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Trump threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that refused to carry the address live. In his speech, he again implored Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would ban mail-in ballots nationwide and impose new identification requirements on voters when they register and report to polls. Republican senators refuse to dispense with the 60-vote filibuster threshold to pass the law.

Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, representing a swing state that is a favored rhetorical target of the president, described Trump’s address as “signaling his unmistakable intent to attack these elections and our voting rights, just as he tried to throw out our votes and seize the presidency in 2020”.

Voting rights advocates pointed toward Trump’s July primetime address as indicative of the president’s intentions – rhetorical attacks on the integrity of voting machines and elections offices, potentially escalating into more direct interference.

Trump’s public commentary, and the actions of agencies under his supervision, shaped the scenario building as Democratic leaders plan their possible responses.

Senators were asked at their recent session to contemplate how to react to a threat to withhold Office of Management and Budget (OMB) funding for states that don’t submit their voter rolls for federal oversight. They also considered a threat of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) action against news outlets covering deepfakes.

“The development of AI will only add to the complexity and could create confusion among voters in our fragmented media landscape,” said Vail. “Unfortunately, that confusion can be to the benefit of the administration’s strategy.”

FCC enforcement actions seem relatively mild compared to more extreme scenarios, like planning a response to armed vigilantes in tactical gear at ballot drop boxes – which was not a hypothetical problem in Arizona during the 2022 midterms. Senators were asked to plan responses for online license-plate doxxing, a midnight firebombing of an early voting site and a last-minute unilateral deployment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and the national guard to polling stations.

The main lesson of the exercise “is that this is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and it is an all-hands-on-deck response”, said Perryman. “And so what that means is that, we’re not looking at any one silver bullet to be able to fully protect elections. It’s going to take all of us.”