Trump's midterm mess collides with a courtroom time crunch

The nation's election system is in a messy legal limbo, with fights over mail-in voting, electoral maps and voter records still locked in court.

Why it matters: Americans are in the eye of the storm, with over half saying they don't think the 2026 midterms will be conducted fairly or are unsure, according to a new poll.

• President Trump insists his push to reform America's elections will protect the sanctity of votes. But the administration's overhaul has left voters and states in a complicated web of litigation — with the first midterm ballots already sent out.

Driving the news: Just 45% think the midterms will be conducted fairly, a sentiment shared by 37% of independents and 48% of both Democrats and Republicans, according to a YouGov survey conducted Sept. 4-8.

• It comes as Trump has spent years spreading unproven claims of widespread voter fraud, fueling a government crackdown that critics say oversteps his power.
• That's left the president's election agenda in the hands of the federal judiciary.

Case in point: The administration asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to clear its modified SAVE system (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements), an online tool it integrated with Social Security data and expanded to conduct bulk searches to verify voters' immigration status.

• Voting rights groups sued over what they described as an overhaul of the system, which was previously used to check eligibility for benefits, to "create comprehensive databases of American citizens."
• District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the plan, saying government agencies had "haphazardly" pulled together "unreliable" data that states were using to "actively" remove citizens from voter rolls.

"SAVE, if it is allowed to be utilized for the purposes the administration is trying to utilize it for, will inevitably falsely flag voters as being ineligible," says Jared Davidson, counsel at Protect Democracy.

• But Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices Tuesday to toss the "indefensible order" that he said threatens election integrity.

Zoom out: That was the second time in just three days that the Trump administration turned to the Supreme Court on its election-related agenda.

• On Sunday, the administration made yet another appeal to the justices to allow its mail-in voting policy changes to go into effect, adding to a complicated series of injunctions and appeals over the plan.
• States sued over the rule, saying it would force them to "immediately redesign" ballot envelopes and "develop new systems at breakneck speed."
• "If you look at what they're trying to do in terms of restrictions on mailing outbound absentee or mail-in ballots; those are already out the door, and others are heading out the door every day," says Dan Lenz, senior legal counsel for strategic litigation at the Campaign Legal Center.

Plus, the redistricting war over the country's congressional maps flared up again in Missouri this week.

• The state's election chief faces contempt proceedings for telling officials to use a redrawn map—one that the state supreme court blocked, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in, and then revived by another federal judge.

What they're saying: "The chaos is the point," Davidson says.

• He tells Axios, "implementation isn't even necessarily the end game for the Trump administration here."
• Lenz echoes him, arguing that muddying the waters "allows you to then contest election outcomes you don't like after the fact."

Go deeper: Trump is pulling every lever to reshape U.S. elections