It’s no secret that President Trump has long had a problem with mail-in voting.

It’s no secret that President Trump has long had a problem with mail-in voting. So it’s no surprise that he’s now pledging to “lead a movement to get rid of” them ahead of the 2026 midterms.

On the site today, Jeff Blehar and National Review’s editors remind the White House that states control election rules, and that the Constitution gives Congress — not the executive branch — the power to change federal election laws.

A few thoughts on the political implications of what Trump is doing here. First, it’s tough to imagine a ton of states suddenly deciding to follow Trump’s lead and change their election rules just because the White House says so. As Rich Lowry writes on the site today, “Mail-in and early voting are so ingrained and widespread that they aren’t going anywhere.”

It’s also worth remembering that the Republican National Committee and Trump’s most recent campaign embraced mail-in voting to, in the president’s words, “swamp the vote” and make the 2024 election “too big to rig.” Republican spending groups worked hard to change the culture surrounding mail-in-voting. In Pennsylvania, for example, one group ran ads featuring the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., urging Republicans to vote early and by mail. And a host of other Republican groups — including Turning Point Action, the Sentinel Action Fund, and the Republican State Leadership Committee PAC — spent millions last campaign cycle on ads and door-knocking efforts to better compete with Democrats’ historic lead on early and absentee voting. Here’s Sentinel Action Fund president Jessica Anderson explaining her coalition’s multi-million-dollar Pennsylvania strategy to National Review back in October:

Anderson explained that earlier this year, the three groups settled around three main electoral objectives they felt they must meet here this cycle, otherwise “Republicans would continue to lose.” The first goal was to chip away at the permanent absentee list in Pennsylvania. The second was to change the message and culture surrounding absentee early vote. And the third was to increase the percentage growth from absentee requests to the ballot returns.

The strategy worked spectacularly. In some states, Republican voters even outpaced Democrats in the mail-in voting department. Remember: Every vote counts. And this midterm cycle and beyond, Republicans will already need to figure out how to juice low-propensity GOP voters who only get off their couch to vote when Trump is on the ballot. Doing so without embracing existing election rules will make that task more difficult.