrote anti-corruption protections into our Constitution.

Article I of the Constitution forbids any officeholder from accepting any gift or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent. It’s called the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the Virginia ratifying convention for the Constitution, Edmund Randolph made clear how viscerally the framers recoiled from the possibility of foreign funds. He described “an accident, which actually happened, [which] operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments from foreign states.”

Trump said, “I would be a stupid person” to turn down the $400 million plane. But remember that the Emoluments Clause is in the part of the Constitution making clear Congress’s power—it’s not up to the president to decide.

In his first term, Maryland and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that Trump illegally profited from foreign and domestic officials who visited his hotel. We agreed. That case got tied up in court, and in 2021, the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it since Trump was no longer president.

So what lessons can we learn from this, and what ironclad rules could prevent future presidents from profiting so brazenly from office?

To start, Congress should make clear it does not approve of this massive foreign gift to our president. More comprehensively, Congress could pass legislation to fully enforce the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and remove the procedural hurdles that derailed lawsuits in Trump’s first term.

Then it would be time to recognize that we have relied on common sense or self-restraint from previous chief executives. The Brennan Center’s task force of Republican and Democratic former senior officials recommended that presidents be required to put their businesses and assets into a blind trust, a proposal that is part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act that fell to a filibuster in 2022.

Even those protections may be inadequate. Neither the founders nor later generations of lawmakers profited from meme coins.

Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms. For now, all of our astonished outrage is a good start.