WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump questioned the integrity of U.S. elections ahead of the midterms, repeating false claims about the 2020 election and alleging, without evidence, that China interfered in the vote in a July 16 speech to the nation. Trump, who has long baselessly claimed his 2020 election loss was rigged, introduced a trove of declassified documents in a push to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections less than four months before the November midterm elections. “Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly,” Trump said from the East Room of the White House.
Trump claimed the so-called “deep state” within the government during his first term concealed intelligence showing China’s interference during the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections. “They fought like hell not to have it ‒ Donald Trump to win ‒ and for good reason,” Trump said, contradicting prior intelligence assessments that China did not try to interfere with the 2020 election. In an extraordinary allegation, Trump said Americans have for years been “blatantly lied to” by the government about the security of election infrastructure including voting machines and ballot-counting systems. He said U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure. “They’re vulnerable and they’re easily compromised, and people within our government knew that,” Trump said, adding that “our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attacks.”
Trump also said the Department of Homeland Security has identified 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.
Trump used his long list of election claims ‒ which were not immediately verifiable ‒ to urge Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would overhaul voting in federal elections.
In the November midterms, Republicans face the possibility of losing control of at least one chamber of Congress due to Trump’s low poll ratings and the difficulty the party holding the White House has historically faced in midterm elections.
Since his 2024 reelection, Trump has worked to gain unprecedented federal control of elections through a series of moves, including firing key leaders of the federal Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan panel that helps local election officials administer elections.
Follow along below for more details on Trump’s claims, reactions and other related news.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said President Donald Trump’s primetime speech Thursday seems to be the “ceremonial kickoff” campaign to interfere in the crucial midterm elections come November.
The senator’s critical comments came after the president introduced a litany of declassified documents in an attempt to sow doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections, with the midterms less than four months away.
Whitehouse said Trump is losing independent voters, two years after the president fared well with the group in his reelection victory.
“Trump has badly lost independent voters, even MAGA is disheartened,” Whitehouse said in a written statement. “(Trump) is failing and unpopular, and he’s dragging his party down with him in the midterms.”
The lawmaker said Trump was trying to use the powers of his office to “taint an American election, backed by his coterie of creepy billionaires.”
However, Whitehouse said that his colleagues “will be ready” to defend Americans’ right to vote.
“We have systems to protect the vote and lawyers to defend those systems,” Whitehouse said. “The important thing right now is for the public to see and understand what this lawless and increasingly unhinged president is trying to do.”
Trump-backed GOP Senate candidate thinks Americans should be ‘alarmed’
Terry Collins
Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, who’s also the state’s Republican Senate candidate, said on social media Thursday that Americans should be “alarmed” by their enemies’ attempts to prevent secure elections, echoing sentiments in a speech made by President Donald Trump.
“Our right to free and secure elections should be protected relentlessly, and every American should be alarmed by our enemies’ ability to disrupt our elections and jeopardize our right to vote,” Collins said in a post on X. “Eighty-three percent of Americans support voter ID, and there is no time more important than now to pass the SAVE America Act and safeguard democracy.”
Collins, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump, handily won his GOP Senate primary race last month. Collins will challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Trump critic, in the general election on Nov 3.
U.S. election system is decentralized and that’s a good thing, expert says
Sarah D. Wire
President Donald Trump repeatedly spoke Thursday night of the country’s election infrastructure as a monolithic thing.
“Put together these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it,” he said. “It is not defensible.”
Trump has worked through executive actions in his second term to gain unprecedented control of election administration, saying his moves are necessary to prevent cheating and fraud.
But election experts stress that the Constitution grants states authority over running elections, which has created a patchwork of different systems that uphold similar standards, like requiring paper ballots that can be hand-counted during audits, while being tailored to the community.
That decentralization makes large scale fraud incredibly difficult, said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a non-partisan think tank.
“The central action is still the state and local governments that are administering elections openly in ways that are very openly and verifiably and in bipartisan ways, you know. And all of this can be, and is, regularly audited, reviewed, witnessed,” she said.
State and local governments administer elections “very openly and verifiably and in bipartisan ways … and all of this can be, and is, regularly audited, reviewed, witnessed,” she said.
“The decentralization of our elections, and the paper trail that exists for all of our votes, and the variety of methods by which Americans can vote are all guardrails.”
Trump says states where China hacked election data will be notified
Joey Garrison
Trump said his administration is in the process of notifying states that had election data compromised by China in the 2020 election.
Yet surprisingly, Trump did not single out Georgia at any point in his remarks. The FBI this year opened an investigation into Georgia’s 2020 election results.
“We’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected, so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again,” Trump said.
Trump also said his administration is reaching out to governors, U.S. senators and members of Congress that have “potential issues” with cyber vulnerabilities with the election systems in their states. “If you look at voting today, it’s im such bad shape in so many states, and we are committing to fix it,” Trump said.
The president said the Department of Homeland Security is set to notify every state about noncitizens who are registered to vote in their states.
‘The President lies’: Nevada officials rebuke Trump’s voter statements
James Powel
LAS VEGAS – Nevada officials swiftly rebuked statements made by President Trump during the speech.
Trump stated that the Department of Homeland Security identified 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections. Nevada is one of four states where DHS said that noncitizens were found on voter rolls, according to a draft news release reported on by Politico.
“Today’s announcement from the President and Department of Homeland Security is the latest chapter in a predictable playbook crafted intentionally to undermine faith in our elections,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said in a news release. “As Nevada’s Chief Elections Officer, it’s my job to call balls and strikes – so when the President lies, I am obligated to call him out.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat running for governor against incumbent Republican Joe Lombardo, echoed Aguilar in a news release issued after the speech.
“What’s really happening here is clear. President Trump is trying to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections to illegally expand his own power over our state’s right to administer elections as enshrined in the Constitution,” Ford said.
USA TODAY has reached out to Lombardo for comment.
California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are the other states mentioned in the draft release, according to Politico.
Hakeem Jeffries calls Donald Trump an ‘unhinged … failed president’
Terry Collins
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took to social media, calling President Donald Trump “unhinged” after the president’s primetime speech Thursday, in which Trump warned that U.S. elections are vulnerable to foreign interference in an effort to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections as the crucial midterm elections approach in less than four months.
“Donald Trump is a feeble, unhinged conspiracy-peddling 80-year-old failed President,” Jeffries said in a post on X. “The economy is a disaster under this guy and the American people know it.
“Pathetic,” Jeffries, the Democratic caucus leader, concluded.
From China meddling to election machine vulnerabilities, a look at highlights of Trump’s address
Josh Meyer
President Donald Trump touched on a wide array of issues in his speech July 16, from accusing China of meddling in U.S. elections to defeat him to calling out significant domestic election vulnerabilities.
Here are the highlights of what Trump said in his primetime address, based on what the president said are classified U.S. intelligence documents he has ordered declassified:
China’s election meddling and cover-up
- China tried to undermine the 2020 election in myriad ways, including compromising U.S. voter data, with 220 million voter files stolen, and clandestinely influencing U.S. business leaders and journalists.
- U.S. in raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020 showed China’s attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.
U.S. intelligence agencies’ cover-ups
- U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA covered up information about China’s efforts and intentions to undermine Trump’s political fortunes, including suppressing and downplaying the extent of its actions.
- Significant CIA and National Security Agency reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of presidential briefings.
Vulnerabilities in election infrastructure
- The U.S. election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines, is easily compromised – and has been compromised. Centralized election-related data repositories are most vulnerable to exploitation.
- Intelligence assessments show that adversaries, including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea can compromise U.S. election infrastructure.
Venezuela
- The CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot to digitally rig elections in favor of the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela.
Cover-up of fraud and noncitizen voters at the state level
Sen. Warner: Trump is ‘trying to undermine our confidence in our system’
Terry Collins
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said President Donald Trump’s speech Thursday was an attempt to undermine the nation’s election integrity.
“As an American, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed that the President of the United States tried to speak to the whole nation with a whole series of falsehoods, accusations, I believe, aimed at trying to undermine confidence in our system,” Warner told MS NOW talk show host Jen Psaki.
The senator said Trump’s comments come as a prelude because if America has a “free and fair election in 2026,” he and his allies will lose the midterm election in “a dramatic fashion.”
Warner said this is a time when Americans have to come together to protect their right to vote.
“If we simply blow this off as another Donald Trump rant, we do that at our own peril,” Warner said.
Warner said that in the past 10 years, his committee, in a bipartisan manner, has reviewed and investigated all of the allegations the president brought up.
“The irony of all of this is most of the accusations he’s making about 2018 and 2020, Donald Trump’s appointees were in charge of the intelligence community,” Warner said. “Why didn’t they find any of these so-called allegations?”
Warner urged his Republican colleagues, if they have any dignity, to speak up and “tell the truth.”
Trump calls for SAVE America Act passage
James Powel and Zachary Schermele
President Trump called for the passage of the SAVE America Act, the voting restrictions bill that has stalled in Congress.
“How easy is that to do, unless you want to cheat,” Trump said. “The only reason you wouldn’t do it is if you want to cheat.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson is attempting to pass a version of the bill through the budget process. However, it’s not clear that it has the votes to pass in the Senate.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is retiring, previously said he’d refuse to vote for the larger budget bill if it includes elements of SAVE. “It’s a waste of time, and it’s an exercise in futility,” he said.
