Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) gestures at the United Center during day one of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, August 19, 2024.
Mike Seeger | Reuters
House Democrats this week laid out plans to counter President Donald Trump’s calls to “nationalize” this year’s elections ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Lawmakers gather for annual policy gatherings where they set the year’s agenda and hone their campaign messages. The two men met in Northern Virginia this week in response to President Trump’s demands for stronger voter ID requirements at polling places and his desire to require documentation to register to vote, both changes likely to disenfranchise voters across the country. Pending Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act are also weighing heavily, and President Trump has said he is considering ways to impose his desired changes even if Congress fails to pass them.
“This is a five-alarm fire,” Rep. Terry Sewell, D-Ala., said at a Congressional Black Caucus press conference at the end of Friday’s rally. “We’re going to fight back and we’re going to use every tool in our toolkit.”
Sewell, who also serves on the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections, said options include litigation, legislation and mobilization. But Democrats are in the minority in both chambers, making them somewhat constrained ahead of the crucial 2026 midterm elections that will determine control of the House.
“The vast majority of Americans support President Trump’s common-sense election integrity policies, and Democratic politicians should do the same,” White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said in an emailed statement.
President Trump has refocused his focus on the election in recent months, revisiting his previous baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and that non-citizens were voting. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and is rare. In January, the FBI seized ballots in an election district in Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump lost to Joe Biden.
The president recently called for “nationalizing” elections. He urged the Senate to pass a controversial bill called the Save America Act that would require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that the American people have complete confidence in our election administration, including a fully accurate and up-to-date voter rolls with no errors or illegally registered non-citizen voters,” Jackson said in a statement. “The President also urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish uniform standards for photo identification for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and eliminate ballot collection practices to ensure election safety and security.”
President Trump earlier this month threatened to unilaterally impose voter ID restrictions ahead of the November election. MS NOW reported Thursday that the president has instructed White House lawyers to consider the feasibility of such an order. And the Washington Post reported that a group of pro-Trump activists is circulating a draft executive order to achieve that goal, which is predicated on Chinese interference in the 2020 election.
Rep. Joe Morrell of New York said the legal basis for such efforts is “shaky.”
“I’m very skeptical of the evidence that they suddenly have after six years,” Morrell said in an interview at the retreat.
In his capacity as the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, Morrell is leading House Democrats’ response to the Trump administration’s election priorities. He is also bracing for the potential impact of a challenge to parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which, if upheld, could wipe out some Democratic majority-minority districts. The Supreme Court is expected to announce a decision on the case between now and June.
Morell said Democratic efforts include wargaming various potential election scenarios, pursuing litigation and crafting messages. Meanwhile, Sewell said the CBC held several daylong sessions on voting rights to hone its response.
“One of the things I think we really need to focus on, especially in the wake of the seizure of ballots in Fulton County, is we need to present a strong legal case now against what they’re doing in this area,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey said in a CBC news conference.
Democrats also expressed concern that President Trump could deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or the National Guard to polling places in November as a means of voter suppression.
“Every year we have grassroots efforts that involve people, poll watchers and others, but this time we have to step up even harder,” Ivey said. “We’ve seen this movie before. It’s been a long time since something this blatant has happened, but I think we need to have people trained and ready to go to all these polling places.”
Defending democracy or affordability?
Democrats focused on the cost of living issue throughout the rally, with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and organized labor leaders also in attendance. Affordability is already becoming a key message to Democratic voters this year.
But Morrell said lawmakers are “sensitive” to potential threats to the election. Most of the conversations they had during the retreat were about election security, he said.
Still, they face a strategic challenge after President Trump’s message about the threat to democracy failed in the 2024 cycle. By raising election issues, will the economic message be lost?
“You can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a member of the CBC and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview. Waters said that while affordability is the biggest concern, “Democrats need to be very concerned about what the president is doing. It’s literally voter suppression.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and former member of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee, and Morrell both said Democrats don’t need to choose sides.
“I don’t buy the argument that we have to talk about mass democracy or we have to talk about middle-class affordability,” Raskin said in an interview. “To me, these are the same issues. We need a government that is an instrument for the common good of all people, not an instrument for the corrupt self-enrichment of immigrants and their families and friends.”
“I don’t think[Americans]think about it in an esoteric, theoretical way of saying, ‘Democracy needs to be protected,'” Morrell said. “I think what they’re becoming more aware of is that our access to the ballot has a lot to do with decisions that affect my family’s bottom line.”
