Trump Wants to Change How We Vote. Will He Succeed?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily – “Trump Wants to Change How We Vote. Will He Succeed?”
Date: March 20, 2026
Hosts: Rachel Abrams
Guests: Michael Gold, Nick Corsaniti

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Overview

This episode of The Daily dives into former President Trump’s efforts to reshape the American voting system through the Save America Act and explores the broader strategies his administration is using to influence electoral processes ahead of the 2026 midterms. Rachel Abrams speaks with reporters Michael Gold and Nick Corsaniti to unpack the political maneuvering, institutional resistance, and real-world implications for American democracy.

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1. The Save America Act: What Is It and Why Now?

[01:55 – 05:46]

• Key Provisions:
  • Requires documented proof of American citizenship for voter registration
  • Mandatory photo ID at the polls
  • Forces states to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
  • Broad ban on mail-in voting except for narrow exceptions
  • Non-election related “riders”: bans on medical care for transgender youth and participation of transgender women/girls in female sports
• Trump’s Prioritization:
  • Is making passage of the Act a “litmus test” for fellow Republicans; vows not to sign other legislation and withhold endorsements if it fails
• Notable Quote:

  “He wants a bill that includes all of these things… He has told Congress that he will not sign any other pieces of legislation unless they pass that bill.” —Michael Gold [03:14]

Rationale & Political Calculus:

• Although Trump returned to office in 2024, he persists with unsubstantiated claims the 2020 election was “stolen.”
• Sees controlling election processes as pivotal for Republican success in upcoming midterms.
• Uses the act to put Democrats on the defensive and force difficult votes, especially regarding ID laws and transgender rights.

Memorable Moment:

“He wants to put them [Democrats] on the back foot.” — Michael Gold [05:36]

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2. The Battle in the Senate: Filibuster, Power, and Party Loyalty

[06:07 – 13:39]

• Congressional Dynamics:
  • House passed the bill on party lines; Senate is the major obstacle due to the filibuster (requires 60 votes to advance most legislation)
  • Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is resistant to abolishing the filibuster, upholding institutional norms even against Trump’s pressure
• Stubborn Independence:
  • Senators weigh their legacy and the institution’s future beyond Trump’s presidency
  • Showpiece debate orchestrated to placate the President and create politically potent soundbites, even if passage is impossible
• Notable Quotes:
  • “This has become a test for Senate Republicans… bow down to President Trump… or defend the filibuster…” — Rachel Abrams [08:22]
  • “The Senate has always had this independent streak, and it’s something that has long bedeviled Trump.” — Michael Gold [13:02]
• Political Theater:
  • Senate Republicans state, “We're gonna bring this bill to the floor… make sure that everybody has recorded their position.” — Michael Gold [09:19–09:50]

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3. National Debate – Voter Security vs. Voter Suppression

[10:08 – 11:41]

• Republican Arguments:
  • Fraud prevention (“They think it’s fine to let any illegal immigrant vote.” — GOP Senate quotes [10:34])
  • “Requiring a photo ID to vote is just common sense.” [10:37]
• Democratic Counterpoints:
  • Bill would amount to large-scale voter suppression and disenfranchise millions—including from both parties (“This is not an ordinary voter ID bill. This is a way to keep American citizens from voting.” — Democratic Senator [11:09])
  • Evidence cited refutes widespread voter fraud and highlights unintended bipartisan harm
• Soundbites:

  “We know that this will disenfranchise thousands if not millions of Americans.” [11:04]

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4. Senate Resistance – The Limits of Trump’s Party Control

[12:04 – 13:39]

• Bill’s Fate:
  • Unlikely to pass Senate given united Democratic opposition and filibuster protection.

    “The numbers aren’t there. Democrats are unified against it. The filibuster isn’t changing anytime soon… it seems destined to fail.” — Michael Gold [12:16]

• Longer-term Tensions:
  • Republicans begin to assert limits to presidential power and defend legislative autonomy.
  • Senators contemplate a Senate in a post-Trump era.
  • Trump and his allies look for ways to advance policies through executive or administrative actions if legislation fails.

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5. Beyond Legislation: Executive Actions and Federal Leveraging

[16:17 – 34:47]

Rachel Abrams interviews Nick Corsaniti on administrative and extra-legislative efforts:

A. Federal Investigations and their Impact

[17:52 – 22:47]

• FBI interventions:
  • Raids and subpoenas for 2020 ballots in swing states (e.g., Fulton County, GA; Maricopa County, AZ)
  • Used to add “a veneer of legitimacy” to baseless fraud claims and possibly justify future federal intervention in elections
  • Fear that low evidentiary bars could enable similar intrusions for the 2026 midterms
• Quote:

  “These investigations… could produce reports or claims that there were errors, malfeasance... and then that could be a justification for further action from the federal government.” — Nick Corsaniti [19:24]

• New Dynamic:
  • Appointees (like AG Pam Bondi) who supported overturning the 2020 election are now in positions of power, making “hypotheticals” more plausible.

B. National Voter Roll Efforts

[22:59 – 25:41]

• Request for State Voter Data:
  • Federal government is pressing states to turn over full voter rolls including PII
  • Justified as anti-fraud but experts worry about data misuse and misleading conclusions
• Criticism:
  • Voter rolls are rapidly changing; any “snapshot” is instantly outdated.
  • “There's also pretty significant concern… it could be manipulated, distorted... to serve as justification for more intrusions…”—Nick Corsaniti [24:51]

C. Use of Federal Agents and Troops

[25:41 – 27:12]

• Legal Limits:
  • Law bars armed federal troops from polling places, but ambiguity remains about the presence of federal agents (e.g., ICE) in cities
  • Possibility of federal presence used to intimidate, particularly in Democratic strongholds
• Judiciary’s Check:
  • Courts still constitutionally limit executive overreach on election law, but have also shown increased politicization and sometimes slow responses.

D. The Crucial Role of States

[29:21 – 32:23]

• Decentralized Elections:
  • Decentralization has protected integrity in the past but some local officials in key battlegrounds have been replaced by Trump loyalists
  • Example: Georgia’s State Election Board now controlled by Trump allies, with new powers to take over local (e.g., Fulton County) election administration
  • Potential for states to act in ways preemptively aligned with the president’s agenda

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6. The Broader Consequence: Erosion of Electoral Trust

[32:39 – 34:47]

• Growing Doubt:
  • The cumulative effect of new laws, executive actions, investigations, and policymaker narratives is a mounting skepticism among voters regarding electoral integrity.
• Impact:

  “There has been no greater change in American elections in the Trump era than this widespread doubt and eroding of faith in the electoral process.” — Nick Corsaniti [33:36]

• Potential Outcome:
  • Lower trust could depress future voter turnout or provoke unrest, even if direct subversion of results is structurally difficult.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Comment | |-----------|----------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:14 | Michael Gold | “He wants a bill that includes all of these things…He has told Congress that he will not sign any other pieces of legislation unless they pass that bill.” | 05:36 | Michael Gold | “He wants to put them on their back foot.” | 09:19 | Michael Gold | “We’re gonna bring this bill to the floor…make sure that everybody has recorded their position on the Save America Act.” | 11:09 | Democratic Senator | “This is not an ordinary voter ID bill. This is a way to keep American citizens from voting.” | 13:02 | Michael Gold | “The Senate has always had this independent streak, and it’s something that has long bedeviled Trump.” | 19:24 | Nick Corsaniti | “These investigations... could produce reports or claims that there were errors, malfeasance... and then that could be a justification for further action from the Federal government.” | 24:51 | Nick Corsaniti | “There’s also pretty significant concern...it could be manipulated, distorted...to serve as justification for more intrusions into elections.” | 33:36 | Nick Corsaniti | “There has been no greater change in American elections in the Trump era than this widespread doubt and eroding of faith in the electoral process.”

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Key Segment Timestamps

• [01:55] – Explaining what’s in the Save America Act
• [05:46] – How the filibuster stymies its progress
• [10:08] – Dramatic debate on the Senate floor
• [13:02] – The Senate’s independence from Trump’s will
• [16:39] – Executive and agency-level election interventions
• [17:52] – FBI seizure of ballots and investigations ramp up
• [22:59] – Federal effort to build a national voter roll
• [25:41] – Rumors and reality of federal troops at polls
• [29:21] – State-level control and the shift in local election officials
• [32:39] – The consequences of eroding trust in elections

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Conclusion

The episode presents a deep dive into the intersection of election law, executive power, and institutional checks during Trump’s second term. The Save America Act, while unlikely to pass the Senate, is only one facet of a multipronged campaign to shape how Americans vote and perceive their democracy—raising concerns about the future of election trust and the resilience of federalist institutions.

Transcript

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[Michael Gold]

AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything

[Nick Corsaniti]

from

[Rachel Abrams]

the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. This week the Senate is debating the Save America Act.

[Michael Gold]

We're going to save America. The Save America how can they Fight us? The Save America Act, a bill that

[Rachel Abrams]

could overhaul who gets to vote and that President Trump has called his number one priority.

[Michael Gold]

They have to get it done.

[Rachel Abrams]

Because if we don't get this done,

[Michael Gold]

I'm for if it takes you six months, I'm for not approving anything. I'm for not approving anything. I don't think we should approve anything until this is approved.

[Rachel Abrams]

Today I speak with my colleagues Michael Gold about the bill and why some Republicans are standing against the president to block it, and Nick Corsanidi about the administration's other plans to try and reshape the electoral process whether or not the bill fails. It's Friday, March 20th. Michael Gold, welcome back to the Daily.

[Michael Gold]

Thanks for having me.

[Rachel Abrams]

I appreciate that you're talking to us in the Capitol with a picture of the Capitol behind you. Are you in a sound booth or something?

[Michael Gold]

I'm in a sound booth with a picture of the Capitol so that I never forget where I am, which in this building is not insignificant. It's pretty big around here.

[Rachel Abrams]

So it's 2:30 on Thursday afternoon. And the reason you are at the Capitol is that you've spent all day so far covering the deliberations over the Save America act, which we expect to be voted on in the Senate at some point in the coming days. Can you just start by describing what the Save America act actually is and what it would do?

[Michael Gold]

So the Save America act is this big elections bill that President Trump has been pushing for and it has a few basic provisions, all of which follow what the president is looking for on voter identification and voter registration. So the bill would require people show proof of American citizenship when they register to vote. It would require that you show a photo ID at the polls when you go to vote. It would require states turn over their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, and that's so that the Homeland Security Department can look for non citizens who might be registered. It would broadly ban mail in voting with a few narrow exceptions. And then the president tacked on two provisions that have nothing to do with voting or voter rights. One of those would restrict medical care for transgender children, and the other one would essentially ban transgender women and girls from taking part in women and girls sports. And the president has said that this bill is his top priority. He wants a bill that includes all of these things. And he has told Congress that he will not sign any other pieces of legislation unless they pass that bill. And he's made it clear that he's going to withhold his endorsement from lawmakers if they don't back this bill and push to get it done.

[Rachel Abrams]

Is your understanding of why the Save America act, the rest of it, is so important to the president? Because obviously, he keeps repeating the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, but he did obviously get back into office in 2024. Like, why are these election issues something that he is still so focused on?

[Michael Gold]

Yeah, I think if we're talking about this bill, we need to really zoom out of Washington and look at the bigger picture, which is that there are going to be midterm elections in November, and the control of Congress is up for grabs, essentially, and Republicans are looking at polling that shows that the wind is at Democrats backs. Traditionally, we've seen the president's party lose power in the midterm elections. I think Trump knows that. And he even told House Republicans at their big meeting last week that he believes that the fate of the midterms hinges on their ability to pass this bill.

[Rachel Abrams]

And why is that? What about this bill would actually give Republicans the upper hand in President Trump's mind?

[Michael Gold]

So the contention that the president's been making is that this is a necessary bill because the only way that Democrats can win elections is by rigging them. And again, I want to be clear, there's no evidence for Trump's claim that Democrats are cheating on elections. But this is the claim he's been making, and it's part of a larger effort that he's undergone in recent years to instill doubt about the outcome of elections that he and his party don't win.

[Rachel Abrams]

So it sounds like it's just as much about what's actually in the bill as it is about the optics that the president wants to be able to portray about the election.

[Michael Gold]

I think that's correct. I think it's important to remember that as President Trump and Republicans keep talking about this bill, part of the idea is to raise questions in the mind of voters about whether the votes that they're going to take in November are going to be fairly counted. But I think another key part of the president's strategy here is to try and put Democrats on the defensive and force them to explain why they oppose voter identification, force them to explain why they oppose some of these voter restrictions that the President portrays as common sense ideas, and to force them to take difficult votes on things like these transgender provisions where polls show that voters trust Republicans more on these kinds of issues.

[Rachel Abrams]

He wants to put them on their back foot.

[Michael Gold]

He wants to put them on the back foot. And especially ahead of an election. I think both parties are trying to seek any edge they can get. And this is one area where the President thinks that he has the advantage.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, so as you've explained, the spill is a huge priority for the President. And the President, it's worth noting, has largely enjoyed getting what he wants from Congress, or at least his experience in a second term has been that Congressional Republicans do not stand in his way. Right. But this time is different. Explain why and also how.

[Michael Gold]

Yeah, it is different. You're definitely right about that. And it is correct to say that this term the President has really been able to muscle his priorities through Congress. They've given him wide latitude to do a lot of the things that he's doing. And in the House, that was the case with the Save America Act. The House on a party line vote, pushed through this bill, and they sent it over to the Senate. The problem is that in the Senate, to advance this bill, you need to overcome the filibuster. So that means that you need 60 votes for any bill to move ahead. And because of the math of the Senate, where Republicans only hold 53 seats, they can't pass this bill without the support of Democrats. And the only option they have to do this on a majority vote would be to get rid of the filibuster.

[Rachel Abrams]

And for those of us who do not live and breathe Senate procedure and are not currently based on Capitol Hill, such as you, Michael Gold, what is the filibuster and what does it mean to do away with it?

[Michael Gold]

Yes, a great question, and one that I have to answer a lot. So the filibuster is set up in such a way that everyone knows that you need these 60 votes to move a bill along. And so lawmakers tend not to bring anything to the floor for a vote or for a debate if they know that they don't have 60 votes to move it on to the next step. Now, getting rid of the filibuster would mean changing the rules of the Senate so that you can do everything on a simple majority vote. But a lot of senators, including Republican senators, are really opposed to getting rid of the filibuster.

[Rachel Abrams]

Why?

[Michael Gold]

Well, think about it like this. If you need 60 votes to do anything that gives individual senators a lot of power, if you kind of start with the basic idea that a lot of Democrats are going to oppose a Republican bill and a lot of Republicans are going to oppose a Democrat bill, there's incentive for individual senators to try to work out compromises. And so if you're a moderate senator who wants to get something for your state, if you want to have a very specific influence on a piece of legislation, you can do that because your vote is really critical. And so there are a number of hardline Republican senators who want to get rid of the filibuster and would rather see majority rule, but a number of others who are more institutionally minded don't. And that includes Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who's currently the majority leader and who got his job in part by promising to uphold the Senate's kind of institutional value and its institutional mindset.

[Rachel Abrams]

So it basically, this has become a test for Senate Republicans. Right. And in particular, the Senate Majority leader, Thune, because the choice they have is either bow down to President Trump, give him what he wants, push the Save America act through, or defend the filibuster, and by extension, the incentive to compromise in the Senate and effectively block this piece of legislation that is so important to a president who has a history of defenestrating allies at the slightest hint of disloyalty.

[Michael Gold]

Yeah, this is a really tricky moment for Senate Republicans, and it is a very tricky moment for John Thune. He has to kind of follow the will of a lot of the members of his caucus who do not want to see the filibuster changed. At the same time, the president is very influential. He holds a lot of sway among the Republican base. And so he's getting a lot of pressure, not just from some of his own members, but a lot of pressure from the outside. And he's sort of faced at this crossroads of trying to decide how he's going to deal with the Save America Act.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, so what does Thune do?

[Michael Gold]

So Thune goes to his members, he has a lot of conversations, and eventually he realizes that there's just no will for getting rid of the filibuster. There's no way for them to do it. But he knows that the president wants to see a Vote on this. And so he says, okay, we're gonna bring this bill to the floor. We're gonna have a long debate on it. We're gonna come and make our points. We're gonna force the Democrats to come and defend their points. We're gonna do this for days. And even though everyone knows that it won't overcome the filibuster, he wants to have a vote and they want to make sure that everybody has recorded their position on the Safe America Act.

[Rachel Abrams]

And presumably he wants to get some compelling sound bites of Democrats on the defense. Right, debating this. And that's what we have started to see play out on the Senate floor. A debate that is basically just for

[Michael Gold]

show, more or less. But in the meantime, he's hoping that this will release some of the pressure by having this debate on the floor.

[Rachel Abrams]

Good afternoon, everyone. I think, as everybody knows, we are looking forward to having an important battle on the floor of the Senate this week.

[Michael Gold]

And so for the last few days, the Save America act has been the only thing basically that the Senate has debated.

[Rachel Abrams]

Mr. President, I rise today to say I support the Save America Act.

[Michael Gold]

And what we've heard from these Democrats here is nothing but fear mongering and outright lies.

[Rachel Abrams]

Listen to the Democrats talk.

[Michael Gold]

They think it's fine let any illegal immigrant vote.

[Rachel Abrams]

Requiring a photo ID to vote is just common sense.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Heck, if you want to get a

[Rachel Abrams]

library card, you have to show a photo id.

[Michael Gold]

And we've seen Republicans make the same argument as the president about voter fraud, about the idea that Democrats might be rigging elections.

[Nick Corsaniti]

What this bill is, is a voter suppression bill. It's a voter purging bill.

[Michael Gold]

And Democrats have objected to the bill by arguing that the Save America act basically amounts to voter suppression.

[Nick Corsaniti]

We know that this will disenfranchise thousands, if not millions of Americans.

[Rachel Abrams]

This is not an ordinary voter ID bill. This is a way to keep American citizens from voting.

[Michael Gold]

And they're citing studies that show that millions of Americans don't have the documents they need to be able to vote or to register to vote. And one thing that they're also pointing out is that those millions of Americans don't neatly follow one party or the other. That this law would hurt Republican voters and it would hurt Democrat voters as well.

[Nick Corsaniti]

If Republicans want to waste the Senate's time debating this bill, so be it. We will continue to debate it. That's what the rules allow the Senators

[Rachel Abrams]

and Senator Thune to do.

[Nick Corsaniti]

But we will continue to expose this is a load of nonsense.

[Rachel Abrams]

So it sounds like part of the reason why Republicans might support the Save America act is about showing fealty to the president. Right. Validating his claims of voter fraud, that this is a big issue, as opposed to concrete, clear evidence that it would actually help them in the midterms.

[Michael Gold]

I think that's right. And I think there's a sense in which they think that the president's priority is the most important thing right now.

[Rachel Abrams]

So, given everything that you've laid out, Michael, is there any chance that this bill is going to pass in the Senate?

[Michael Gold]

I would say no. Stranger things have happened, and I'm never in the business of absolutes when it comes to predicting the Senate, but the numbers aren't there. Democrats are unified against it. The filibuster isn't changing anytime soon. So whenever they vote on this, it seems destined to fail.

[Rachel Abrams]

Michael, I can't help but wonder, though, how the president is going to view this sort of compromise that Thune is proposing. Right. Of at least having a debate, if not pushing this through, given the fact that the president has made it clear this is his number one priority. And just stepping back. There's a longer story here of the President Trump's control over his party. He has enjoyed basically being the boss, and this seems to be a rare moment of some Republicans standing up to him and saying, no, there's actually something more important here than just us doing whatever it is you want.

[Michael Gold]

Yeah, I think that's right. And the Senate has always had this independent streak, and it's something that has long bedeviled Trump. It was a real issue for him in his first term. And a lot of senators are looking to the future when Trump won't be president, and thinking about what they want the Senate to be and how they want the Senate to function, especially in a world where they're not in charge anymore. They don't want to hand Democrats the reins to push through laws without them. And so I think what you're seeing is a lot of these Republican senators really trying to take a stand here and say the Senate means something, the legislative branch means something, and we can't just let you trample all over it.

[Rachel Abrams]

They're imagining a world where President Trump is not President Trump forever.

[Michael Gold]

That's right. Presumably he will not be president after the 2028 election. And so they have to think about what their jobs are going to be after that. At the same time, Trump has made it clear that he's not letting go of this issue. And what we're seeing is he and his allies in the administration are looking to ways that they can achieve similar goals to alter the elections that are coming this November.

[Rachel Abrams]

Michael Gold, thank you so much.

[Michael Gold]

Thanks, Rachel.

[Rachel Abrams]

After the break, my colleague Nick Corsenidi explains other plans from the Trump administration that could reshape American elections regardless of whether the Save America act fails.

[Michael Gold]

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[Rachel Abrams]

Nick Our colleague Michael Gold just told us that the President has vowed to push through elements of the Save America act now that it looks like it's almost certainly going to fail. You focused a lot of your recent reporting on those efforts and on election integrity more broadly. So what is the President talking about when he's talking about the parts of the Save America act that he wants to preserve and push through in another way?

[Nick Corsaniti]

So the Save America act is kind of a key part of a multi pronged approach that the administration is bringing to try and remake American elections according to President Trump's will. And while that's the main battle happening on the Hill, there's been a lot that's been percolating in the background. The president has been using, you know, different agencies within his administration to intrude or start to investigate different parts of the electoral process.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right. And when it comes to the electoral process, we should point out that the president has repeatedly lied about the 2020 election, specifically that it was stolen. And now he is seeking to influence the 2026 midterms, and in different ways. And this is where I'd like to acknowledge that there are so many fears out there about election interference. And I've heard plenty of theories. I'm sure you've heard all kinds of theories. And I think it's very hard for people to know where their fears fall on the scale of possible to totally unlikely and ridiculous and outlandish. And so I wonder on the Venn diagram of scary and likely, what is in that middle section, what is actually worth talking about?

[Nick Corsaniti]

So I think it's important to start these conversations looking at what the federal government has actually done, what actions have they taken, and then understand where they could go based on what they've already done. And there's a few buckets here that the federal government has started on. And the most pressing, at least from what election experts across the country have told me, are these FBI investigations into the 2020 elections. And what that's looked like so far is the FBI raided an election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, and they took ballots related to the 2020 election. This was a pretty unprecedented move.

[Rachel Abrams]

That's right. We talked about that on the show earlier this year. And not only was the raid unusual, but Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, we learned, had actually brokered a phone call between the FBI agents involved and President Trump. And totally unusual.

[Nick Corsaniti]

That's exactly right. And then they subpoenaed election materials from Maricopa county in Arizona, the biggest county. But then allies of the president have continued to push that effort further. In Michigan, we reported that election activists there obtained copies of ballots and other election materials from Detroit, another Democratic powerhouse in a key swing state.

[Rachel Abrams]

And what would the point of those investigations be like? What does the FBI gain from getting access to information from the 2020 election? And what does that have to do with potentially 2026?

[Nick Corsaniti]

There's kind of two goals here. The first is adding, like, a veneer of legitimacy to the many false and baseless claims that the president's made about the 2020 election. But it could also kind of significantly impact the 2026 elections. And this is where I hear so much fear and worrying from election experts. These investigations, whether it's real or not, could produce reports or claims that there were errors, malfeasance, problems with the running of elections in these critical areas. And then that could be a justification for further action from the Federal government further action like so it could take a couple forms. And I think we can just look at what President Trump has said so far. In an interview with the Times earlier this year, he said he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines in the 2020 election. He has also said that he wants to nationalize elections and that he wants Republicans to take over elections. And, you know, in a worst case scenario, you could see the president directing any arm of the federal government to intrude in an election, seize machines, seize ballots, and all trust and best practices about the election would be out the window. But there's an underlying worry that comes with these FBI investigations, and that's the very grounds on which they were brought. So when the affidavit was unsealed in Fulton county, we see that there was a host of disproven claims and conspiracy theories that served as the justification for going in and taking these ballots, and a judge signed off on them. And so there's been election of lawyers who I've spoken to who were just baffled that this was the bar that was needed for the FBI to go and take these ballots. And they worry that the bar could be just as low for a possible intrusion into the midterms.

[Rachel Abrams]

One of the things that feels sort of different about the world that we're living in now is that while we're talking about hypotheticals, we are also talking about an FBI and a judiciary that in the second Trump administration we have seen been quite acquiescent at times, compliant with the administration's demands or agenda. And so I can imagine that that is adding fuel to the concerns about whether this kind of intrusion could occur in a place like, I don't know, Detroit or just some other area that is really pivotal to an election to the midterms.

[Nick Corsaniti]

That's exactly right. What's fueling so much of this unease is that this administration is staffed with so many allies of the president who are willing to go along with a lot of his efforts. And if we look at the election space, so much of the leaders of these levers of the federal government, people like Attorney General Pam Bondi, they were outside the government in 2020, but they were standing with the president in his efforts to overturn that election. Now they're inside the administration. They're the ones who will be pulling those levers of power. And I think that is part of what's making so many of these hypotheticals feel a little bit more real to election experts, Democrats, even Republicans that I've talked to.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, so what you have just described about the FBI, the doj, that I think is one bucket of concern.

[Michael Gold]

Right.

[Rachel Abrams]

What is the next bucket of concerns that you think we should be paying attention to?

[Nick Corsaniti]

So there is a fairly unprecedented effort by the federal government to create what would essentially be a national voter roll. And they're demanding private voter rolls, which are kept by states, and they include personal identifiable information like Social Security numbers and driver's licenses. They want that entire data set sent to them by secretaries of state or top election officials to create a national voter roll list. And it's part of this investigation into voter fraud and non citizens voting that the President claims is happening. In reality, no investigation has found widespread voter fraud nor widespread noncitizens voting in elections.

[Rachel Abrams]

But theoretically though, the idea that the federal government would basically say we want this information so that we could come up with another check against people who shouldn't be voting voting, I think that that's something that a lot of people might hear and kind of be on board with. Right. I think most Americans are on board with like voter ID requirements in general.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Yeah. On the surface it sounds like a good check. Right. But it's actually pretty faulty in its foundations. A voter roll list in any state is effectively a living document. People die, people move, people get married, people turn 18. People turn 18 and that changes their voter registration. These changes in the voter list are happening every waking second. And the federal government's effort is much more of a snapshot, like a picture. So as soon as the federal government gets this information, it would instantly be out of date.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay. But presumably the federal government is well aware of the limitations of creating such a snapshot. Like, they know how voting works. They know people turn 18 and get naturalized. So they would know that a list today is not a good list for tomorrow. What then is the purpose of something like this?

[Nick Corsaniti]

So this is actually probably serving two purposes. The first is to kind of in further investigate the, this baseless claim that the President has continued to make, that the voter rolls are dirty, that there's millions of non citizens on them, that there's other types of voter fraud happening everywhere. And if you had a national voter list that could be scrubbed, you'd be able to prove that. But there's also pretty significant concern among these election officials that are refusing to hand over this data, that it could be misused, that it could be, you know, kind of manipulated, distorted in a way to kind of prove those claims and then either serve as justification, as we were talking about earlier, for more intrusions into elections or allow the government to make claims about the midterms that just aren't true that could impact results.

[Rachel Abrams]

Nick, I want to ask about a theory that's been put out there about using federal troops like the National Guard to somehow police polling stations or intimidate people at polling stations. Where does all of that fall in the Venn diagram we talked about?

[Nick Corsaniti]

Well, in this one, the law is pretty clear. Federal law clearly says that there can be no armed troops in polling places.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right.

[Nick Corsaniti]

The Trump administration has left a little ambiguity in their statements. Kristi Noem, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, you know, refused to rule out having ICE agents at polls. But, you know, in private conversations with election officials, some Department of Homeland Security officials have said, we're not going to do this. So that fear, I think, has kind of been answered by the administration, even with slight ambiguity. But the fear that I'm starting to hear more from, you know, kind of governors of states isn't that these ICE agents will go into polls, it's that they'll go into cities or go into

[Rachel Abrams]

Democratic strongholds, like we've seen in Minnesota.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Exactly that. It's not so much that there will be armed federal agents watching you vote, it's that the situation in a city could suddenly become unstable and what suppressive impact that might have on voting.

[Rachel Abrams]

So there is a concern about federal troops. It's just not quite the concern that I think is sort of the loudest about them being physically at polling places.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Exactly. There's clear laws prohibiting armed agents in the polls, but there isn't that to have armed patrols of cities.

[Rachel Abrams]

But I think it's worth pointing out, though, that this is an administration that pushes the legal limits all the time and after taking some kind of action, gets reined in by a court. And while the courts were a bulwark against the claims of election fraud in 2020, we have talked about how they have also been quite compliant in some cases, with the administration's demands. And I sort of wonder how we should be thinking about the courts pitching forward as it relates to them being a check on anything that we might be discussing here today for the 2026 midterms or beyond.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Well, we've seen time and time again that the judiciary has become politicized in this country. So there's lots of fears that a politically connected judge could side with the federal government on any of these claims. And it also, you know, can take time for a judge to rule. So if, say, troops were dispatched to an election center or had intruded to the process in some way, the damage was at least momentarily done right before the court rules. But I think it's also important to not forget that the Constitution is very clear. The president and the executive branch have no explicit authority over elections.

[Rachel Abrams]

Right.

[Nick Corsaniti]

So when the president says he wants to nationalize elections, or when he claims he's going to enact voter ID through an executive order, there's no constitutional authority to do that. And in fact, we've already seen courts knock that down. In March of last year, the President signed an executive order seeking to make a host of changes to American elections that was swiftly knocked down and has been almost completely blocked by federal courts. So there are moments where the courts clearly provide a check on the President in his efforts to change the electoral process. But in the heat of the midterms, you know, what could be done in a moment or what might take some time to correct, there could be damage still done.

[Rachel Abrams]

I want to linger for a minute on the role of the states here. You know better than anyone that elections are decentralized. The states oversee their own elections. So even beyond the courts stepping in and saying no to the president, there's this reality that it's always been really hard to imagine anyone, quote, unquote, rigging an election or influencing an election nationwide simply because there are thousands of people across the country who are actually in charge of how elections are run, and they are not connected to one another. So you couldn't just say, flip a switch and all of a sudden everything changes on the national level.

[Nick Corsaniti]

That's exactly right. And that's one of the strengths of the American electoral process. The decentralized nature where local officials and state officials are running elections makes it very hard to corrupt or hack or rig an election. But this is also kind of where we've seen some of the most significant change from the 2020 election to what could happen in the midterms. In 2020, a lot of local election officials were bulwarks against the efforts to subvert the results by the president. And in 2026, some of those offices have changed. So we're kind of in a new reality here as the battleground areas are different. And so some of the election officials in some of these key spots are much friendlier to the president. His past claims about election interference and fraud and a lot of conspiracy theories, you know, those are also held by some of these local officials.

[Rachel Abrams]

Nick, can you give us an example of a state that has shifted in this way that matters for the midterms?

[Nick Corsaniti]

Yeah. The clearest example of this is in Georgia. The state election board in 2020 was, you know, overseen by Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State, who stood up to President Trump's desires to overturn the election and, you know, find him some 11,000 odd votes. Now, it's run by allies of the president who have supported his conspiracy theories about elections, supported the raid by the FBI in Fulton County. And the state Election board has pretty significant powers. And one of the ones that could really come into play in the midterms is this new state law that would allow the state election board to suspend those in Fulton county who oversee elections and inst their own person to run the election. But with a midterm election, the states that we need to pay attention to are actually quite different than a presidential like Texas. So in a midterm, Texas has multiple battleground House districts and Democratic held House districts. And there's state officials there like the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who, you know, launched the lawsuit in 2020 to overturn that election. And there's concerns, and we don't exactly know how that might play out in a midterm because it hasn't been tested.

[Rachel Abrams]

In some ways, the idea of states preemptively taking action that they think is in line with the president's agenda or might help the president or might help the Republican Party, that sounds like, at least spiritually, sort of the center, the bullseye of that Venn diagram.

[Nick Corsaniti]

That's exactly right. So we've already seen these states take action at the behest of the president to help Republicans in the midterms. So as we look ahead, you could see how it's actually the state officials that could play the biggest role.

[Rachel Abrams]

I want to just emphasize that a lot of our discussion is hypotheticals, right? We are living very much living in the land of what could happen based on what we have seen so far. But the fears that people have about the midterms, about future elections, as you pointed out, are largely based on actions that have been taken both at the federal and the state level. This stuff is not happening in a vacuum. And one thing that does very much seem like it is not outside of the realm of possibility is that the overall impact of all of these efforts and all of these claims and all of these justifications for what we have seen could further erode the trust that voters have in the electoral system itself. And we already know, based on the claims from 2020, that there are a lot of people that just simply do not believe in the integrity of our electoral process. And I just sort of wonder how we should be thinking about the role of that doubt going forward and what impact it actually has, practically speaking, on people turning out to vote.

[Nick Corsaniti]

There has been no greater change in American elections in the Trump era than this widespread doubt and eroding of faith in the electoral process. You know, American elections have been challenged before. We saw it go to the Supreme Court in2020. But what happened in 2020 and the movement that spun out of it is a new front in American politics and American elections. And so with all these actions that have already been taken, these raids by the FBI, these requests and lawsuits to get voter information, the presence of federal troops in cities to carry out immigration raids, these state election officials kind of taking power and siding with some of the election conspiracy theories, it all contributes to the doubt and the eroding of faith in elections. And that can have a profound impact on whether Americans trust their elections and what actions they take when they don't.

[Rachel Abrams]

Nick Corsaniti, thank you so much for joining us.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Thanks for having me.

[Rachel Abrams]

We'll be right back.

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[Rachel Abrams]

here's what else you need to know Today, the Pentagon has asked for $200 billion in funding for the war in Iran, a significant sum that adds to the cost of an already divisive campaign. The White House will review the request before it's formally submitted to Congress. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a news conference on Thursday that the number, quote, could move.

[Nick Corsaniti]

Obviously, it's, it takes, it takes money

[Michael Gold]

to kill bad guys.

[Rachel Abrams]

So the sum is nearly a quarter of the country's entire annual defense budget. And it's already raising eyebrows among some moderate Republicans who would be key to approving the new money. And two former FBI agents fired last year for having worked on an investigation into President Trump's attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election filed a lawsuit accusing senior leaders at the bureau and the Justice Department of targeting them for, quote, political retribution. In their suit, the agents claimed that FBI Director Cash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi had retaliated against them for being, quote, politically disloyal to President Trump, even though they had worked on the election interference case only briefly and in largely administrative roles. The suit is the latest effort by FBI employees, employees to hold Patel and Bondi accountable for the sweeping purge of investigators and analysts who had taken part in inquiries into Trump or his allies. Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lynn, Jack Decidoro and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Lexi Diao. Contains music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the daily I'm rachel abrams. See you on Sunday.

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