Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back—and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team.

A year ago, I warned that President Donald Trump was poised to marshal federal government forces to subvert the 2026 midterm elections, just as he attempted to do after losing the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Joe Biden. True to form, Trump and his administration have since been relentless in attacking election integrity. He directed the United States Postal Service to issue a rule that would have completely shut down mail balloting nationwide for the 2026 midterm elections. His former national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, ordered government seizure of Dominion voting machines from Puerto Rico in an apparent gambit to concoct a new election-rigging conspiracy theory. Trump’s Department of Justice seized Fulton County, Georgia’s 2020 presidential election ballots, sued 30 states and D.C. to obtain their unredacted lists of voter information, and threatened election officials with federal prosecution if they did not hunt for voter fraud to the administration’s satisfaction.

Our guardrails have held so far, dooming most of these efforts, but the most dangerous period for election integrity is yet to come. Concrete steps in these final weeks can ensure a fair and safe November election and peaceful transition of power in Congress, if the polls are accurate about the direction of the nation’s voters.

My earlier analysis pointed to the three bulwarks against attempted election subversion—the state and local governments that administer elections, the courts that protect rights, and the American people who are democracy’s ultimate safeguard. Each played a role in checking some of Trump’s attempted meddling in the past year. For example, when the Department of Homeland Security made unsupported claims that states were allowing thousands of noncitizens to remain on their voting rolls, state and local election administrators demanded evidence. After Nevada got the data and investigated, the DHS list of 16,000 potentially ineligible Nevada voters fell to zero.

Federal district courts, an appeals court, and the United States Supreme Court stopped USPS’s efforts to impose its mail-ballot rules before the system was ready to be deployed; a........

© Slate