Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.Election watchers are buzzing about President Donald Trump’s speech to the nation on Thursday night — but so far, no one has any concrete idea what he’s going to say.The White House has scheduled a rare primetime address for Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said the address would touch on multiple subjects but include a “very big announcement” about election security. “It’s really, really big news,” he said. “Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”Trump, of course, has said many things about the integrity of U.S. elections, few of them true. He has claimed repeatedly that voter fraud is rampant and cost him the 2020 election, despite numerous investigations and audits that have found no evidence of that.Nevertheless, since Trump retook office last year, his administration has reopened investigations into that election on several fronts: The FBI seized ballots from an election office in Fulton County, Georgia; subpoenaed records from a partisan audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona; and has questioned election officials in Wisconsin. FBI Director Kash Patel said in April that the bureau would “soon” be making arrests in connection with the 2020 election, but those have yet to materialize.The Department of Homeland Security is also investigating potential noncitizens on the voter rolls in Michigan, Texas, and other states. The Department of Justice recently sent letters to all 50 states warning election officials could be prosecuted if they knowingly keep noncitizens on the rolls. The administration has also launched investigations into the security of voting machines. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence last year procured voting machines from Puerto Rico and probed them for security risks. Reuters reported the resulting report found vulnerabilities, such as machines running outdated software, but did not find evidence of vote manipulation. Some reporting suggests Trump’s speech will focus on those alleged vulnerabilities. Reuters and MS NOW have reported that Trump will present newly declassified intelligence about voting machines and attempts at foreign interference in U.S. elections. A 2021 report from the Justice and Homeland Security departments found “no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes” in the 2020 election. A National Intelligence Council report declassified in 2021 also found “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”The speech also comes exactly one week after Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the agency responsible for certifying voting machines to voluntary federal guidelines that most states rely on. Reuters subsequently reported that Trump administration officials were frustrated with the commissioners’ inaction on voting machines and had been looking for ways to circumvent the agency for months.For now, the White House is staying tight-lipped. “As usual, anonymous sources are speculating about what President Trump will say during his speech on Thursday evening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The truth is, nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in.”One key question is whether Trump will actually announce a new policy or action. Preparations for the 2026 midterms are already well underway, and election officials would likely not be able to implement any major new policies in time. Even if Trump does announce a new policy, he may not have the legal authority to order it. He has already issued two executive orders attempting to overhaul U.S. election procedures, including one last year that ordered the EAC to ban voting machines that use barcodes or QR codes for counting, with limited exceptions for voters with disabilities. But courts have blocked all their major provisions on the grounds that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally change election law. Instead, the Constitution delegates election rule-making to state legislatures and Congress.Trump has repeatedly pressured Congress to enact his preferred election policies by passing the SAVE America Act and similar legislation, but they do not have enough support in the Senate to pass. It’s possible that a goal of Trump’s speech is primarily to ratchet up that pressure. When Newsmax asked him to give a preview of the speech in an interview on Monday, Trump responded by saying, “We gotta have voter ID, we gotta have proof of citizenship” — two provisions of the SAVE America Act — “and we have to do something about the mail-in ballots, which are just corrupt, crooked, and should not be allowed.”Even if Trump does not try to use the speech to unveil new election policies, he could still use it to undermine the 2026 elections by sowing doubt about the legitimacy of U.S. elections in general. Election experts have decried Trump’s fearmongering around elections as attempts to intimidate election officials and lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable result.Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.
