Trump tries to shape mail-in voting with executive order
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondents Ashley Lopez, Hansi Lo Wang and Miles Parks.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. |
| 0:08.1 | I'm Hansi Luong. I cover voting too. And I am Miles Parks, who also covers voting. |
| 0:13.2 | Woo. An auspicious day because it's the entire voting team on the same podcast. And for good reason, because today on the show, President Trump has signed a new executive order related to voting that is already facing multiple legal challenges, |
| 0:25.9 | which isn't entirely surprising. For months, Trump has teased on social media that he would be |
| 0:30.6 | signing an order related to mail and ballots. Hansi, though, can you catch us up on what |
| 0:35.1 | Trump ultimately ended up signing on Tuesday? What was in that order? |
| 0:39.3 | This order is basically about citizenship lists and the U.S. Postal Service. It specifically calls for the Trump administration to create lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state. |
| 0:51.1 | And states can review and suggest changes to those lists, and the Postal Service |
| 0:55.4 | would be banned from delivering mail imbalance to anyone not on those lists. |
| 1:00.4 | Yeah, and I mean, this is a pretty hard executive order. |
| 1:02.7 | Would you agree with that, Hansi, to understand? |
| 1:04.7 | I mean, I feel like I've read it like six or seven times now, and I do feel like there's |
| 1:08.2 | three different lists in terms of it feels like, you know, |
| 1:12.2 | the federal government makes this list of citizens. The USPS makes a list. The states have a list. |
| 1:17.6 | I want to be clear that it's not terribly clear exactly how any of this would work. A lot of |
| 1:22.5 | questions. But what was clear like from the response almost that, like, Trump really can't do this. |
| 1:29.5 | This isn't within the purview of what a president can do, which is why almost immediately you saw a lot of people threatening to sue. |
| 1:36.6 | And I do want to talk about that. Hansi, what do we know about what lawsuits this executive order is already facing? |
| 1:43.3 | Well, we have Democrats suing. We have |
| 1:45.1 | voting rights groups suing, civil rights groups suing, a group of overseas and military voter |
| 1:49.8 | suing. And I'm watching to see if some states start suing. You know, Colorado's secretary of |
| 1:54.1 | state told me she's been in touch with the state attorney general's office for a potential |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.