The MAGA and Musk Fever Dream to End Democracy
Elon’s in. Project 2025 is moving forward. And Trump has told us the plan out loud.
“In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” That’s what Donald Trump told a crowd in 2024.
If we didn’t know what he meant then, we do now. One of his latest executive orders is a lawless power grab to seize control of elections and silence voters.
The order reads like a MAGA fever dream – giving unprecedented and likely unlawful powers to the president, and bulldozing our Constitution.
It requires showing documents like passports or Real IDs to use the federal voter registration form – things many don’t have or would have to pay for – despite courts ruling this is illegal. Even conservative legal experts are calling it an unlawful overreach.
This would impact at least 21 million eligible Americans’ voter registrations. With Black, Latino, rural, low-income, and naturalized voters most impacted – folks who already face systemic voting barriers. New Hampshire lawmakers passed a similar citizenship-document law, and voters were turned away from a recent local election.
Giving Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) power to comb through state voter rolls may be the most dangerous part. Trump wants an unelected oligarch – with roots in apartheid South Africa – to help him decide who’s American enough to vote. DOGE’s weaponized incompetence is a recipe for mass database errors and thousands – maybe millions – of Americans’ voter registrations being wrongly canceled.
Here’s MAGA’s likely plan: DOGE stirs up chaos, then Trump points to the mess as proof of election law violations – and uses it to block eligible voters.
States that count mail ballots after Election Day could lose federal funds under Trump’s order. That means overseas and military ballots could be tossed – even if mailed on time. The newly-corrupted Justice Department is being told to enforce this gross and “bonkers” misinterpretation of federal law.
The DOJ was also told to prioritize investigations of votes that violate election law and Trump’s order proclaimed the agency has “failed to prioritize and devote sufficient resources” to stop voting by people who aren’t citizens. Data going back to 2002 from the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing group behind Project 2025) found just 85 examples. But facts don’t matter under the Project 2025 playbook.
Bypassing Congress and the Courts
This executive order is how Trump plans to get what Congress and the courts haven’t yet handed him: control over who gets to vote.
With a massive voter suppression bill up for discussion in the House Rules Committee this week, but facing steep odds in the US Senate, this order takes its most dangerous provisions and makes the documentation aspects worse. It echoes North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law – struck down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision” by choosing ID types they’re less likely to have.
This whole scheme reads like a follow-up to the infamous call where Trump demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” him 11,780 votes he didn’t earn. That call featured one of this order’s likely architects, Cleta Mitchell – who helped Trump plot to seize voting machines in 2020.
My organization, Fair Fight, is battling against similar MAGA lawlessness in Georgia right now. Republican legislators are pushing legislation at the last minute to restrict ballot access and give the unelected State Election Board, a government body that has become hyper-partisan, more influence over our voter rolls. After the Trump-endorsed majority on the board coordinated in secret with election-denier activists to create and pass rule changes that a judge called “unconstitutional,” Georgia’s MAGA Republicans are looking to reward them.
They’re hoping we’ll assume this is more Trump bluster. But we’ve learned the hard way since 2016: take Trump at his word. Even if the courts fully or partially block this order – and they likely will – the damage could already be done.
US economic growth is expected to slow, consumer sentiment is down 30% since November, and prices are expected to rise under Trump’s tariffs. While DOGE guts essential support, Trump’s MAGA lackeys want to cut taxes for the rich. The corruption is rampant, and we’ll be left holding the bag while Trump’s enablers in Congress and in the states, willing, opportunistic, and spineless alike, stand by and let it happen.
Time to Organize
We can’t sit by and count on the courts to save us. We are the check. That means speaking up, organizing, and showing up in local and state elections.
The Constitution is clear: Congress and the states run elections. MAGA knows it. That’s why Musk dumped massive donations behind the MAGA candidate in the fast-approaching and crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Demand that Congress do its job and rein in this rambling, maniacal wannabe king. Urge your governor not to comply. Push your election officials to stand up.
Autocracy thrives on isolation. So we all have to fight back, together. Loudly. Relentlessly. Because it’s our democracy – and we’re gonna fight like hell to save it.
Democrats have been winning special elections – in tough districts – and MAGA members of Congress are getting an earful at angry town halls across the country. The energy is real, and it’s ours to keep growing.
Want to protect your freedom? Start now: Show up at events. Spread credible info online and in real life. Support organizations filing legal challenges against Trump’s illegal overreach and Fair Fight, which is organizing locally, where elections take place. Remind your family and friends to check their registration status. Call your representatives – especially if they’re Republicans. Set a calendar reminder to keep the pressure on. Schedule it, then do it: send the email or make the call.
Autocracy thrives on isolation. So we all have to fight back, together. Loudly. Relentlessly. Because it’s our democracy – and we’re gonna fight like hell to save it.
Max Flugrath is the communications director at Fair Fight, a non-profit fighting for free and fair elections in Georgia and across the nation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
Check out more from Zeteo on Trump 2.0:
There is no solution to this issue that is coming from the Uniparty, regardless of which name it goes by. I am concerned by the machinations the Trump administration is doing, but coming from someone who thinks that the Democrats are any kind of a solution or antidote is... well that ship has sailed.
We need a robust, truly democratic party that has no affiliation whatsoever with either of the two names that the current Uniparty operates under.
Elon's going to fall over and smash his teeth on the ground.
Trump is going to fall also. I dont know which way but its inevitable that he will.
The ground swell will get him for one. No matter what he does , he is still a low IQ snake oil salesman. not a presidents bootlace, but a mafiosa style crim. and they always fall.
As will Putin. soon. so will Xi, Assad fell, then went to russia where Putin robbed and poisoned him, That was bad luck.
Netanyahu needs to pay for his war crimes.
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