What Trump's Election Order Is Really About
The election order is more about creating a narrative than changing policy.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday that tells the DHS in coordination with SSA to create lists of eligible voters, DOJ to prosecute election officials who provide ballots to those not on the lists, and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to voters on state-submitted participation lists.
There are many problems with this EO. Let’s go over the main ones.
The EO is an unfunded mandate. It places new requirements on state election officials and the USPS without providing any resources to fulfill those requirements.
The EO presumes a top-down, centralized power approach to public policy at odds with our decentralized government established by the Constitution and American values.
The president does not have the authority to change election rules. Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution clearly places this authority with Congress and the states.
DHS would need to create these state lists from current federal databases which are notoriously incomplete and inaccurate.
The EO would create chaos and confusion. It would go into effect for this year’s election and some of the deadlines conflict with established state deadlines.
The mail-in ballot requirements would be particularly problematic for the eight states that only use mail-in ballots. Voters who move or register close to election day may mistakenly get left off the list and never receive a ballot.
The EO assumes a problem that doesn’t exist. Mail-in balloting has repeatedly proven a safe and secure voting method and state governments have proven effective at running secure elections. Non-citizen voting is extremely rare and has never changed the outcome of an election.
Given all these problems, what’s the point of this EO?
Our president continues to spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats utilizing mail-in ballots and non-citizen voters. This EO helps him reinforce that false narrative. Additionally, if Republicans lose a lot of seats in this year’s elections, he’ll likely accuse Democrats of election theft again. If the EO is struck down by the courts and the SAVE Act does not become law (both highly likely), Trump can use those failures to sow distrust in our elections and thus reinforce his stolen elections narrative.
What should we be doing?
Reinforce what is true: Our elections are safe and secure. Mail-in balloting works (Trump himself used it). Non-citizen voting is extremely rare and quickly corrected.
Resources:
“Explainer: Executive Order on Mail-in Ballot Rules and Federal Voter Eligibility Lists”
“Cato Experts: Trump Usurps Executive Limits to Alter Election Laws”
“Beware of Novel Claims of 2020 Election Fraud”
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What We’re Reading
Newsweek: “Pastor Detained by ICE Denied Bible Delivery in Custody—Church Group”
Salguero added that Cortes Vasquez is a leader in the church who visits the sick, leads Bible studies, and serves the local community. He said Cortes Vasquez was credentialed as a minister about six months ago in recognition of his service.
Under the Trump administration, ICE pledged to target “the worst of the worst” immigrants, focusing on those with criminal records or posing public safety risks. However, multiple cases have emerged of asylum-seekers and other nonviolent individuals being detained, raising concerns among faith and immigrant advocacy groups about the breadth of enforcement.
Salguero said Cortes Vasquez, who was born in Colombia and has been in the United States for over a decade, was working at the time of his arrest. He said ICE agents stopped him while he was on a delivery route, and that the family maintains he has an active asylum case. Salguero said that Cortes Vasquez was taken into custody after officers allegedly cited an issue related to his vehicle registration.
He said Cortes Vasquez has committed no felonies. “This man has no criminal record. He’s never been arrested for anything.”
Jonah Goldberg: “What the No Kings Protests and Tea Parties Have in Common”
Regardless, what struck me watching the combined segments was how familiar they felt. I thought, “Wasn’t this pretty much exactly how the mainstream media covered the tea party protests?” Instead of George Soros (who was name-checked in the Fox report) the New York Times, MSNBC, et al. harped incessantly about how the tea parties were funded by the Koch brothers and various astroturf right-wing organizations. They’d “question the sincerity” of the tea parties—or outright deny it.
These outlets also focused on the freaks, weirdoes, cranks, and characters who inevitably sign up for any mass movement and suggested they weren’t marginal but representative. As the Los Angeles Times noted back then, “At MSNBC, commentators Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews wrote off the demonstrations as the work of nothing more than crackpots or political stooges.” Others insisted that the tea parties literally fit the textbook definition of fascism. Some haven’t let go of this conviction.
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But the claims that the No Kings protests were a Trojan horse for communists just doesn’t feel all that different from the claims that tea parties were cover for fascists.
As for the scorn for the idea that “No Kings” is a silly slogan—which I’m marginally sympathetic to—I think it’s worth noting that the whole idea behind a movement built around the ideas that inspired the Boston Tea Party is not so very different. The Boston Tea Party was a protest against, well, a foreign king. There was other stuff involved of course, but conceptually the similarities are far more obvious to me than the differences.
And if we’re scoring for hypocrisy and insincerity, where the fudge are all the tea partiers these days? Trump’s fiscal incontinence, crony capitalism, and fetish for bailouts and taxes are certainly no better than Barack Obama’s. I attended many tea party events where speakers waxed eloquent about the Constitution and attendees carried little pocket Constitutions. If the No Kings crowds are hypocrites because they didn’t mind Joe Biden or Obama’s excesses but hate Trump’s, the same charge of hypocrisy works the other way around.
I mean, Trump has literally levied taxes on tea! He’s done so without the consent of Congress. Strictly speaking, this is taxation without representation. That Trump has levied taxes on a bajillion other things without constitutional authority doesn’t lessen the irony. The fact that he’s also launched a couple wars without congressional authority makes the “No Kings” argument stronger, not weaker.
Matthew Taylor: “Christian Nationalism Is a Spectrum. Here’s Why That Matters.”
I would argue that the best way to broadly conceptualize American Christian nationalism is to think of it as a spectrum: there are mild forms, which are mostly benign, and there are more extreme forms that are quite dangerous. We see this in basically every survey that’s been done on the subject. Whitehead and Perry distinguish between Christian nationalist “Ambassadors” (roughly 20% of the country) who are somewhat interested in sanctifying the nation and Christian nationalist “Adherents” (11%), true believers who are strongly committed to the project. The Public Religion Research Institute has used a similar delineation, except they adopted the more helpful word “Sympathizers” (21% of the country vs. 11% “Adherents”) instead of Whitehead and Perry’s “Ambassadors.”
On the softer, gentler “Sympathizer” side of the Christian nationalism spectrum is what I like to call the “God Bless America” Christian nationalists. They like a little divine blessing seasoning on their patriotism; it feels right to them––like praying before a Thanksgiving meal. They like having an American flag in their church sanctuary. They appreciate that the Pledge of Allegiance says “one nation under God.” They’re proud that our money says “In God We Trust.” If you ask them in a survey, “Should the United States be a Christian nation?”, 45% of the country is going to say Yes. But when you keep asking follow-up questions you discover that the majority of these people just mean something like: America should be moral or we like that our leaders pray. It’s not exactly an active agenda.
NYT Editorial Board: “The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree”
At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack. The outcome was predictable. Critics, including this board, had warned that Mr. Trump’s pardons would embolden the rioters by signaling that crime has no consequences. One does not have to be a criminologist to predict that people who commit a violent act and are absolved of any punishment might become repeat offenders.
The Dispatch: “The Institutional Rot of the Right’s Youth Politics”
What these choices reveal is that the cultural reference points of the American right no longer lie in conservative intellectual traditions or political theory grounded in argument and debate. Instead, they stem from a loose constellation of streamers, influencers, and online commentators whose audiences are predominantly young men navigating an internet grievance culture organized around attention—earned through spectacle and the continual escalation of rhetorical transgression.
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