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Courts block election changes
Federal courts blocked major provisions of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape election rules ahead of the 2026 midterms, including a June 25 ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that found unconstitutional an executive order directing the federal government to create a nationwide list of verified citizens and giving the U.S. Postal Service authority over mail-in ballots.
“Federal courts have blocked major provisions of President Trump’s efforts to reshape election rules ahead of the 2026 midterms, as Republican senators simultaneously rebuffed his attempts to force through sweeping voting changes”
Talwani concluded that “the federal government does not have the authority to create centralized lists of adult citizens or decide who can vote by mail,” according to her 37-page ruling.
One day earlier, Judge Denise Casper in Boston permanently barred Trump’s administration from implementing a requirement that voters prove their citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, with Casper ruling that “the Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections,” according to court filings.
The rulings marked “the latest defeats for Trump’s election overhaul agenda,” and the injunction from Talwani applied to 24 jurisdictions—23 states and the District of Columbia—that challenged the order, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
SAVE America Act and tactics
As the judicial setbacks mounted, Trump also pushed for the SAVE America Act, an election bill being debated in the U.S. Senate that Trump said he would not sign any other law until it was passed.
Le Parisien described the bill as requiring voters to provide a document proving their American citizenship to register on the electoral rolls, such as a birth certificate or a passport, and to present an identification document at the time of voting, such as a driver’s license.
The Santa Barbara News-Press reported that the Department of Homeland Security was considering whether to use grant funding allocated to states—and the threat of withholding it—to “advance core national security priorities,” including changes to U.S. election security and infrastructure.
In the Senate, the SAVE America Act’s passage was framed as requiring 60 votes out of 100, while Republicans hold only 53 seats, and Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune warned that changing the threshold to 51 votes did not have enough support among Republican senators.
What’s at stake next
The court rulings and the push for voting-rule changes were tied in the sources to a broader effort to influence the 2026 midterm elections, with the Washington Post describing an “avalanche of setbacks” as Republican senators rebuffed Trump and “court after court hindered his administration’s plans.”
“Donald Trump is currently using every lever at his disposal to influence the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections, the elections held every two years to renew part of the U”
The eciks.org account said the injunction from Judge Talwani was limited to the 2026 elections, dismissing challenges to the order as “not yet ripe” when it comes to future elections, while the Trump administration signaled it would appeal.
In parallel, the Santa Barbara News-Press described how Trump’s push for election administration changes included demands that states hand count ballots and use the newly overhauled Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database to flag potential noncitizen voters.
The same source said Trump warned Republicans that if they lose control of the House, Democratic lawmakers will move to impeach him, and it quoted Sen. Brian Schatz saying, “He’s done a million impeachable things, so I don’t want to be too coy about this, but I do think it’s an important tactical question,” in a June 21 interview with CNN’s “Inside Politics.”
