Donald Trump's Thursday night speech began and ended with lies. But buried within it was a stark threat to free and fair elections in 2026.

Yes, we need to call out the lies. Of course, we need to debunk the attacks. But if we do not immediately mobilize against Trump's plan to take over voting, his speech will have been a success for him and a catastrophe for democracy.

For 27 minutes, we watched Trump stumble through a prepared text at the White House. Reading from a teleprompter, looking old and sounding tired, he told lie after lie about our elections.

He made false claims about the intelligence community, voting equipment and state voter rolls. He announced the release of raw government files that, upon examination, do not support his lies.

After the address concluded, even election conspiracy theorist John Solomon confirmed to the media that Trump had zero evidence that any votes were changed by foreign actors in 2020, 2022 or 2024, or had hacked any voting machines in the United States.

Observers declared the speech a failure. Trump had failed to deliver new information. He had distorted and lied, but he had not made any new sensational claims.

I agree with this assessment as far as it goes. But unfortunately, this analysis does not cover the most troubling part of Trump's speech.

After falsely claiming that there are more than "278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections," Trump announced a federal power grab over election administration from the states.

First, he claimed that the administration will "mitigate any harm" and take "swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected." Then, he claimed that they would "fix" voting in the states. Most importantly, he "ordered DHS to notify every state about noncitizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately."

In that short portion of Trump's rambling address, the president revealed its true purpose. While Trump continues to lie about the 2020 election, the motive behind this address was to rig the election right before our eyes.

This did not come out of nowhere. Last night's speech was the latest escalation in a fight Trump has been waging for more than a year...