On May 29, the Postal Service proposed a rule that would add a checkpoint to the process of voting by mail. Before that ballot could reach a voter, they would have to be checked against a federal list. If the voter’s name isn’t on it — or if USPS rules there are other technicalities, like the envelope not conforming to new standards — the USPS could refuse to deliver the ballot.

There are so many problems with this proposal that it’s hard to know where to begin. But to briefly name a few:

First, it isn’t the Postal Service’s job to be the gatekeeper of who can vote by mail, and the president has no authority to make it do that.

Second, it’s built on a fiction: that mail voting is rife with fraud. Worse, it’s designed to manufacture proof of that fiction. The voter lists states would hand over, the rule says plainly, are meant to “facilitate law enforcement efforts” — letting officials cross-check how many ballots went out against how many came back and flag the gaps for investigation.

Third, it asks states and USPS to build expensive new systems from scratch, just a few months before an election. Exactly when every hour should go to running a clean election.

The rule would do what its design all but guarantees: sow confusion, and leave eligible voters without the ballots they’re entitled to.

Here is the good news: this rule isn’t final. It’s a proposal, and a proposed rule has to go through a 30-day public comment period before it can take effect. That is a real window, and public comment on rules like this one carries weight, especially from the election officials who would have to carry it out. If you run elections, this is the moment to document, on the record, what it would cost and what it would break. If you don’t, you can still file a comment saying so.

And if you vote by mail, the most useful thing you can do is the simplest: don’t let the noise change your plans. Mail voting is safe, this rule is not in effect, and it may never be. Check your registration, know your state’s deadlines, and return your ballot early. The administration’s strategy runs on confusion and on the feeling that resistance is pointless. Neither is true.

On Fox News Sunday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed without evidence that “there’s a ton of evidence that the 2020 election was rigged” and that the Department of Justice has “multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Georgia, in Fulton County, Georgia” focused on determining whether “the right people voted.” Blanche offered no specific evidence to support the claim, acknowledged that the investigation has taken more than five years because supposed election-riggers are “very good at hiding what they’re doing,” and declined to provide any timeline for results.

No court, audit, or law enforcement investigation — including those conducted by officials appointed by and loyal to the Trump administration — has produced credible evidence that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged. What makes Blanche’s statement distinct from prior disinformation is its source: it is the sitting head of the Department of Justice, using the authority of that office to validate claims the legal system has repeatedly rejected.

As Protect Democracy’s Executive Override report documents, the administration has made election denialism official federal policy — using investigative and enforcement powers to manufacture the appearance of fraud and flood the public with disinformation designed to erode confidence in the 2026 midterms. Blanche’s Fox News appearance fits squarely within that strategy. The report warns that conspiracy theories and bogus investigations serve not only to deceive voters now, but to lay the groundwork for the administration’s final gambit: contesting or overturning 2026 election results that the administration doesn’t like. Lending the DOJ’s institutional credibility to election disinformation accelerates both goals simultaneously.

As the war in Iran continues, unresolved, President Trump is facing concerted pushback from Congress for the first time. The House on Wednesday passed a war powers resolution directing an end to U.S. engagement in Iran, with a handful of Republicans supporting the measure. The Senate must now take up the measure within roughly three weeks. Whether or not the measure ultimately passes, the House’s vote is an important reminder of Congress’s proper role in foreign entanglements, and a hopeful sign that members of Congress intend to use the power they have.

The White House also released a proposed rule that would tighten the president’s control over a wide array of federal spending. This new rule would give Trump’s political appointees power to approve or deny funding through grants to a wide array of organizations that are funded by the federal government. The funding decisions would be made according to explicitly political criteria, with the rule targeting funds that would be used for “anti-American” activities or that don’t support the president’s agenda. This assertion of power over federal spending is contrary to Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and the rule is likely to face challenges in court. It’s Trump’s latest effort to exert large-scale authority over the entire bureaucracy of the federal government, even over the occasional protestations of members of his own party.

In court and in the institutions he’s politicizing, President Trump has faced some major setbacks over the past few weeks. Legal experts are fleeing the Department of Justice, which will impair the department in the long-run and also makes it less capable of acting on his behalf in the short-term. In court, he faced a loss on his $1.776 billion “weaponization” fund, and the administration is now signaling that they will drop the fund altogether because of the challenges it’s faced in court and in public opinion (though Trump himself didn’t commit to scrapping the fund, calling it a “beautiful thing”). Even in his attempts to politicize the Kennedy Center or the 250th anniversary of the United States, the president is facing pushback.

At the same time, Trump recently announced that he is appointing Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence (DNI). Pulte is best known for being the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a role that he used to dig up justifications that would allow the Department of Justice to launch investigations into the president’s perceived enemies. Pulte, who does not have any experience in the intelligence community, could further politicize one of the most important foreign policy roles in the federal government.

Trump is also working to remake the federal workforce on a larger scale. An executive order signed on June 3 will recategorize thousands of protected civil servants as political appointees, meaning they can be fired at will for no reason. The removal of these protections will extend the president’s reach into more of the operations of the government, and could mean that everyone from epidemiologists to meteorologists who track severe weather could now face political pressures that will be totally new to them. The order does not hit every civil servant, but it’s another attempt to chip away at the independence of the federal workforce, which touches the lives of every American in ways that they usually don’t have to think about.

The investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center, when combined with the news that former FBI Director James Comey was being indicted for a second time and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is still trying calling for investigation Senator Mark Kelly, is a reminder of the sweeping efforts this administration has made to silence dissenting voices. These three investigations are all targeting different pillars of dissent, from civil society to politicians of the opposing party, but each of them meets the three-part standard we laid out in our tracker on retaliatory actions:

1. Evidence suggesting political interference with an investigation
2. Political opponents being treated differently than those similarly situated
3. Courts or other legal validators questioning the actions of the DOJ

These actions, then, are designed not to enforce the law, but to punish those who speak out against the administration. They are efforts to quash dissent and the ability to participate freely in the public square before an election, and they aren’t the only examples.

News also broke this week that the DOJ wants to know more about who on Reddit and X is criticizing ICE, and we also know that the president is working to push a government-wide NDA on all federal employees. The administration is working on all fronts to silence dissenting voices both inside the government and in the broader public square.

The April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and the subsequent exchange of fire between a gunman and the Secret Service outside the White House have sharpened concerns about political violence in the run-up to the 2026 midterms. Rather than treating the attack as a shared civic danger, the White House moved within days to assign blame to Democrats and the media, claiming their rhetoric had “helped to legitimize this violence.” That framing omits a documented pattern running in the other direction: an NBC News review found that Trump’s public attacks on perceived political enemies generated threats against at least 22 officials on both sides of the aisle.

Research consistently finds that election periods are correlated with heightened risk of political violence, and data shows that threats and harassment against local officials surge during election years — most frequently targeting election officials and poll workers, with an additional uptick in threats against judges over election-related issues. Swatting incidents, online death threats, and increased protection measures for officials connected to politically charged cases have all intensified since the Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, raising concerns inside federal law enforcement about the trajectory of the threat environment as the midterms approach.

It’s important to remember, too, that there are things we can do to lower the temperature:

• We can condemn political violence, regardless of whether it’s directed at figures we support or vehemently disagree with.
• We can intentionally avoid spreading false narratives, fueling conflict, or providing platforms to extremists.
• We can use legal tools to hold those accountable who spread dangerous misinformation, put others at risk, or threaten those engaged in the political process.

We can all collectively choose to obtain our information from trusted, official sources, avoiding the contentious and inaccurate information that often circulates online.

It’s important to remember, too, that there are things we can do to lower the temperature:

• We can condemn political violence, regardless of whether it’s directed at figures we support or vehemently disagree with.
• We can intentionally avoid spreading false narratives, fueling conflict, or providing platforms to extremists.
• We can use legal tools to hold those accountable who spread dangerous misinformation, put others at risk, or threaten those engaged in the political process.

We can all collectively choose to obtain our information from trusted, official sources, avoiding the contentious and inaccurate information that often circulates online.

A court ruling this month offered partial protection for one set of vulnerable institutions while exposing the limits of judicial relief. A federal judge ruled on May 12 that ICE may not conduct warrantless arrests at more than 5,000 churches that have claimed sanctuary status, barring enforcement within 100 feet of those properties without prior approval from agency headquarters or an immediate threat to safety. But the ruling’s scope is limited to those 5,000 churches, and ICE is still claiming the right to make warrantless arrests in other sensitive circumstances — including homes. The DHS Home Entry Memo — which Protect Democracy and the ACLU are challenging in federal court — continues to authorize ICE officers to forcibly enter homes to make arrests without judicial warrants.

The administration is simultaneously expanding its reach through agreements with state and local law enforcement — paying financial incentives to local police departments under the 287(g) program and incorporating immigration checks into routine traffic stops across an expanding array of jurisdictions — thereby extending the enforcement dragnet well beyond communities near the border.