The New Sign Trump Is Planning a Midterm-Elections Power Grab
In trying to predict whether Donald Trump will find a way to place a stubby thumb on the scales of the midterm elections and maintain his total grip on the federal government, it’s of more than passing interest that he just bought (or at least profoundly influenced with money) a non-presidential election in Argentina with an economic bailout that was contingent on his buddy Javier Milei winning.
Trump’s lack of interest in free and fair elections is beyond question. And his malice toward any adverse election results in this country was manifested in his latest Truth Social post on the subject:
What’s worse, the NBA Players cheating at cards, and probably much else, or the Democrats cheating on Elections. The 2020 Presidential Election, being Rigged and Stolen, is a far bigger SCANDAL. Look what happened to our Country when a Crooked Moron became our “President!” We now know everything. I hope the DOJ pursues this with as much “gusto” as befitting the biggest SCANDAL in American history! If not, it will happen again, including the upcoming Midterms. No mail-in or “Early” Voting, Yes to Voter ID! Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being “shipped.” GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!
The semi-incoherence of this post led the Los Angeles Times to interpret it as advising California Republicans not to use mail ballots or vote early on Prop 50. I don’t think so. For years Trump has periodically embraced the far-right position that only votes cast on paper ballots in person on Election Day are legitimate. “Same day voting” on “paper ballots” with “voter ID” was part of his campaign’s Agenda 47 last year and was also included in the Republican National Convention platform. In August, he promised a future executive order to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.” And now he’s again identifying “mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting” as proof of “Democrats cheating on Elections.” By law California mails ballots to every registered voter in the state or as Trump puts it, has “shipped Millions of Ballots” to steal the election.
His post isn’t an effort to influence the Prop 50 vote, which he knows his team is going to lose. It’s a warning he will regard the passage of Prop 50 as illegitimate by definition and will use it, along with his totally made-up allegations that Joe Biden’s 2020 election was fraudulent, to change or at least delegitimize the midterm elections.
An estimated 69 percent of presidential votes in 2020 were cast by mail-ballot or in-person early voting. According to Trump, that’s 109 million suspect ballots — so of course the election was stolen. With the COVID-19 pandemic ending, non-election-day voting dropped somewhat, but in 2024, 60 percent of presidential votes were cast by mail or via in-person early voting. That’s still 93 million suspect ballots. So of course Trump really won by a historic landslide. Add in his completely unsubstantiated claims that vast numbers of noncitizens illegally voted in 2024, 2020, and 2016 (when he argues he really won the popular vote over Hillary Clinton), and it’s clear the MAGA contention is that any election Trump doesn’t win is rigged. He’s justified, then, in doing some counter-rigging of his own.
What form will that take? Well, one Trumpian election-rigging scheme is right out in the open: his campaign to get Republican-controlled states to conduct extremely rare mid-decade redesigns of congressional districts to give the GOP a cushion against likely Democratic midterm gains. The Prop 50 initiative that Trump is pre-demonizing is a Democratic counter-measure. But more subtle tactics are almost certainly going to emerge. It’s possible if not likely that the federal courts will uphold Trump’s efforts to dictate state election rules by executive order, defying the rather plain constitutional language protecting state prerogatives in that area. Barring that sort of coup, you could easily envision administration and state Republican Party efforts to suppress Democratic votes. The Department of Justice’s announcement last week that it is sending “monitors” to California and New Jersey polling places in advance of next week’s balloting isn’t of itself that alarming; it’s happened before when there were rumors of foul play afoot. But Trump’s Truth Social instruction to DOJ to reinvestigate the 2020 election as “the biggest SCANDAL in American history,” which will recur in the midterms if the stealing doesn’t stop, is a pretty clear signal to federal and red-state law-enforcement assets to crawl all over blue jurisdictions as they prepare to vote in 2026.
One tactic that Democrats are already worried about is the deployment of immigration agents (and even National Guard units) to polling places in the guise of detaining illegal immigrants who are seeking to vote. It’s very clear that such a step would affect voting by qualified and registered Latino voters who don’t particularly want to get caught up in a raid and thrown into detention until they can clear their names. A couple of well-publicized ICE raids at early voting sites in selected locations could have a national effect right on through Election Day in 2026.
Whatever Team Trump has planned or might yet plan, it has been fully pre-justified by a president who over and over and over again has claimed that elections are so corrupt that winners are determined by unflinching self-confidence and raw force. It’s very clear which party has both right now.