Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) accused President Trump of attempting to undermine democratic elections on June 28, 2026, tying the criticism to the administration’s ongoing push for new voting restrictions ahead of the midterms. “Unfortunately, we have a president who does not believe in democracy,” Sanders wrote on X. “Rather than trying to defend his dismal record in the coming election, he wants to change the rules & make it harder for people to vote. NO, we will not allow an authoritarian to undermine American democracy.”
What Trump Has Been Pushing
Sanders’s post comes amid sustained White House pressure on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would prohibit states from accepting voter registration applications for federal elections “unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.” Citizenship is already required to register to vote in the United States, and states already maintain systems to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls; the Bipartisan Policy Center and other election researchers have found that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is extremely rare. NPR reported that Trump has pushed what experts described as a “maximalist version” of the bill, at points suggesting it should also include restrictions on voting by mail and provisions related to transgender athletes in sports — additions that have complicated the bill’s path through Congress, since even some conservatives have traditionally opposed federalizing election administration to this degree.
A Federal Court Has Already Ruled Against Part of Trump’s Approach
Separate from the stalled legislation, Trump has pursued elements of the same agenda through executive action, and those efforts have run into direct judicial pushback. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled on June 25 that Trump lacked the constitutional authority to regulate state elections in the way his March executive order attempted. That order had directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create a nationwide list of verified adult citizens, and called on the U.S. Postal Service to build a system accepting mail-in ballots only from voters on those preapproved lists. Talwani’s 37-page ruling found those provisions unconstitutional. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in response, “Trump will not be able to use the Postal Service to control which voters receive a mail ballot, and cannot use the DOJ to intimidate election officials into following his unlawful order. The Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Trump.”
This Was Not the First Such Ruling
The June 25 decision was the latest in a series of judicial defeats for a broader Trump effort to influence election administration that began with a separate executive order issued in March 2025. A federal judge permanently blocked key parts of that earlier order as well, after U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had already ruled in January that elements of it “cannot lawfully be implemented,” specifically those imposing new citizenship-verification requirements on voter registration. Kollar-Kotelly wrote at the time, “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the later ruling was “an important reminder to our president that he does not administer our elections.”
Why the Bill Has Stalled in the Senate
Despite Trump’s continued pressure, the SAVE America Act has not advanced past the House, where it passed narrowly. NPR reported that experts believe a narrower version focused specifically on requiring photo identification at polling places would have broad voter support and could have built political pressure on swing-state Democrats, but Trump’s insistence on the more expansive version, covering mail voting and unrelated social issues, has made the bill harder to pass even among some Republicans. NPR’s reporting also noted that Trump has separately said he believes voting should be “nationalized,” a position the network found “is not widely held at all” even within his own party.
Allegations of a More Drastic Motive
Some Democratic election officials have gone further than Sanders in characterizing the administration’s intentions. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, responding to an earlier version of Trump’s executive order, called it a “cheap substitute” for the SAVE Act that he did not believe could pass the Senate, and offered a starker interpretation of its purpose. “I genuinely believe that the Trump administration wants to cancel the 2026 elections so that he and his party can stay in power,” Fontes said, according to Democracy Docket. “And we have to fight like hell against that by every means available.”
Jocelyn Benson, a former Michigan secretary of state, offered a related warning to NPR about the broader strategy behind such efforts. “So much of the work to undermine democracy is about creating this narrative that democracy can’t be trusted so that even if you lose in court, people have lost so much faith in the system that they give up on it and walk away,” Benson said, adding that historically, “it’s when citizens lose faith in their democracy that democracies die.” She urged voters to reject that narrative and still turn out in November.
How Republicans Have Defended the Approach
Supporters of the citizenship-verification push have argued the measures are a matter of basic election integrity rather than suppression, framing voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements as commonsense safeguards that enjoy broad public support, including among many Democratic and minority voters in various polls. They argue that even though noncitizen voting is already illegal, requiring documentary proof closes a verification gap that makes the existing prohibition harder to enforce in practice.
Research cited in NPR’s reporting complicates the simplest version of that case, however: roughly one in 10 Americans could potentially have difficulty producing the specific documentation, such as a passport or birth certificate, that the SAVE America Act would require, a logistical hurdle that has fueled Democratic warnings about the bill’s effect on eligible voters who lack easy access to those records.
What Comes Next
The Trump administration has not said whether it will appeal Talwani’s ruling, and the SAVE America Act remains stalled in the Senate, where it lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. With the first ballots for the upcoming midterms beginning to go out, the legal and legislative fight over voter eligibility verification is expected to remain a central flashpoint through the remainder of the election cycle.
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and has long advocated for expanded voting access measures including automatic voter registration, did not specify in his post any new legislative or legal action he intends to pursue in response to the administration’s continued push.
Neither the White House nor congressional Republican leadership had issued a direct response to Sanders’s specific accusation as of publication.