Trump: ‘There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!’
President Donald Trump suggested he would issue an executive order attempting to impose a nationwide photo ID requirement for voting, a requirement to show proof of citizenship for registration, and a ban on mail voting ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Such an order would likely be blocked by courts, but if it stood, it would stand to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
Following the House’s passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act Wednesday, Trump took to Truth Social late Friday afternoon to suggest that if the Senate doesn’t send him the bill, he’ll take unilateral action. Senate Democrats have said they’re committed to preventing the measure from becoming law.
The bill would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at registration and show a form of I.D. when they cast their ballots.
“The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future,” Trump wrote. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
In January, a federal court issued a permanent injunction against Trump’s March, 2025 executive order that attempted to require documentary proof of citizenship on voter registration and limitations on mail-in ballots. In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, articulated why the Founders entrusted administration of elections first with the states in the Constitution’s Election’s Clause.
“The Framers of our Constitution recognized that power over election rules could be abused, either to destroy the national government or to disempower the people from acting as a check on their elected representatives,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Accordingly, they entrusted this power to the parts of our government that they believed would be most responsive to the will of the people: first to the States, and then, in some instances, to Congress.
The idea that immigrants are being brought into the United States to vote is a far-right conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly disproven. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote, and those that do so intentionally are easily caught, prosecuted, imprisoned for years, and then deported, all for the chance to cast a single ballot out of hundreds of thousands. Consequently, noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare, as election officials and court findings across the country have persistently shown.
Similarly, mail-in ballots are popular across the country and have shown no evidence of being particularly susceptible to electoral fraud. The SAVE America Act would not limit mail-in ballots, but another bill recently introduced in the House, the Make Elections Great Again Act, would.
