Too Big To Ignore: Will of the People Weekly

Week of September 21, 2026

With the midterm elections just weeks away, Trump and his allies are using every tool at their disposal to intervene. Last week, a new whistleblower disclosure revealed that Trump’s DHS told federal agents to pose as voters to get into state voter databases. Trump is also asking the Supreme Court to let DHS run voter rolls through a database a judge paused after finding it had been used to remove eligible citizens. DHS has already been tracking where election materials are printed in languages other than English, and a top Justice Department official told prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases or risk being fired. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies are urging him to declare a national emergency to take over the midterms, and the international observers who have monitored every federal election since 2002 haven’t been invited. What happens next is up to us, not them. When all of us show up, the will of the people wins. Try and stop us.

In the Administration

• A whistleblower says Trump’s DHS told officers to pose as voters to get into state databases. The anonymous disclosure, released last Monday by Senate Democrats, says immigration officers searched state voter lookup tools as though they were the voters themselves, and leadership told them to proceed when they objected.
• A top Trump Justice Department official told prosecutors to bring voter fraud cases or risk being fired, sources say. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh told senior supervisors on a recent call that lawyers must pursue voter fraud cases referred by the FBI or DHS, according to MS NOW. Between January 2025 and May 2026, just 41 suspected noncitizen voters were charged with a federal crime.
• Trump’s allies are urging him to declare a national emergency to take over the midterms, and he hasn’t ruled it out. After the Supreme Court ruling, Real America’s Voice host Wayne Allyn Root wrote that Trump “needs to declare National Security Emergency,” and influencer Mike Engleman called on him to take over voting for the midterms. When Root pressed Trump on air last month to declare an elections emergency, the president answered: “Let me just say stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at that.”
• Trump hasn’t invited the international observers who have monitored every federal election since 2002. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)’s election office says it is “currently waiting on that invitation from the United States,” which it needs before sending the assessment team that normally arrives ahead of a federal election. Its website shows no plans to send a mission before November.
• Trump’s Homeland Security Department has been tracking places that print election materials in languages other than English. The Democratic National Committee obtained the list, which includes Georgia’s Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, through a public records lawsuit. Asked about it, DHS said noncitizens “should not be able to use a purported lack of knowledge of the English language as an excuse to avoid prosecution.”

In Congress

• The only election item on Congress’s calendar this week is behind closed doors. A Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee holds a closed briefing Wednesday that includes an update on the election. The House has no committee hearings scheduled in Washington this week.

In the Courts

• Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • Trump’s administration is asking the justices to let DHS resume using its overhauled SAVE citizenship database, which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked in June after finding it violated federal privacy law and that states were “actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.” The D.C. Circuit refused 2-1 to pause her ruling, and the voting rights groups filed their response last week, so a ruling could come any time.
• NAACP et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security et al. (U.S. District Court, D.C.)
  • Nine civil rights groups and unions, including the NAACP, Mi Familia en Acción, SEIU and AFT, sued Trump’s DHS, ICE, Justice Department, FBI and border czar Tom Homan on Friday, arguing that threats to send federal agents to the polls are voter intimidation barred by Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act. They want a court order barring any deployment of agents that intimidates voters or people helping them vote. Homan said Sept. 13 that “there is no sensitive location policy” and “We’ll go where we’ve got to go.”
• U.S. Postal Service v. California (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • Last Monday night, the Court refused to let Trump revive his anti-voter mail-ballot rule for the midterms, saying in a three-sentence order that his administration “is unlikely to succeed” in its challenge. Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately that the rule may yet prove lawful for future elections, and Justices Alito and Thomas dissented. The rule stays blocked through November.
• American Oversight v. U.S. Postal Service (U.S. District Court, D.C.)
  • American Oversight sued Trump’s Postal Service to force it to release records on how it built its “Federal Mail Ballot Portal,” which a whistleblower described as rushed and haphazard, after the agency ignored four expedited public records requests. American Oversight says the plan to use the system in future elections remains “uncertain and opaque.”

In the States

California

• Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 13-bill election package Saturday that makes it a felony to seize ballots, election records or voting equipment before results are certified, after the Riverside County sheriff seized some 650,000 ballots. Another new law requires officials to alert the state within a day of any warrant or subpoena for election materials.

Virginia

• Attorney General Jay Jones told Trump’s DHS on Thursday that it may have broken several state laws, demanding written confirmation of whether it directed anyone to access Virginia voters’ records without their permission. “Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order,” he wrote.

Pennsylvania

• A DHS email made public last week shows its claim of 14,576 potential noncitizen voters in Pennsylvania came from the same immigration unit at the center of the whistleblower complaint, which ran the state’s public voter roll against federal databases.

Missouri

• Republicans told a federal appeals court Thursday it is not too late to switch to their gerrymandered map, even though ballots on the 2022 lines went out to overseas and military voters the next day. A ruling could come any time, and absentee ballots must be available to all voters by Tuesday.

South Dakota

• A federal judge declined to block part of South Dakota’s new proof-of-citizenship voting system after the state rewrote the confusing voter notices a voting rights group had sued over.

Upcoming Elections & Deadlines

Tuesday, September 22

• Missouri absentee ballots available

Thursday, September 24

• Michigan absentee ballots and drop boxes available
• Early voting begins in Illinois