The Trump administration is using the Justice Department, the FBI and a presidential executive order to tighten voting rules in what election experts describe as a coordinated assault on voting rights. The push spans three fronts: civil lawsuits seeking voter data from nearly every state, criminal investigations into discredited allegations of 2020 election fraud, and a sweeping order granting the Postal Service power to restrict mail-in voting.
The Justice Department has filed 30 active lawsuits demanding access to voter rolls from states and the District of Columbia, according to Eileen O’Connor, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who spent eight years in the DOJ’s voting section of the civil rights division. “So far, eight courts have issued rulings in these cases, and the DoJ has lost each one,” O’Connor said. She called the department’s demand for records containing drivers’ licenses and Social Security numbers an overreach.
The FBI has opened investigations into long-debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election, focusing on Georgia and Wisconsin. According to the Washington Post, the bureau raided an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, seized images of ballots in Arizona, demanded ballots in Michigan, and expanded its inquiries to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. FBI agents visited the homes of former and current Wisconsin election officials, the Post reported.
Trump signed an executive order in March 2026 that directs the U.S. Postal Service to decide which voters may receive mail-in ballots and authorizes it not to deliver ballots to people not on newly developed federal mail voter lists. The order also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of citizens in every state using what the Brennan Center called unreliable and incomplete federal data. It threatens criminal penalties against election workers, mail carriers and others who deliver ballots to people the administration claims are ineligible.
Twenty-three Democratic-led states, including California, sued in early April to block the order, arguing it unconstitutionally interferes with states’ authority to administer elections. A separate March 2025 executive order requiring proof of citizenship at registration has been partially blocked by several federal courts, and the administration has appealed.
The Justice Department’s voting section has been restaffed with attorneys who worked on efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss. The department tapped former Republican congressman Dan Bishop of North Carolina, an avid election denier, to lead a national voting fraud drive in April 2026. Democracy Docket disclosed in May that Minneapolis lawyer William Mohrman, who was involved in lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden’s victory, had been hired as a senior counsel in the voting section. The section’s acting head, Eric Neff, a former California prosecutor, reportedly has links to election-conspiracy promoters.
The DOJ has also backed a Texas redistricting plan that could help Republicans pick up five House seats while challenging a California redistricting plan that could benefit Democrats, according to the report. The voting section’s staffing has been reduced from about 30 lawyers to fewer than half, a former DOJ lawyer said.
Trump reacted to California’s June primary results by alleging without evidence that Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s early lead had vanished because of rigging. “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had… 3rd World Nation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He later claimed the primaries were under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, and the DOJ sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles.
Some Republicans have raised constitutional concerns. “These attempts are clearly unconstitutional. States run elections, not the feds,” said veteran Republican consultant Charlie Black.
Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches at American University, said the executive order “could very well disenfranchise millions of voters while doing nothing to eliminate virtually non-existent voter fraud.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the push, telling Fox News last month there was “a ton of evidence that the election was rigged” in 2020. Multiple audits and lawsuits have found no evidence of meaningful fraud in that election.
At a Republican House retreat in January, Trump warned lawmakers the midterm stakes were high. “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be … I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said.