Transcription
The internet and White House are teeming with conspiracy theories about secret plots to steal elections. But what I'm about to tell you, this is the real thing. And it's been hiding in plain sight.
All that talk about stealing elections and undocumented immigrants voting... [President Trump] The Democrats cheat, Republican’s don’t cheat. ...it's actually a cover for something deeper and more insidious. This may be the most important executive order he's ever signed. Republicans have to win this one. We’ve been going all over the country to look at voter rolls.
This myth of non-citizen voting appears to have been a billionaire-backed, funder-driven effort to make it harder to vote, which increases the relative power of wealthy donors. This is all about class war. As the economy tanks, working people are becoming more and more fed up with a government co-opted by financial elites, big tech and energy companies. At the same time, the billionaire class is working to silence any dissent to their massive tax breaks, shredding the social safety net, and mass surveillance.
Just last month, conservatives on the Supreme Court, most of whom are linked to billionaire-funded dark money groups, successfully eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, further cementing Republican power. That's the kind of ruling I like. But the bigger motive behind moves like these actually transcends partisan politics. And that's because the various anti-voter proposals coming out of the White House would make life hell for many Republican voters, too.
A few weeks ago, we ran the first poll that asked working-class Americans how Trump's election policies would actually impact them. We’ll reveal the numbers and show how all of this is secretly being driven by billionaires dedicated to making sure working and middle-class voters don't have their say in November or in 2028.
Let's roll it back to 2024. In the last election, 73.6% of eligible citizens registered to vote. And only 65.3% actually voted. So already, we're not batting a thousand. The president's allies in Congress are pushing dangerous anti-voter legislation like the Save America Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act, either of which would be the most restrictive federal laws around voting in elections basically in American history.
The SAVE Act and its permutations look stuck in Congress, but much of what they would do has been laundered into executive orders. You can break it down into a few categories: proof of citizenship, bans on mail-in voting and intimidation and interference. All proposed under the guise of “securing” our elections from noncitizen voting.
[Jonathan Diaz] I think what most people don't realize is that proposals for voter ID that have come out of this administration would be stricter than anything currently on the books in any state. President Trump wants to mandate proof of citizenship to even register to vote, which only comes in the form of an up-to-date passport with the correct address or a birth certificate. Do you know where your birth certificate is right now? I don't. Half of Americans don't have a passport. 1 in 10 Americans doesn't have a birth certificate.
Cisco Aguilar, the secretary of state in Nevada, sees this proposal as a modern day poll tax. They all say, “Oh, well, everybody has a passport.” No, not everybody has a passport. Those that are privileged enough to have a passport will be fine. But again, it's that working class community that we are taking out of the picture, and taking away the opportunity for them to have a voice.
The numbers are stark: a YouGov poll last year found that just 28% of Americans with a household income of less than $50,000 possessed a valid passport, compared to 80% of those who make at least $100,000. And the burden doesn't fall evenly on gender, either. Trump's proposals would require these up-to-date records of anyone who has changed their last name– you know, like 80% of married women. Plus, the administration wants to require proof of citizenship every time someone updates their registration info– and for renters in this economy, that's often a yearly task. You don't need a tinfoil hat to start to see who is being targeted.
[Jonathan] Working-class and lower-income folks, voters in rural communities, especially native and tribal communities, and voters on the very young and very old ends of the spectrum. Keep those demographics in mind when considering the fact that the Brennan Center found that 21 million voting-age Americans don't have these proof of citizenship documents readily available. Our poll also found that 13% of the working class voting population does not have a passport. And to get one, that's a really big lift for many.
Nevada is a working community, right? We're a 24/7 economy. We are service industry based. And a lot of people don't have access to additional resources or the time to do this. When you ask them to go spend four hours trying to accumulate these documents, that's four hours where they're not making money, and it's going to cost them not only for the documents, but it's the opportunity cost that they could earn a living to provide for their family or themselves.
According to our poll, 66% of working-class voters said that the $130 fee for a new passport would be difficult for them to afford. And 47% of working class voters say that it would deter or prevent them from voting. It'd be tough on middle-class voters, too: 53% say it would be cost prohibitive, and 36% say they wouldn't be able to vote.
And for what? The number of noncitizens voting in American elections is essentially zero, but since 2020, a subset of activists has become obsessed with the idea. All of the groups that had been built up into this election denial infrastructure started almost simultaneously talking about the myth of noncitizen voting. And it was very clearly a coordinated effort, very likely a funder-driven effort, to coordinate around this single line of messaging.
[Cassie] Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center took us down the funder rabbit hole– because while the giant, gaping loopholes in campaign finance law make it intentionally difficult for people to follow the money, there are some big names that you really need to know.
[Brendan] A lot of the national groups get their money from billionaires like Dick Uihlein or Elon Musk, or wealthy, powerful individuals who control a lot of money, like Leonard Leo. You might recognize Leonard Leo as the guy who picked Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices.
[Brendan] Leonard Leo, who controls over $1 billion, has groups like the Honest Elections Project and Save Our States, which have been playing an important role, at least in helping to advance messaging and policy development. This January, the Honest Elections Project released a big game plan that literally outlined each of the steps that Trump has pursued, including serious restrictions on mail-in voting–
Tell me about mail-in ballots.
–you know, the method that Trump both constantly rails against and uses himself. I used a mail-in ballot, you probably said. Yeah, I did. You know why? Because I'm President of the United States.
There are also foundations like the Bradley Foundation, and all of these organizations collectively pour, tens and at this point, hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting these broad national groups.
[Cassie] The Bradley Foundation is a Wisconsin-based organization that put more money than anybody into election denialism and voter suppression. They were a big sponsor of the Only Citizens Vote coalition, a who's who of billionair-funded, anti-voter organizations– over 80 in total, a lot of them involved in Project 2025.
[Brendan] They help craft legislation, they provide testimony when legislation that would undermine the freedom to vote is moving in state legislatures or sometimes in Congress. They're more of the experts in the room. Back in 2024, Only Citizens Vote created model anti-voter legislation in partnership with the massive corporate lobby group ALEC. Leading the way on that legislation was Cleta Mitchell. She's a Federalist Society member, OG election denier, and most importantly, on the board of the Bradley Foundation.
[President Trump] All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000 plus votes.
Cleta Mitchell now has her own group called the Fair Elections Fund, which helps to coordinate many of these efforts, as well as seed money to state-based groups, some of which are themselves associated with the Election Integrity Network.
[Cassie] Ok, here’s another big name: the Election Integrity Network, which brings us down another rabbit hole. The Election Integrity Network is fueled by just a few big players, including the Conservative Partnership Institute and Citizens for Renewing America. The Conservative Partnership Institute is funded by Trump donors. It's run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and gets its money from big players like the Koch linked Donors Trust Fund, a group funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby, and, of course, the Bradley Impact Fund Foundation.
With all of this backing, members of the Election Integrity Network have infiltrated state, local and federal government, where they're implementing the goals of their billionaire patrons. Back in February, some of its top members attended a summit of elite election deniers and Trump administration officials. On the agenda: urging the White House to declare a national emergency to take control of elections. A month later, Trump took action with a new executive order aiming to do just that.
[Jonathan] His latest executive order targets vote by mail by attempting to restrict who the U.S. Postal Service can send mail ballots to, by working with DHS to try and create a supercharged federal citizenship and voter eligibility database, which is not something that they're authorized by law to do, and not something that the federal government really has the capacity to do. The SAVE System is a system that they built from scratch they say does a proof of citizenship on voters to determine whether or not that voter is eligible to vote. And spoiler alert, it's a mess. What they're trying to do is force three major federal bureaucracies, that can’t function within themselves, to create a national voter role within 60 days. It’s preposterous and it’s a pipe dream. There's all sorts of false positives. There's plenty of examples of voters being identified as noncitizens when in fact they are citizens.
Let's go to the poll: 53% of respondents in each income bracket say that eliminating vote by mail will make it harder for them to vote. The alternative is voting on Election Day, and workin-class people were six points less likely to have the time to vote during the day than upper-income respondents. 24% of Americans voted by mail in 2024, and if people can't vote by mail, they'll have to wait in endlessly long lines on Election Day, a time-honored way to suppress the vote.
[Steve Bannon] You're damn right we're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.
[Cassie] After a year of ICE occupying cities and raiding people's homes and schools, people are understandably terrified of the prospect of getting locked up for trying to vote– especially people of color. Our poll found that 12% of Black, Asian and Latino voters would be less likely to vote if they heard ICE was at their polling place. That's almost double the 7% of white respondents who said that they'd be wary of voting with ICE lurking around.
It’s a huge issue I mean, I hear about it every single day, somebody asks me about it. And it's not only Latinos in the Latino community, it's the general community at large. Because they don't want to go into a situation where they feel [uncomfortable] or there could be chaos. People want to go where they feel safe and they feel welcomed.
And while voters are being teased with the threat of prosecution, it might become a very real possibility for election workers. The executive order also directs the Department of Justice to prosecute election officials who register people who provide insufficient proof. When you add in that criminal element, that really scares them. It creates a huge burden and a huge weight on their shoulders, because at that point, it's not only about them, it’s about their families. So it's really setting up a kind of perverse incentive system where election officials are going to demand more and more and more proof to keep themselves safe.
The anti-democracy movement has grown in leaps and bounds since 2020, fueled by two seemingly inexhaustible resources: conspiracy theories and right-wing billionaire cash. Just how much they can accomplish for their billionaire benefactors remains to be seen nationally. But quietly, they've already had a seismic impact on a more local level. What they’ve really built is a network of state-based activists.
[Cassie] 23 states have passed some kind of proof of citizenship law, and a growing number of states are shortening mail-in vote windows. As of early May, a dozen states have complied with the DOJ's unprecedented requests for sensitive voter information, including information on individual voters targeted for disenfranchisement. And even in states where they haven't managed to pass legislation, experts say that the confusion and misinformation they promote has been disastrous.
Luckily, not everyone is falling in line. The administration has now sued 30 states plus Washington, D.C., over their refusal to furnish the White House with sensitive voter information. And, returning the favor, 23 states and D.C. are suing to block the latest executive order on mail-in voting, including Nevada.
[Cisco] We need to make sure that at the state level we continue to fight these issues, doing everything we can by notifying and educating the public, but also using the legal system to protect eligible voters. The administration is trying to redefine eligible voters. And despite what they say, it has nothing to do with immigration or even party affiliation. The attacks on democracy are coming from the top down, all aimed at silencing working people and ensuring that billionaires have complete control of the country.
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