Trump’s Election Rule Changes Are Getting Blocked Everywhere. Now He’s Threatening Funding.

Trump’s effort to reshape how American elections are run has run into courts, Republican senators, and state officials all at once. With the 2026 midterms approaching, the pushback has turned into something close to a full blockade.

Now the administration is trying a new angle: money.

What the Executive Order Does

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to pursue tighter voter eligibility standards and changes to mail-ballot procedures. The administration framed it as an election security measure. Critics, including Democratic-led states and voting rights organizations, argued the order exceeded presidential authority.

Under the Constitution, states and Congress control most election rules. The White House doesn’t get to unilaterally rewrite them.

What’s Been Blocked

Courts have moved quickly. A federal judge blocked the use of a revamped immigration database for voter-roll checks after finding problems with privacy protections and data reliability. It’s part of a wider pattern of federal overreach that courts have consistently pushed back on — including Trump’s attempt to control Kennedy Center programming, which also ended in reversal. The Department of Justice has had nine of its election-related cases dismissed, all brought against states that refused to hand over voter-roll data.

The ACLU has challenged the executive order’s restrictions on mail-in ballots in federal court.

Multiple legal challenges are either active or pending. The administration has not won a clean court victory on this issue.

Republican Senators Aren’t Cooperating Either

The Washington Post reported this week that Trump has “dug in” on changing midterm election rules despite Republican senators rebuffing him. The Save America Act, which would have put some of these changes into law, appears to have died in Congress.

Losing the bill matters because executive orders are limited. For the changes to stick past a potential future administration, they’d need to be codified in law. Congress isn’t delivering that.

The New Tactic: Grant Funding

With courts blocking the legal routes and Congress not cooperating, the administration is now considering a different lever: withholding federal grant funding from states that don’t comply with its election-security demands.

The Department of Homeland Security said officials are reviewing whether to use grant money as use to “advance core national security priorities,” which the administration includes election changes under.

Democratic-led states are already preparing legal challenges to that approach. Using grant funding as a coercive tool to override state election authority has its own constitutional problems, and state attorneys general have made clear they won’t comply quietly.

Why This Is Happening Now

The 2026 midterms are close enough that the window for implementing major changes to how elections run is narrowing fast. States need time to adjust voting systems, train poll workers, and print materials. Every month of legal uncertainty makes it harder to implement anything even if courts eventually allowed it.

Democratic states are moving quickly to lock in their existing systems before any federal mandate could take effect. The question of what the federal government can and can’t mandate on states came up earlier this summer too, when Trump tried to eliminate Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Several have passed or are considering legislation that explicitly preserves their current mail-ballot and voter-registration rules.

Where It Stands

The administration’s push has produced no durable wins. The executive order is being litigated. Congress didn’t pass a backup bill. Nine DOJ cases were dismissed. The courts blocked the immigration database play.

Now there’s a funding threat that will almost certainly face its own legal challenge the moment it’s actually enforced.

The fight is still going, but the administration has fewer options today than it did six months ago.

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