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Sometimes it’s the chaos, not the cruelty, that’s the point.

That certainly seems true of President Donald Trump’s second executive order on elections, issued on Tuesday. The order purports, among other things, to direct the United States Department of Homeland Security to create a list of all U.S. citizens over 18, to supply that list to states, and for the United States Postal Service to refuse to accept mailed in ballots from voters unless that voter’s name appears on a list of the state’s eligible voters that it has given USPS months before the election (a list which presumably the state would have to match with the DHS’s list, though that part—among many others!—is unclear).

The order will face multiple court challenges and likely will be found unconstitutional by courts. Even if courts did not intervene before November, the multiple rulemakings and new procedures for DHS, USPS, and state and local election officials envisioned by the order would be impossible to implement before November’s elections. Indeed, the order is so underwhelming that it suggests Trump’s real purpose was not its implementation but to create more confusion and litigation around elections, further undermining voter confidence in the integrity of American elections.

To understand the likely fate of this new executive order, we should begin with his first executive order on elections, issued in March 2025. That order, like the new one, was marketed as a means for the president to protect the integrity of federal elections by changing federal election rules. Among other things, the first order purported to direct an independent federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, to enact new rules requiring that........

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