On Fox News Sunday in mid-May, 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.

On June 23, just days after a Memorandum of Understanding ended the president’s unilateral war with Iran, the Senate adopted a resolution directing the president to remove military forces from the conflict. The resolution was adopted on a bipartisan basis, signaling both that the war does not have support in Congress, and that Congress is willing to reassert its constitutional authority of war powers, at least in this case.

A day later, though, after the president made his opposition to the resolution clear to Republican senators in person, the Senate reversed course, rejecting a similar motion. The Senate has now left Washington for a two-week recess.

This fitful attempt to push back against the president is a stark reminder both of how much the Congressional muscle to assert its war powers has atrophied, and of how much control the president still has over his party. Trump was able to prosecute this war from beginning to what could be its end without meaningful Congressional involvement, and even after hostilities have ceased, he is still demanding a free hand to act as he sees fit.

When Tulsi Gabbard resigned as DNI in May, Trump announced he would install Bill Pulte — a housing official with no intelligence background — as acting director. The move triggered a Democratic blockade of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key surveillance authority that expired on June 12 as a direct result of the backlash to Pulte.

Facing the FISA blowback, Trump nominated Jay Clayton on June 11, and Senate Republicans moved to fast-track his confirmation with bipartisan support. But on the morning of his scheduled hearing, Trump torpedoed the process himself, demanding the Senate first confirm his preferred SDNY replacement and attach the SAVE America Act  — a bill that lacks the votes to pass — to any FISA reauthorization.

The result: Section 702 has lapsed, Clayton’s confirmation is stalled, and Pulte assumed the acting DNI role on June 19 as originally planned. Although he initially seemed to buckle to political pressure on the DNI, Trump has now demonstrated a willingness to use the position to extract unrelated concessions — regardless of the cost to the intelligence community. And, perhaps even more alarmingly, Pulte has no relevant experience and a history of taking retaliatory actions on Trump’s behalf, and could gut the office.

This week, the Trump administration threatened to withhold a portion of more than $1 billion in annual homeland security grants from states that refuse to adopt sweeping election changes — including phasing out electronic voting systems and running voter rolls through a citizenship verification database that critics say produces false matches and could wrongly remove eligible voters.

Courts continue to push back on parallel efforts to compel states to hand over voter data. A federal judge in Maryland dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit seeking voter registration records — joining at least eight other courts — finding the administration’s legal theory contrary to the plain text of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The administration also faced losses in court over his executive orders seeking to alter the 2026 midterms. His executive order on mail-in voting was struck down in federal court, and his 2025 order requiring proof of citizenship was permanently blocked.

Even as he faced losses across multiple fronts in court, the president also continues to undermine faith in free and fair elections through legislation. Trump has halted progress on his nomination for the Director of National Intelligence, and the signing of a bipartisan housing bill, in a desperate attempt to force the passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would effectively disenfranchise millions of Americans and has become a top priority for the president.

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.

Deployments of ICE agents to cities across the country began in earnest in the summer of 2025, and a year later, they are set to ramp up again. White House border czar Tom Homan has said that one of those surges will target New York City, explaining that the surge would happen because Governor Kathy Hochul is no longer allowing state and local law enforcement to double as immigration officials across the state.

While Homan acknowledged that he “had to” surge ICE into the city, he also made it clear that he doesn’t want to repeat what happened in Minnesota. “You will not see a Minnesota. I will not let Minnesota happen,” he said.

This comes as tensions have continued to escalate around the Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in New Jersey. The facility has been the site of protests over the conditions inside, and those protests have sometimes led to armored officers using tear gas and batons to beat back the protesters. More than 80 people have been arrested.

Two significant developments this week show that the administration’s use of federal power to suppress civic participation is facing real resistance.

A federal judge blocked DOJ subpoenas targeting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other state officials, finding the “dominant purpose” of the subpoenas was to “coerce” and “harass and retaliate against” officials who had criticized the administration’s immigration enforcement — not to investigate any actual crime. The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions finding that the Trump Justice Department conducted politically-motivated investigations aimed more at harassing opponents than examining potential crimes.

On a separate front, ABC is publicly fighting back against the FCC’s investigation of “The View” and threats to its broadcast licenses — actions the network’s own Democratic commissioner called “naked political retribution.” ABC began airing on-air ads this week urging viewers to submit public comments before a July 6 deadline, taking the fight directly to the public.