Inasmuch as it happens, Democrats are going to have a much harder time cheating during this year’s midterm elections, compliments of President Trump.The Trump administration is deploying approximately 1,000 Department of Justice election monitors for November’s midterm elections — nearly quadrupling the 268 deployed in 2022 and exceeding the 714 sent in 2024. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced the surge, confirming the monitors will fan out nationwide to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act and federal election laws.
This is the election integrity enforcement operation that the SAVE America Act was designed to complement — and that Democrats have spent every available moment trying to prevent.
The deployment matters enormously in the context of what the Trump administration has documented over the past year. New Jersey admitted 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote, with nearly 400 casting ballots. Virginia found 6,531 admitted noncitizens on its rolls and agreed to pause their removal during the pre-election window. A British national pleaded guilty in Texas to voting in five American elections over twelve years. Arizona’s 2020 voter database was hacked by someone who confessed to the FBI and walked free. Minnesota’s vouching system was caught on hidden camera confirming that virtually anyone can vote with a personal guarantee. Milwaukee’s central count machine failed in three consecutive elections.
A thousand federal eyes on polling places, ballot counting operations, and election procedures won’t fix all of that — especially when Democratic blue states are still fighting in court to block the administration’s voter roll verification orders. But it changes the calculation for anyone thinking about pushing the boundaries of what the law allows on Election Day.
The contrast with the administration’s legislative frustrations is sharp and worth acknowledging directly. The SAVE America Act — which would require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote, supported by 83 percent of Americans — stalled in the Senate because Republican holdouts refused to end the filibuster. The Senate went on recess. The window to pass it before November grew tighter with every week of inaction.
What Harmeet Dhillon is doing is filling the enforcement gap that the Senate left open. You can’t get voter ID legislation passed? Deploy more election monitors. You can’t get voter roll verification signed into law? Send 1,000 federal officials to watch what happens in person. You can’t get blue state attorneys general to cooperate with federal data requests? Send your own people.
Every Democrat who filed a lawsuit to block the SAVE America Act, who refused to hand over voter roll data, who ran sanctuary city policies to shield noncitizens from immigration enforcement — every one of them now knows that 1,000 federal monitors will be watching what happens in November.
The Senate failed to act. The executive branch is acting anyway, with every tool at its disposal. That’s not the preferred outcome — the preferred outcome was legislation. But it’s better than doing nothing and allowing Democrats to play their games.