A strategy document circulating among civil society organizations in more than a dozen states lays out a framework for resisting what its authors describe as a coordinated federal effort to disrupt the 2026 midterm elections — and the blueprint has its roots in Minnesota.
Why It Matters
Election administration in the United States is deliberately decentralized, spread across tens of thousands of polling places and thousands of county-level offices. That structure is now both a vulnerability and a defense as the federal government expands its scrutiny of state and local election systems ahead of the November midterms.
Approximately 80 civil society organizations across 19 states report facing Department of Justice pressure or direct federal intervention into how they conduct voter outreach and registration. The breadth of that effort has prompted pro-democracy groups to coordinate a response at the state and local level.
What Happened
A memo titled “Act Free to Be Free: A State and Local Pro-Democracy Framework” is making the rounds among organizers and elected officials. Doran Schrantz, the former executive director of the Minnesota faith-based organizing group ISAIAH, is identified as a key author of the document. The memo argues that the Trump administration is actively preparing to interfere with the 2026 midterms and urges state and local leaders to build resistance infrastructure before that interference takes hold.
On Thursday, President Trump used a nationally televised address to allege widespread problems with the election system — claims his critics characterize as a pretext for federal intervention. A day earlier, he endorsed MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for governor of Minnesota.
Minnesota faith, labor, and civil society leaders have publicly declared their opposition to what they call federal election interference, aligning themselves with the framework Schrantz helped develop.
Schrantz said the administration’s immigration enforcement operations — including what she described as an ICE and CBP presence lasting roughly two and a half months — shaped her understanding of the stakes. “Operation Metro Surge baptized me in the breadth of possibilities of what we might have to deal with,” she said. On the reluctance she encounters among some national political figures to acknowledge the severity of the situation, she was direct: “When I’m around D.C. and New York elites, they wanna tell themselves a story that there’s some normal way we can get through to the other side of this. I just don’t think so.”
By the Numbers
80 civil society groups in 19 states report being targeted by DOJ pressure or federal scrutiny related to election activity.
The Justice Department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over disputes involving voter roll maintenance, and sent warning letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening prosecution if noncitizens vote in the August or November elections.
The FBI’s raid on Fulton County, Georgia, seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election ballots and documents. That action came after Trump was recorded demanding that the state’s then-Republican secretary of state “find” 11,780 votes from the 2020 presidential election.
The Trump administration also fired two Democrats from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and forced one Republican to resign, leaving the independent federal body without its full complement of commissioners ahead of a major election cycle.
Zoom Out
The federal actions described in the “Act Free” memo follow a pattern visible in multiple states. FBI agents raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in June. Wisconsin election officials have been interviewed or approached by FBI agents investigating the 2020 election. The Justice Department has been deploying election monitors to blue and purplish-blue states and cities.
In Arizona, a candidate aligned with Trump’s election skepticism defeated an incumbent Republican in the 2024 race for Maricopa County recorder, placing a new official in charge of vote counting in the state’s most populous county. At the federal level, Trump has also issued an executive order seeking to involve the U.S. Postal Service in election administration — a move that election law experts say raises significant legal questions about the separation between federal and state authority.
Additionally, the administration has threatened to withhold terrorism-prevention funding from states that do not comply with its election-related demands.
What’s Next
Organizers behind the “Act Free” framework are pressing state and local officials to establish clear legal and procedural boundaries before federal pressure intensifies closer to Election Day. With the 2026 midterms now roughly four months out, the pace of both federal action and state-level response is expected to accelerate.