Trump's Mail Voting Power Grab Is "Legally Hilarious" -- But Still Dangerous

President Donald Trump is testing how much election interference he can get away with, and his latest move reveals the playbook: issue legally absurd orders, lose in court, then use the chaos to spread misinformation and intimidate election officials.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order attempting to federalize mail voting. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a list of "approved" absentee voters and instructs the U.S. Postal Service not to mail requested ballots to anyone not on that list. It's a brazen attempt to override state election authorities -- and according to The Bulwark's Andrew Egger, it's "legally hilarious."

"The order has already drawn a plethora of major lawsuits, which are all but guaranteed swift success," Egger wrote Tuesday. The strategy has no basis in federal law and represents a "slapped-together usurpation of states' election authorities."

But winning in court misses the larger threat.

The Real Goal: Chaos and Intimidation

Trump failed to convince Congress to pass his SAVE America Act, which would have required proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote or vote by mail nationwide. So he's trying an end run through executive action -- not because he thinks it will survive legal scrutiny, but because the process itself serves his purposes.

"Trump keeps testing the waters of how much bullying of election officials he can get away with," Egger noted, pointing to the FBI's January raid on the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, as evidence of escalating intimidation tactics.

The pattern is clear: Trump issues an unconstitutional order, democracy advocates celebrate when it gets struck down, and meanwhile Trump uses the legal battle to spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and embolden supporters to harass election workers.

"It remains gospel in MAGA circles that Democrats fiendishly stole the 2020 election on behalf of Joe Biden," Egger wrote. That false narrative -- decisively debunked by Trump's own legal team's dismal court record -- provides cover for each new assault on voting rights.

The 2020 Lie, By the Numbers

Conservative columnist George F. Will laid out the facts in The Washington Post: A 2022 report by eight prominent conservatives examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed by Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election.

Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings. Fourteen were voluntarily withdrawn by Trump's team. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump won exactly one -- in Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state's outcome.

Trump's batting average? .016.

In Arizona, the most scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump's own advocates confirmed his loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind," Will wrote.

Why This Still Matters

Egger warns against complacency, even as Trump's support craters. "Trump really is losing support at a remarkable rate; all the old received wisdom about the impregnability of Teflon Don really does seem to have fallen apart," he wrote. "But Trump still has his hands around the neck of American democracy with a much surer grip than he had in 2020."

The danger is not that this particular executive order will succeed. It won't. The danger is that Trump is normalizing election interference, one absurd order at a time, while testing how far he can push before facing real consequences.

"Too much of the country seems strangely confident -- just as in 2020, and with even less justification now than then -- that he'll simply choose not to squeeze," Egger concluded.

The executive order may be legally hilarious. The threat it represents is not.