It’s not just you. It really is impossible to keep track of all the political news. But one thing is pretty reliable: When Donald Trump has a bad week, he will use social media to make a presidential announcement.
Last week was one of those bad weeks. President Vladimir Putin of Russia landed in America as if he had V.I.P. tickets to a private Taylor Swift meet-and-greet. He made no concessions in Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Trump belatedly realized that he had been played. Plus, that Jeffrey Epstein thing just won’t go away.
So, true to form, the president took to social media on Monday and announced that he would issue an executive order banning mail-in voting in time for the midterm elections. Like a lot of things Trump says, it is hard to know if we should be storming the streets to protest or keeping our eyes on the other things going on — Epstein! Russia! War! Tariffs! ICE!
Just how do we know which of Trump’s moves matters?
We don’t.
But despite his record-low approval ratings, Trump seems bullish on the G.O.P.’s chances in the midterms. What makes him so confident? Is it because this Supreme Court enables his policy agenda? Or is it because he surrounds himself with sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear? Or maybe he thinks he knows something about the midterm electoral math that the rest of us don’t.
Patterns matter. And a pattern is starting to emerge around the midterms.
Trump does not have a theory of political change in the traditional sense, but his second-term executive orders do tell a political story. One, signed in March, telegraphed the administration’s intention to “protect the integrity of American elections.” That order embodies the right’s lie that elections have been “stolen” in this country, and it is a clear example of how Project 2025 has made prosecuting so-called election fraud a policy objective.
Trump’s latest, a missive on mail-in voting, is just moving that same ball forward. Whether the executive order ever materializes or is enacted, it matters that when the president reaches for a strategic distraction, he chooses one that matches Project 2025’s goals. If you want the CliffsNotes version of America, you can just read Project 2025, which is a blueprint for how to codify conservative rule in this country until time immemorial. Maybe you cannot bear to read more than a summary. You can still see its fingerprints in these kinds of patterns.
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The post How to Make Sense of Trump’s Voting Rights Chaos appeared first on New York Times.
