The draft executive orders you aren't supposed to see

Behind the scenes, the infrastructure to challenge the 2026 midterms is already being built. Here is how we fight back.

Thursday night, the President gave a primetime address about the upcoming midterm elections. He did exactly what we’ve come to expect: he told the country the system can’t be trusted, suggested the results might need to be questioned, and positioned himself as the sole protector of the vote’s integrity. Framing his arguments to justify his demands, he stated, “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost”. He used these unsubstantiated claims to demand that Congress pass the SAVE America Act, a currently stalled voting bill that would be so burdensome that millions of legitimate voters would be denied ballots.

Of course, we’ve heard all of these arguments before. As someone who worked on the January 6th Select Committee and read the documents, the pattern is glaringly obvious.

What We Already Know

The committee’s final report documented a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election. As the election lies are repeated more feverishly from the White House, it’s worth repeating some of January 6th Committee’s proven facts:

• Trump advisers drafted an executive order that would have directed the military and federal agencies to seize voting machines across the country.

• While it was never signed, it was written, reviewed, and seriously considered by people inside the White House.

• The Eastman memos laid out a strategy to pressure Vice President Pence into refusing to count certified electoral votes from seven states.

• Officials made direct calls to state election workers demanding they “find” votes.

• Alternate slates of fake electors were organized and submitted to Congress and the National Archives.

Over sixty courts rejected the legal challenges, including judges appointed by Republicans. The system held in 2020 because individual people chose to follow the law under enormous pressure. The Vice President refused to fold, and state officials held the line.

The Fact that Can’t be Spoken

Thursday’s speech didn’t happen in a vacuum. Just yesterday, the President’s newly appointed Director of National Intelligence could not confirm in a Senate hearing that Joe Biden won the 2020 election — on the record, under oath, in 2026.

But he is certainly not the first, as innumerable confirmation hearings have demonstrated that — in this Administration — repeating the fact that Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election is unforgivable.

What this means in practice is that the Administration, much of Congress, one of our major political parties, and their media cheerleaders must operate in an alternate reality, in which history has been rewritten. Stranger still is that many of these same leaders prominently condemned the President’s election lies following the January 6, 2021 attacks.

Who Actually Protects Your Vote

While the political drumbeat gets louder, and fear and anxiety rises as people wonder who is defending the rule of law and protecting our voter freedoms, there is hope! Our strategic litigation partner Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is doing the serious, unglamorous work that matters.

• They helped pass the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which successfully closed the specific loophole the Eastman memos tried to get Vice President Pence to exploit.

• They blocked the President’s executive order that sought to implement the SAVE Act by presidential decree. It would have required American citizens to produce a passport (which are expensive and half the country doesn’t have one) or a certified birth certificate that matches their current name (many people don’t have easy access to this documentation, and married women who have changed their names are out of luck anyway).

• They sued and won in multiple states that, following the President’s demands, tried to illegally change their maps this year, despite it being in violation of the state constitution.

• They monitor Hatch Act violations throughout this election cycle.

• They defend election workers, whose expertise and integrity serve as the last line of defense when everything else gets loud.

• Among hundreds of other bold, brave legal actions in defense of democracy.

I’ve watched them do this work, and it matters far more than anything a politician from either party can say in response to the President’s speech. With the President’s speech all but guaranteeing the 2026 election will face unprecedented challenges, we must rush as much support to the current and coming litigation as possible!

What I’m Asking You to Do

Call your representatives. Ask them directly:

1️⃣ Will you commit to certifying the results of the 2026 midterm elections once your state certifies them?

2️⃣ Will you oppose any effort to use federal agencies, including the military, to interfere with counting or certification?

3️⃣ Will you protect the independence of state and local election officials?

You can get their numbers here:

Guide to Calling Your Elected Officials

These questions have obvious answers if you believe in the Constitution. The committee documented exactly what happens when officials choose not to answer them honestly.

Get your representatives on the record, and support Campaign Legal Center’s work. And remember: the plan to seize election machines wasn’t a fringe idea floated by someone on the outside. It was a draft executive order written inside the White House.

We can only image what’s been drafted this year, lying in wait for the moment that may challenge our Constitution and Country like never before.

But the January 6th Committee unveiled the playbook — it doesn’t take that active of an imagination to know what they’ll try to do, which means we can be ready. The question now is whether enough people will demand our representatives honor their oaths, support the litigation defending our freedoms, and spread the word that the only way to “keep our republic” is free and fair elections.