Every red state in America has two types of Republicans — elected officials who cede their state power to President Donald Trump in silence, and election administration officials worried about his intentions in the next election.
Trump’s March 31 executive order, a power grab on mail ballots in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, increased pressure on both groups.
That order directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create a national list of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to those on that new federal list. And it orders the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute state election officials who fail to comply with the terms of the order.
Article I, Section 4 of the United States Constitution grants sole authority to administer elections to the states. Lawsuits aimed at blocking Trump’s power grab were quickly filed in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. by Democratic Party organizations, blue state officials and voter rights advocates.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 31, 2026, restricting voting by mail.
Trump, who voted by mail in a special election in Florida in March despite being there during early voting, has long promoted lies and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about voter fraud through mail-in voting in an attempt to sow division and mistrust in how the election was conducted.
The real reason for that: Trump wants to overturn the system so that he chooses voters instead of voters choosing their politicians. And he combines that drive with MAGA base pressure to silence red state politicians who know how unconstitutional it all is.
Imagine if a Democrat did this
David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer and founder of the Center for Election Research and Innovation, proposed a scenario that shows how unusual that would be. Imagine if a Democratic president ordered DHS to create a national voter registry and required everyone on that list to vote, regardless of whether they were eligible or not.
(I know, I know, Trump and his MAGA allies insist it will happen now. Because they lie about it.)
Rob Kendall: Trump’s Indiana Senate endorsement doesn’t help anyone but Trump
Becker, who was speaking at a news conference for journalists, said red-state Republicans would be outraged and sue the president.
“Yet we continue to see this dynamic of Republicans ceding their state sovereignty to this particular president when they would never have ceded that sovereignty to a president of the other party,” Becker said.
The other side of that coin: Becker told me that election administration officials in red states are just as concerned about Trump’s executive order as Democrats in blue states. He recently hosted a webinar for 548 election officials from 42 states and Washington to discuss Trump’s executive order.
“I’ve heard a lot of concern” about that, Becker told me, in part because of the uncertainty created in 2025 by another Trump executive order to power the elections, before it was overturned by a federal court.
“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. “At least as many Republicans expressed concerns about these executive orders as Democrats.”
Trump’s cunning executive order isn’t about how you vote
The Brennan Center for Justice, which joined the lawsuits challenging the executive order, noted in an April 8 briefing that Trump’s requirement to prosecute anyone who disobeys constitutional orders “appears to wipe out those who provide election administration services, postal workers, and civilian volunteers who help individuals submit their ballots.”
Al Schmidt, a Republican appointed as Pennsylvania Secretary of State in 2023 by Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who became governor in 2023, told ABC News on April 5 that Trump’s executive order is causing “some level of confusion” while expressing confidence that it will be overturned by the courts.
“We want voters to know that the election will be free, fair, safe and secure and that everyone knows the rules before the start of this election,” Schmidt said. “So confusion is never a positive thing unless you’re looking to sow doubt in the outcome of an election.”
Opinion: Trump fires another loyalist. He will hire someone else.
This is not a new scenario for Schmidt or Shapiro. Schmidt received multiple death threats after he helped run the 2020 presidential election in Philadelphia and faced Trump’s wrath for doing the right thing.
Shapiro, who as Pennsylvania attorney general in 2020 fought Trump’s efforts to overturn his presidential loss to Joe Biden in the state, joined a coalition of more than 20 other states and Washington to challenge the executive order in federal court. And Shapiro, who is up for re-election this year and is considered a likely presidential candidate in 2028, boasted in an April 3 social media post that he “won Trump and his allies 43-0 in 2020.”
According to a December 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center, mail ballot use increased sharply in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its use has steadily declined since then. But Pew found that 35% of American voters used mail-in voting in that presidential election, and of that 26% supported Republican candidates.
Trump’s executive order is not about voting or how you vote. It’s up to him to decide whether he wants you to vote or not. More Republicans need to speak out about how that violates the Constitution.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s National Voter List Violates the Constitution | Opinion