Crackdown: Trump Signs New EO Targeting Mail-In Fraud Ahead of Midterms

On Tuesday afternoon, President Trump signed an executive order clamping down on election practices around mail-in and absentee ballots. The measure includes provisions that have been debated as part of the SAVE America Act. A Daily Caller exclusive story by Reagan Reese has details.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday cracking down on mail-in voting across the country, the Daily Caller learned first.
The executive order will require the Secretary of Homeland Security to create a list of verified U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state with the Social Security Administration’s help, according to a fact sheet shared with the Caller. The presidential action will also require that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) only send absentee ballots to those on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list. Ballots will now have specific secure envelopes, with unique barcodes for tracking, the order mandates.
States will be provided with their revised list of confirmed voters no less than 60 days before each federal election under the order.

The measure is sure to draw a legal challenge. The Constitution gives the states wide latitude in the conduct of elections and allows Congress to set overarching rules; there is no constitutional provision for the executive branch to make such rules. Article 1, Section 4 is the appropriate section in the Constitution; it states, in part:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Here's the "or else":

The executive order also tells the U.S. Attorney General to prioritize investigating and prosecuting anyone accused of sending ballots to ineligible voters, the Caller learned. States that disobey the order may lose federal funds under the presidential action.
“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman told the Caller in a statement.

The withholding of federal funds is a frequently used tool, but in President Trump's tenure, that, too, has been hotly contested.

New Twist: Red States Now Bypassing Senate to Lock Voting to Citizens Only

All of this would, of course, be mooted by passage of the SAVE America Act, the major election reform measure now stalled in the Senate. President Trump has made passage a priority, with midterms coming soon.

The president previously told the Caller he was in favor of using the standing filibuster to pass the legislation. He added that the White House was working very hard to get the legislation through.
Trump has also said he will veto any other legislation until the SAVE America Act is passed.
“It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post.

That's a fair point. Without election integrity, without the SAVE America Act, without making sure only eligible Americans are able to vote in our elections, everything else is water, not stone. What's more, the ID objection from Democrats is one of the dumbest arguments in the history of politics, and that's really saying something; you need an ID to do almost anything in modern life, but this is the hill Democrats have chosen to perish on — and they may have just enough votes to block the measure, as long as the current version of the filibuster is in place.

We live in interesting times, folks. Stay tuned.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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