President Trump vowed to impose voter ID requirements ahead of the midterms, with or without congressional approval, the latest escalation of his campaign to assert more control over elections, which he baselessly claims Democrats have been rigging against him and others.
“We cannot let the Democrats get away with NO VOTER I.D. any longer,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday afternoon. “These are horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS.”
“I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future,” he wrote in another post. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”
The president, in his posts, also made an unusually partisan direct address to the Supreme Court, claiming that if the status quo remained, Democrats would eventually try to pack the court with an expanded number of justices, end the filibuster in Congress, and add additional U.S. states.
“Our Country will never be the same if they allow these demented and evil people to knowingly, and happily, destroy it,” Trump wrote.
The comments alarmed critics of the president.
“Trump’s authoritarian takeover and interference in the midterm elections under the guise of ‘election integrity’ has begun,” Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the advocacy group Campaign for New York Health, wrote on X.
This week, the House passed the SAVE Act along party lines, which would require proof of citizenship to vote and let the Department of Homeland Security seize voter rolls.
Republicans supporting the bill echoed the president’s unfounded claims of mass election interference from Democrats.
“Cheating is the only path to victory,” Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, told The New York Times.
Critics of the effort, which is unlikely to advance through the Senate, accuse the Republicans of pursuing a thinly veiled attempt at voter disenfranchisement, given that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and millions of Americans don’t possess the legal documents, like a passport, that would help them prove their citizenship.
Almost all states require voters to attest that they are citizens to vote, under penalty of perjury.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Washington blocked parts of a previous Trump executive order requiring documented proof of citizenship when military members register to vote and mandating agencies “assess citizenship” before providing federal voting forms.
“Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
The Constitution leaves administering elections largely to the states, but President Trump has continued to push for more federal involvement, an effort rooted in his continued insistence that non-citizens are cheating in elections, even though analysis, including a review by the Trump administration, suggests this barely ever happens and does not sway elections.
Earlier this month, the president called on Republicans to “nationalize” elections.
The White House has said it can offer “no guarantee” that federal immigration agents won’t be present at polling stations, as MAGA allies like podcaster and former White House strategist Steve Bannon have pushed to use armed immigration agents to “surround the polls.”
The Justice Department has sued multiple states to force them to turn over voter registration information.
Leaders in Illinois accused the administration of using federal force there to dampen civic participation and voter turnout in future elections.
Gov. JB Pritzker called the efforts a way to “circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.”
