14/ And thanks to Matt Rota and Henrike Lendowski for the illustrations and animations.

Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections When Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held. But if faced with the same tests today, those barriers — and people who held the line — would l...

13/ Read the full story here: www.propublica.org/article/trum...

12/ Much of what we report is new, including:

Details about how close guardrails came to breaking in 2020.
What election deniers have been doing in gov. positions.
How the FBI raid to seize 2020 election materials in GA came about.

11/ The Trump administration — including the White House, DHS and DOJ — maintains its actions are aimed at making U.S. elections more secure, and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them. It says its actions are within the law.

10/ “Our election system withstood” Trump’s “attacks following the 2020 election,” said Dem. Sen. Alex Padilla, @padilla.senate.gov te.gov. “But this will be an even tougher test, with more election deniers having access to federal power than ever before.”

Trump says Republicans should ‘nationalize’ elections The comments come less than a week after the FBI raided an elections facility in Georgia.

9/ These new officials could influence how Trump reacts to the upcoming midterms as polling shows Republicans are approaching what could be a significant electoral loss and Trump has said that Republicans need “to take over” the midterms.

tinyurl.com/2s3aez28

FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is “Dangerous,” Experts Warn The search warrant, which sought 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls from Fulton County, marked what experts described as a significant escalation in President Donald ...

8/ Once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers, which they’ve already used to push forward actions that critics say amount to partisan interference. Experts say 2026 will serve as an unprecedented stress test of the integrity of American elections.

www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...

Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms The meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of electi...

7/ Experts warn that these hirings show the movement has merged with the federal government.

www.propublica.org/article/elec...

She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security. Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts are concerned.

6/ He hired around two dozen appointees to replace them, including many from the election denial movement.

Ten helped try to overturn the 2020 vote.

The rest are associates of such people.

www.propublica.org/article/heat...

5/ Soon after assuming power for a second time, Trump got rid of essentially all 75 people or positions that had acted as guardrails during the 2020 election.

4/ But if faced with the same tests today, those barriers — and people who held the line — would largely be missing.

Building the “Big Lie”: Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth Internal emails and interviews with key participants reveal for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the rigged election theory touted evidence they knew to be disproven, disputed o...

3/ When Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held – barely.

www.propublica.org/article/big-...

Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections When Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held. But if faced with the same tests today, those barriers — and people who held the line — would l...

2/ I’ve been reporting this for months with the great @jenafifield.bsky.social for @propublica.org, with help from @williamturton.bsky.social, @mrsimon22.bsky.social, and Misty Harris. This is what we found.

🧵👇

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

EXCLUSIVE: Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has been wielding its vast power to transform the midterm elections.

This is the untold story of Trump’s efforts to, as he has called it, “take over” the midterms.

Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections When Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held. But if faced with the same tests today, those barriers — and people who held the line — would l...

MUST READ with a lot of new info: Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections, by @dougbockclark.bsky.social @jenafifield.bsky.social

Fair Contract Now for ProPublica Guild We, the workers of ProPublica, provide our readers with deeply researched, unbiased news that holds power to account. This work is more important now than ever, but our staff can’t properly contribute...

Good afternoon! All day today my colleagues and I will be on STRIKE. You can help us send a message! Please do not visit ProPublica's website and tell management to give us a fair contract so we can get back to work: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

This DHS Official Oversees the Security of Federal Elections. He Wants to Ban Voting Machines. David Harvilicz, who co-founded a firm with a 2020 election denier, oversees voting machine security for the Department of Homeland Security while the Trump administration is relitigating the presiden...

EXCLUSIVE: Top Department of Homeland Security official David Harvilicz has repeatedly questioned the validity of Democratic victories at the ballot box and pushed for Republicans to overhaul electoral systems to their advantage.

www.propublica.org/article/davi...

Toner Prizes The Toner Prizes for Excellence in Political Reporting recognize the best U.S. national or local political reporting in any medium or on any platform—print, broadcast or online.

Honored that my reporting is a finalist for the 2026 Toner Award for Excellence in National Political Reporting. Thanks to all the ProPublicans and sources who supported it this last year: newhouse.syracuse.edu/centers/robi...

ABA names 2026 finalists for Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts WASHINGTON, March 11, 2026 —The American Bar Association today announced the 31 finalists for the 2026 Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts, which recognize outstanding work that fosters the Ame...

Honored that my reporting is a finalist for the 2026 ABA Silver Gavel Award: www.americanbar.org/news/abanews...

South Carolina Hospitals Aren’t Required to Disclose Measles-Related Admissions. That Leaves Doctors in the Dark. Physicians across South Carolina, home to the largest measles outbreak in decades, are advising patients without the benefit of real-time data on hospitalizations due to measles-related pneumonia, bra...

A bill sponsored by several state reps seeks to prevent hospitals and doctors from questioning or interfering “in any manner” with a patient’s right to refuse treatments or vaccines.

South Carolina hospitals aren't required to disclose measles-related admissions @jenniferberryhawes.bsky.social

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What Meetings Among Trump Lawyers Reveal About the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia The federal prosecutor from Missouri, who is overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Georgia, had several meetings set up with top administration lawyers last fall to discuss election integr...

11/ Read on for the full story of how a small, interconnected group of Trump administration lawyers from Missouri played a behind-the-scenes role in the raid in Georgia…

www.propublica.org/article/thom...

10/ Albus, Martin, Olsen, the FBI, DOJ, and the White House all did not respond to requests for comment or detailed lists of questions.

9/ Emails reviewed by ProPublica show that Albus and Martin have known each other since at least 2007.

In the email exchange, Albus put in a good word for a St. Louis lawyer who was a finalist for an appellate court judgeship. That candidate was ultimately selected.

8/ Under Trump, senior roles across the White House, DOJ and FBI have increasingly been filled by a small, interconnected group of Missouri lawyers with longstanding ties to one another.

Albus is part of that group.

Why Bondi Chose a Missouri Prosecutor for a Georgia Election Case “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

7/ Albus, a U.S. Attorney in Missouri, was an unusual choice to investigate events in GA.

Former U.S. attorneys from both parties said it was rare for a prosecutor from one region to take on cases in other states or be granted nationwide authority.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is “Dangerous,” Experts Warn The search warrant, which sought 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls from Fulton County, marked what experts described as a significant escalation in President Donald ...

6/ The meetings reveal new details about the length of the preparations for, and people involved in, the Jan. FBI raid on Fulton County, which election and legal experts told ProPublica was a significant escalation in Trump’s breaking of democratic norms.

www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...

The Conservative Researcher Being Linked to the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia Kevin Moncla has tried repeatedly to prove that the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, was tainted by fraud. While state election overseers have rejected his claims, his work may be fueling the fede...

5/ Olsen and Albus also later spoke to Kevin Moncla, a conservative researcher whose largely discredited claims are cited in the affidavit used to authorize the Fulton County raid.

www.propublica.org/article/kevi...

A rift between Trump’s favorite lawyers exposes a broader MAGA divide in the administration | CNN Politics A rift between two of President Donald Trump’s favorite prosecutors came to a head at the start of the year, when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal lawyer, removed ...

4/ Another was Ed Martin, a DOJ lawyer who until recently led a group investigating what the president has described as its “weaponization” against him, according to the source.

www.cnn.com/2026/02/07/p...

3/ One was Kurt Olsen, the White House lawyer tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election, who has been sanctioned in court for making false claims about voting machines in Arizona.

www.dailyjournal.com/article/3872...