In a turbulent week for American democracy, President Donald Trump has reignited fierce debates over voting rights, census policy, and the redrawing of congressional districts—sparking protests, legal questions, and concerns about the future of fair representation in the United States.
On August 15, 2025, President Trump claimed during an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” that Russian President Vladimir Putin shares his skepticism about mail-in voting. “Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” Trump told host Sean Hannity after a nearly three-hour meeting with Putin in Alaska. “He said there’s not a country in the world that uses it now.” According to Reuters, Trump used Putin’s comments to press his fellow Republicans to intensify their efforts to overhaul the U.S. voting system—a campaign he has championed since the disputed 2020 election.
Ironically, Trump himself has voted by mail in previous elections and even urged his supporters to do so in 2024. Yet, he continues to promote the false narrative that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 election, using this claim to justify calls for sweeping changes to absentee voting and other election procedures. “The Republicans want it, but not strongly enough,” Trump said during the interview. “You can’t have a great democracy with mail-in voting.”
Putin, meanwhile, secured another term as Russia’s president in 2024 with a staggering 87% of the vote—a result that drew sharp allegations of vote rigging from independent observers, opposition figures, and Western governments. The most formidable opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony earlier that year, casting a further shadow on the legitimacy of the Russian election. As reported by Reuters, the Russian president has previously claimed that some U.S. elections were marred by fraud, though he has never provided evidence—a position that mirrors Trump’s unproven assertions about widespread voter fraud in America.
U.S. Justice Department and Senate investigations have found that Moscow attempted to influence the 2016 election to help Trump, and intelligence officials believe Russia preferred Trump to win again in 2024. Trump, however, has consistently denied any collusion, reiterating his claims during the Alaska meeting. “He and his presidential campaigns were falsely accused of colluding with Russia,” Trump insisted, even though the U.S. intelligence community never reached such a conclusion.
While Trump pushes for changes to the way Americans vote, he is also seeking to reshape how they are counted. On August 9, 2025, he instructed the Commerce Department to change the way the U.S. Census Bureau collects data, directing it to exclude immigrants in the country illegally. He announced on his social media platform that the census should be based on “modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.” The move signals an intention to inject presidential politics into a process that determines not just political power, but also the distribution of billions in federal funds.
Experts say excluding undocumented immigrants from the census would have only a minimal impact on Nevada’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, given current population growth patterns. David Damore, a political science professor at UNLV and executive director of Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute, told The Nevada Independent, “We are not positioned to get a new [House] seat and the likelihood of losing one is small given current [population] growth patterns.” But the bigger concern, Damore said, is the potential loss of federal aid, as census data guides the allocation of $2.8 trillion for roads, health care, and other programs.
Legal and constitutional hurdles loom large. Sondra Cosgrove, a political science professor at the College of Southern Nevada, pointed out that the 14th Amendment requires counting the “whole number of persons in each state,” not just citizens. “It does not say citizens, it does not say voters, it doesn't say men or women. It just says whole persons,” Cosgrove said in an interview with The Nevada Independent. She also warned that if Congress withholds funding from the Census Bureau to comply with Trump’s directives, states like Nevada may have to backfill the budget to ensure an accurate count—potentially forcing difficult choices about which public services to fund.
Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer and census consultant, told the Associated Press, “He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution. Logistically, it’s a half-baked idea.” Jeffrey Wice, a census and redistricting expert at New York Law School, added, “This isn't something that you can do overnight. To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.”
Trump’s efforts to reshape the census are not new. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked his attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, and lower courts later ruled his plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment figures was illegal. When the Supreme Court finally weighed in, it sidestepped the substantive issues, dismissing the case on technical grounds. Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, writing, “I believe this Court should say so,” referring to the unlawfulness of excluding noncitizens from the count.
These moves have fueled accusations that Trump is manipulating the basic measures of American society to suit his political ambitions. Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a leading expert on the census, told the Associated Press, “Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system. He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, such as he sees them.”
Redistricting is another front in this battle. Trump has urged Republican-led states, notably Texas, to redraw congressional maps ahead of schedule in ways that would favor GOP candidates. Texas Republicans, who currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 House seats, cite population growth as justification for redrawing the map, but critics say the real motive is to secure five additional Republican seats and avert electoral disaster for Trump in 2026. Similar efforts are underway in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.
These developments have not gone unnoticed by grassroots activists. On August 16, 2025, Santa Barbara’s Indivisible group will stage a protest on State Street, denouncing what they call the “Trump takeover” and the gerrymandering of Texas and other red states. The demonstration, which emphasizes nonviolent protest and community safety, is designed to defend the “sacred right to vote” and oppose what organizers describe as “anti-democratic” efforts to rig elections. “This is not a partisan political fight,” said Ian Paige, a member of Indivisible Santa Barbara. “It is a pressure test of our democracy.”
Paige and other organizers argue that Trump’s policies are deeply unpopular, from the “persecution of our immigrant friends and neighbors” to the use of military force in American cities. “Rather than face backlash from angry voters, Trump has ordered Republicans in Texas and elsewhere to deliver him additional seats in Congress. We urge all friends of democracy—Democrats, Independents, and Republicans—to stand up against this naked, dictatorial power grab.”
As the nation heads toward the 2026 midterm elections, the struggle over voting rights, representation, and the very mechanisms of democracy shows no signs of abating. Whether these efforts will reshape the political landscape—or provoke a new wave of civic engagement—remains to be seen.
