Democrats and their allies in the media have repeatedly claimed that President Donald Trump and his supporters represent a danger to American democracy. After a Biden-aligned group succeeded in temporarily removing Trump from the 2023 Colorado presidential primary ballot, President Joe Biden declared, “Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) similarly asserted in April 2024 that Trump is “a great threat to our democracy.”
Just a day after a Democratic donor — who claimed “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot” — allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump, New York Magazine maintained, “Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, and saying so is not incitement.”
But some on the right, like Vice President JD Vance, see things differently. In a keynote speech at the Ohio Republican Party dinner in Lima, Ohio, Vance identified what he believes is the true threat to American democracy: Democrats seeking to change the electorate rather than persuade existing citizens.
Vance criticized Democrats for attempting to expand their power by importing new voter blocs through illegal immigration rather than addressing the needs of current citizens. He stated, “Illegal immigration is the most important issue confronting this country” and noted it had been “destroying this country for over the past four years.”
Reflecting on recent progress under the Trump administration, Vance remarked, “I’m happy to report that one and a half months into the Trump administration, we had illegal border crossings down 99%. It was a radical success.”
He continued, “I believe that saved the United States of America, because we know exactly what the Democrats [would do] — not because we had to read their minds but because Democrats would go out and say that what they wanted to do with those 20, 25 million illegal aliens is give every single one of them the right to vote and turn them into permanent wards of the Democratic Party.”
Vance argued that this approach would effectively undermine democratic principles: “If we allowed the Democratic Party to import voters rather than persuade voters, that would have been the end of American democracy.”
In recent years, several Democratic-controlled jurisdictions — including cities in California, Maryland, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. — have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections. In D.C., over 500 noncitizens voted last year, with 310 registering as Democrats.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The DOJ recently filed a lawsuit against the Orange County registrar of voters for allegedly failing to maintain accurate voter rolls and for refusing to provide records related to the removal of noncitizens, in violation of the Help America Vote Act.
The Democratic National Convention’s 2024 platform supported a mass amnesty plan, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens. It also endorsed changing the term “alien” to “noncitizen” in immigration law — a shift that could have profound implications for voting rights in federal elections.
Vance warned that such efforts would have reshaped the electorate: “Even though Trump saw gains in each of the seven swing states in the 2024 election, giving voting rights to millions of yesteryear’s illegal aliens could significantly alter America’s political destiny.”
Concluding his remarks, Vance offered some optimism: “Now, we have largely solved that problem. If you look, for the first time in 50 years — the first time in 50 years — we now have net negative illegal immigration.”
