The last free and fair nationwide elections took place on 5 November 2024. Those who expect to vote (against Trump and Republican incumbents or challengers and for their rivals) on or before 3 November 2026 are going to be disappointed. The elections, if held, will be disrupted or suppressed by DHS, INS, BP, and FBI officers; federalized national guard and active-duty military forces; and police forces in some states and cities. Trump’s pretextual reasons for interventions by government forces to interfere with or even cancel the elections will be emergencies claimed to be caused by election fraud or public disorders. And the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, may reverse or invalidate some elections.
Trump has said that government forces will target major Democratic cities in Democratic states for such interventions. He has practiced with interventions purportedly because of immigration in Los Angeles and crime in Washington, D.C. He has mentioned other cities for interventions, including Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Portland, and San Francisco. If a “blue wave” seems in the offing, Trump’s pretextual reasons might be invoked even in cities which lean blue in red states: in Florida: Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Gainesville, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, Fort Lauderdale, Key West, and Sarasota; in Ohio: Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati; in Texas: Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Fort Worth, Denton, Corpus Christi, Richardson, and Plano. All of these cities have large numbers of Democratic voters to whom Trump might seek to deny the vote by administrative abuses, intimidation, disruption, or suppression. This targeting associates only Democratic cities with immigration and crime. In the long run, Trump might try to delegitimize, even outlaw, the Democratic party, as implied by his aide Stephen Miller, who stigmatized the Democratic party by labeling it a “domestic extremist organization.”
Those who expect to vote and the commentators who assure them that the president cannot constitutionally impede elections—optimists all—do not, or refuse to, recognize the conditions which might adversely affect the conduct of free and fair elections. These optimists disregard the evidence that Trump is less and less restrained by norms, rules, laws, or constitutional provisions. They disregard that he acts in violation of them and is less and less responsive to, if not defiant of, court decisions contrary to his actions. Indeed, he relies on the interval between his actions and court decisions to achieve much of what he wants to achieve. They disregard that he has issued illegitimate executive orders which might, if obeyed, affect voting procedures and vote counts. They disregard that the six reactionary Supreme Court justices have been using, and will continue to use, the emergency docket, more commonly known as the “shadow docket,” to ignore precedents or reverse administration-restraining district and appellate court decisions by diktats, not decisions, in favor of the administration. On election day, the entire federal system will be flooded with cases filed on an emergency basis by Democrats and Republicans. In cases quickly presented to the Supreme Court, it might issue rulings, as it did in Bush v. Gore (2000), which make Republicans winners.
Trump’s efforts to influence the midterm elections have already begun because of his and other Republicans’ sense of urgency verging on desperation and panic about the likelihood of losing control of the House of Representatives and the possibility of losing control of the Senate. Their sense of urgency can only increase as Republican election prospects worsen because of voter unhappiness with inflation, unemployment, immigration abuses, and coercive government actions. This unhappiness will likely increase and turn more and more Americans against Trump and the Republican party in two very different circumstances. One would be the release of the Epstein files. The other would be the killing and wounding of civilians by government forces. Those of a certain age recall that the Ohio National Guard killed four and wounded nine students at a peaceful anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970. The disgust at the former and the shock of the latter would greatly worsen Republican prospects.
Already fearful of a blue wave which might become a blue tsunami, Trump and Republicans can imagine innumerable, frightful scenarios of possible consequences. All assume, after all the votes are counted and confirmed, and the challenges dismissed, that Democrats gain a near-veto-proof majority in the House and a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Democrats will have a long list of candidates for impeachment and conviction, including cabinet officials, other Senate-confirmed officials, political appointees, and perhaps Supreme Court Justices. They might offer Trump a deal: you pardon no one, and we do not impeach you. (Nevertheless, I dream that they impeach and convict both Trump and Vance—which results would elevate the Democratic Speaker of the House to the presidency. I can dream, can’t I?)
In response, Trump and Republicans will do whatever it takes to forestall such scenarios in their fight to retain power in the federal government and many state governments. By the 2028 general elections, the effects of Trump’s policies will be worse, and Trump and Republicans will know that their policies and programs across the board are, and are likely to remain, unpopular with the large majority of voters. In anticipation, they will continue efforts to rig, undermine, or entirely wreck elections. They might attempt to avoid their defeat by demonizing and, through the Department of Justice, FBI, and DHS, treating the Democratic Party as a “domestic extremist organization.” To this end, Trump might use or manufacture an incident like the Reichstag fire of 1933 to suppress or eliminate his rivals. One thing is certain: Trump and Republican demonization of and antipathy to the Democratic Party and Democrats will make it impossible for them to peacefully relinquish power and enter into virtually permanent political impotence.
NOTE: The assassination of Charlie Kirk might be such an incident, which occurred after I drafted this blog on 9 September. Jonathan Chait in his 11 September The Atlantic article “Trump’s Dangerous Response to the Kirk Amendment” amplified my concern about Trump’s exploiting an incident to harass his political opposition. I strongly recommend reading Chait’s article, which cites Trump’s threatening words applied only to “radical-left political violence.”
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