Trump’s week in review: EU trade deal, Smithsonian content probe, mail-in ballots, 55 million visas
Effort to get rid of mail-in ballots, voting machines
In a post to Truth Social on Monday, Trump announced his intentions to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines, claiming without citing evidence that paper ballots ensure fairer elections.
"Democrats are virtually unelectable without using this completely disproven mail-in scam," said the president. "Elections can never be honest with mail in ballots/voting, and everybody, in particular the Democrats, knows this."
While promising to sign an executive order to begin the process of removing those options, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later explained to the media that Trump would champion federal legislation instead.
"The White House continues to work on this, and when Congress comes back to Washington, I'm sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill, and also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we're protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people," she stated.
"And I think Republicans generally, and the president generally, wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections."
Critics, including Ed Kilgore, political columnist for Intelligencer, called the effort "Trump's latest voter-suppression crusade." He expressed skepticism that it will succeed in Congress.
"Leavitt can talk about consultations with Congress as much as she wants, but the fact remains there is not even a single chance a Trump-sponsored election administration bill could survive a Democratic filibuster," he wrote.
"Democrats themselves tried to establish national voting and election rules of a very different nature during Joe Biden's administration, but it went nowhere for the same reason."
