The vote is the heart of democracy. Every two years, citizen organizations mobilize to register Americans and ensure they are on the rolls. That work is especially vital in poor and minority communities. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is the leading voter registration group in the Buckeye State. In 2024, it registered 100,000 voters.

The group helped lead the fight for fair maps against an egregious gerrymander in Ohio. The Brennan Center represented it in court, where we prevailed repeatedly. When legislators simply ignored those court rulings, the activists went to Ohio voters. Together with a former chief justice of the state supreme court, Republican Maureen O’Connor, they supported a campaign to pass a state constitutional amendment to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission. They called the amendment Citizens Not Politicians. It would have benefited neither party but empowered voters. The ballot measure fell short in 2024, but it was an example of nonpartisan, cross-ideological civic activism at its best.

That’s why what happened late last week is so troubling. Indeed, so outrageous.

In a massive sweep, 100 FBI agents and other federal officers raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s office and fanned out to the homes of volunteers, board members, and staff. Agents seized phones and computers, scooped up papers, and questioned startled citizens.

If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.

The rationale? According to a search warrant, the hunt for voter registration fraud.

This gives every indication of being an extraordinary abuse of power. It is part of a strategy that aims to intimidate voters and those who would help them exercise the franchise.

This is, after all, the same Justice Department that repeatedly has probed or prosecuted President Donald Trump’s critics, only to see those cases crumble before grand juries and judges. Combine that with an FBI led by Kash Patel, who wrote an election-denying children’s book about his fealty to the “king.”

This expanded strategy was mapped out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for what became many Trump administration policies. Use the Justice Department, it urged, to go after state election officials and registration groups. Hunt the imaginary threat of widespread voter misconduct.

The Heritage Foundation for decades has been a principal purveyor of the myth that many voters are committing fraud. Now the entire federal government is in the grip of that conspiracy theory.

A reminder: The Brennan Center’s research shows that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud.

What will be produced by this massive display of prosecutorial force? Probably not much of anything but—its progenitors likely hope—dread. If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.

In fact, the strategy seems focused not on enforcing the law but fomenting fear.

We saw that in January when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, seeking to “prove” that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election there. When the affidavit that authorized the raid was released, it turned out to be a collection of long-debunked claims. The raid sent a message to election officials everywhere: If you oversee an election where we dislike the results, you might be met by a knock on the door.

We saw it last week when Trump declared that California’s primary election was “rigged,” because a Republican reality show star did not finish in the top two for the mayoral election in deeply Democratic Los Angeles.

We saw it last year when armed, masked federal border patrol agents showed up in force at a press event held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a redistricting ballot measure.

What can we do to protect voters?

We should stand up for those working to register and mobilize voters and ensure they have the best legal advice and follow the rules. We should redouble efforts to protect election officials who face torrents of abuse. We should encourage states to step up, by passing legislation to make doubly sure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies cannot wreak havoc at the polls. We should lift up the nonpartisan work of police, prosecutors, and sheriffs through the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which brings together election officials and law enforcement to train officials around the country. And we should unite against efforts to interfere in elections or intimidate voters.

The Brennan Center honored the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in 2024 at our annual Brennan Legacy Award Dinner, together with Chief Justice O’Connor. I told the crowd, “This is kind of a buddy movie that I want to watch.”

Molly Shack, the group’s dynamic leader, told attendees about how it approached its work. “We are organizing people in communities around education and criminal justice reform and democracy issues and an ability to have a government that works, that can actually be responsive to citizens in all of our interests.”

She continued: “I think the idea that democracy is a partisan issue is something that I think we’re all trying to fight against. A functioning democracy shouldn’t be about right versus left. It should be about right versus wrong.”

US President Donald Trump has threatened to send troops to Chicago to “straighten that one out.” New York City, he says, might be next.

Already, armed National Guard regiments are patrolling the streets of Washington, DC. All this on top of the deployment of troops to Los Angeles earlier in the summer.

The deployment of out-of-state troops to occupy cities cannot plausibly promote public order. It’s blunt force, a brutal power grab. It runs afoul of the Constitution and the proper role for states.

I write history books and consider myself an expert on the presidency. I can think of few analogies—not in this country, anyway—for such a move by a chief executive.

Why is this particular turn so alarming? After all, public safety is important, and fighting crime is a worthy goal. My colleague Liza Goitein explains the legal and constitutional issues:

Trump is on even thinner legal ice with this plan than he is in Los Angeles and DC. Unlike in the capital, the president doesn’t command the Illinois National Guard unless he calls them into federal service (i.e., “federalizes” them). There are various laws that authorize him to federalize the guard, but none of them would apply here.In Los Angeles, Trump is relying on a law (Section 12406 of Title 10 of the US Code) that authorizes federalization when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,” meaning federal law. Immigration law is federal law. Trump claimed that the protests rendered him “unable... to execute” ICE raids. Although dozens of raids happened during the protests and the administration did not cite a single raid that was thwarted, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to Trump’s assessment.
But that law simply wouldn’t apply to the type of crime Trump has cited in Chicago—essentially, violent street crime. The laws that are implicated are largely those of Illinois and Chicago, not the “laws of the United States.”
Even under the Insurrection Act—which is the main exception to the law barring deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement—the president may deploy troops to execute the law only in situations involving either federal laws or those state laws designed to protect the constitutional rights of classes of people (basically, civil rights laws).
Nor can Trump ask other states’ governors to send their guard forces into Chicago, as he did in DC under a law known as Section 502(f), which authorizes governors to voluntarily use their guard forces for missions requested by the president or secretary of defense. Under this law, presidents have asked governors to deploy guard forces within their own states, in other states that consent, or (as only Trump has done) in DC without local consent. No governor has sent guard troops into another state that did not consent, as would be the case here. That’s because guard forces deployed under this law remain state officers as a legal matter. And under the Constitution, states are sovereign entities vis-à-vis one another. That means one state cannot invade another, even at the president’s request.
If the president wants to send one state’s National Guard forces into an unwilling state, he must federalize them first. But to federalize them, he needs statutory authority. And there is no statutory authority to federalize the guard to police local crime.
The Pentagon reportedly sees its planned military deployment in Chicago as a model for other cities. And of course, the other cities Trump has name-checked in this context are governed by Democrats: Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Oakland.
Flooding “blue” cities with soldiers on the pretext of fighting crime would be an unprecedented abuse of power that would violate states’ rights and threaten our most fundamental liberties. The plan is profoundly un-American. And it is illegal.

Public safety matters greatly. But facts belie the (ever shifting) rationale. New York, for example, remains one of the nation’s safest large cities. As Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday, crime has dropped dramatically, even this year. Fighting crime is not a rationale—it’s a pretext.

The cities targeted so far have two things in common: a Black mayor and a fusillade of presidential rhetoric denouncing them as “hellholes.”

Bill Kristol, founder of The Bulwark and a longtime prominent Republican, surveyed events and put it this way: “What we are seeing is not merely a ‘slide toward authoritarianism.’ It’s a march toward despotism. And it’s a march whose pace is accelerating.”

What can be done to push back? Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker warned federal forces: “Do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.” Trump, in turn, mused: “They say... ‘He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.’ A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” He added, “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.” (As presidential quotations go, it’s about as reassuring as Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”)

Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul can play pivotal roles. States and cities can go to court—an epic legal battle. They can rally the public in their states and around the country. They can monitor and document the conduct of deployed forces.

We must all speak out when our Constitution is under threat.

It’s going to be a busy fall.

NOW READ: 'The tip of the iceberg': Inside the 'greatest corruption in presidential history'

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.”

NOW READ: The price increases that should cause more panic for every American