A Pattern, Not a Plot
From a new ProPublica investigation to executive orders, congressional fights, and court battles, recurring themes are emerging across how elections are governed.
On April 13, 2026, ProPublica published an investigation that added new detail to a question that has been quietly building for months: what has happened to the people inside government who were responsible for safeguarding American elections.
The reporting found that a previously undisclosed network of at least 75 federal officials who played roles in protecting the 2020 election has largely disappeared from government. Many were fired, reassigned, or left their positions. In their place, ProPublica identified a smaller group of Trump-aligned appointees in election-relevant roles, including some who had supported efforts to overturn the 2020 result.
That finding is significant on its own, yet it also lands in a broader landscape that has been taking shape across multiple headlines. Over time, stories about executive orders, staffing changes, congressional proposals, state-level election fights, and court cases have begun to point toward recurring themes about power, oversight, and control over the rules of democratic participation.
No single development explains the whole picture. Taken together, however, they suggest that similar pressures are appearing across several distinct arenas: personnel and institutional guardrails, executive action, Congress, the states, and the courts where many of these conflicts are ultimately resolved.
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What ProPublica Found
The Disappearance of an Election Protection Network
ProPublica’s investigation focuses on the federal infrastructure that existed, largely out of public view, to help protect elections. That network spans multiple agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
According to the reporting, nearly all of the officials connected to that effort are now gone from their roles. Some were dismissed. Others were reassigned or chose to leave. The result is not a single dramatic purge, but a broad hollowing out of personnel tied to election protection and oversight.
The investigation also found that a number of election-relevant positions are now held by appointees aligned with Trump’s claims about the 2020 election. Some of those individuals were directly involved in efforts to challenge or overturn the certified results.
It is not only about who has left, but also about who has taken their place. Institutions are shaped both by the people who remain and by the guardrails that constrain them. When experienced officials and internal watchdogs disappear, and when replacements bring a different set of assumptions about past elections, the character of those institutions can change in ways that are difficult to measure in a single headline.
Our own prior reporting has touched on related questions, from the appointment of figures such as Heather Honey to election-related roles, to the weakening or removal of inspectors general who historically served as independent oversight within federal agencies. ProPublica adds substantial new reporting to that same area of concern, grounding those questions in a clearer picture of how many people have left and how broadly those changes extend.
See our previous reporting here:
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Executive Action
Redefining “Integrity” from the Top
Personnel changes do not occur in a vacuum. They exist alongside a series of executive actions that have sought to define what “election integrity” means and how it should be enforced.
On March 25, 2025, the administration issued an executive order titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections. A year later, on March 31, 2026, a second order, Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections, reinforced and expanded similar themes. Both orders emphasized citizenship verification, federal involvement in election systems, and concerns about voting procedures such as mail-in ballots.
See our reporting here:
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These directives do more than signal priorities. They shape how federal agencies approach election-related work, what kinds of policies are pursued, and how the language of “integrity” is applied in practice. They also establish a framework that can be carried out by the people inside those agencies, which returns to the question raised by ProPublica about who those people now are.
Some of these executive actions have already prompted legal challenges, underscoring that they are not simply rhetorical. They are part of an ongoing effort to define the federal government’s role in elections, an area that has historically been shared with the states.
Congress
Legislating the Rules of Participation
Alongside executive action, election policy is also being contested in Congress, where proposals can translate into binding federal law.
The most prominent current example is the SAVE Act, a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections. The measure has become a central focus of the administration’s legislative agenda. Trump has publicly pressured lawmakers to pass it and has tied its passage to other legislative priorities.
The bill has already moved through the House of Representatives and faces a more uncertain path in the Senate, where procedural hurdles such as the filibuster remain significant. Regardless of its ultimate fate, the SAVE Act illustrates that election-related debates are not confined to executive messaging. They are also unfolding through the formal lawmaking process.
See some of our SAVE Act reporting here:
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Statutory changes can have lasting effects. While executive actions can be reversed by future administrations, legislation can reshape the baseline rules governing elections in more durable ways.
The States
Maps, Laws, and the Ground-Level Rules of Elections
Much of the real work of running elections happens at the state level, and that is where some of the most consequential changes are taking place.
One visible front is mid-decade redistricting. In several states, efforts to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms have intensified, with both parties seeking an advantage where they have the authority to do so. Redistricting is not new. However, the scale and timing of these efforts have drawn attention because they occur outside the usual post-census cycle.
See some of our reporting here:
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At the same time, state legislatures continue to introduce and pass a steady stream of election-related bills. The National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks these developments, has documented ongoing activity across issues such as absentee voting, ballot processing timelines, voter identification requirements, and voter registration systems.
Taken together, these developments show that debates over elections are not only about federal policy or national narratives. They are also about the specific rules and structures that govern how votes are cast, counted, and translated into representation at the state level.
The Courts
Where the Conflicts Converge
The courts come last in this structure not because they matter less, but because they are so often where the consequences of the other arenas are tested.
A recent example is the Supreme Court case involving Mississippi’s mail-in ballot rules, which concerns whether ballots received after Election Day can be counted if they were postmarked on time. The case has implications beyond a single state, as similar provisions exist elsewhere.
See our reporting on this case here:
Redistricting disputes have also reached the courts, with litigation over congressional maps in states such as California and New York highlighting how judicial decisions can shape the political landscape. In other instances, state courts have intervened directly in election administration, as seen in cases involving ballot handling and investigations into alleged irregularities.
See our reporting on Louisiana v Callais redistricting here:
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These cases differ in their specifics. However, they share a common feature. They are downstream of decisions made in the other arenas. Executive actions invite legal challenges. State laws and redistricting plans are contested. Even personnel changes can influence how aggressively governments pursue or defend these cases.
The courts are where those threads meet, and where their implications become most concrete.
A Pattern, Not a Plot
It is possible to look at each of these developments in isolation. An executive order can be read as a policy statement. A staffing change can be seen as routine turnover. A redistricting fight can be framed as partisan politics as usual. A court case can be treated as a technical legal dispute.
Yet when these stories are placed side by side, certain themes begin to recur. Across multiple institutions, questions keep resurfacing about who sets election rules, who enforces them, what guardrails remain in place, and how disputes are resolved.
ProPublica’s investigation does not collapse these threads into a single explanation. It does something more useful. It provides new reporting that makes the broader pattern easier to see.
The point is not that every development is part of one coordinated effort. It is that they are not isolated. Across executive action, institutional staffing, congressional proposals, state-level policymaking, and the courts, the same pressure points keep appearing.
And that, in itself, is worth paying attention to.
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Sources:
Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections, ProPublica, April 13, 2026
Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, The White House, March 25, 2025
Trump ties DHS funding deal to approval of voter bill, Reuters, March 23, 2026
How Trump’s long-shot voting bill could hurt his own supporters, Reuters, March 17, 2026
Mid-Decade Redistricting, National Conference of State Legislatures
State Elections Legislation Database, National Conference of State Legislatures
US Supreme Court allows pro-Democratic California voting map, Reuters, February 4, 2026
US Supreme Court backs pro-Republican NY congressional district map, Reuters, March 2, 2026
The SAVE America Act Is the Most Popular Election Reform in Decades, The White House, March 12, 2026
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