For MAGA, 2026 will likely be payback for 2020.
Donald Trump greets a toddler throughout a Halloween occasion on the South Garden of the White Home, on October 30, 2025.
(Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
Donald Trump, a person who loves nursing grievances and plotting revenge, has by no means gotten over shedding the 2020 presidential election. To at the present time, he refuses to confess that he was defeated truthful and sq., preferring the comforting fantasy that the election was stolen.
The 2020 delusion has change into central to Trump’s political id. It fueled his efforts to overturn the election outcomes resulting in the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. His posture as a noble sufferer of injustice helped preserve the MAGA motion collectively throughout the Joe Biden years. And it allowed him to border his victory in 2024 as nothing lower than a conquer political evil.
Now, with Trump within the White Home and each Congress and the Supreme Court docket at present in supine Republican palms, the president has immense energy in Washington. However his need for revenge has not been satiated. Nor has his need to completely management the political system.
Probably the most severe attainable risk to Trump’s energy is the 2026 midterms, which might result in Democratic Occasion management of the Home of Representatives and, in the event that they’re particularly fortunate, the Senate. And Trump can’t abide that.
On July 26, 2024, at a rally in Florida, Trump made a remarkable promise to his followers: “Christians, get out and vote, simply this time. You gained’t need to do it anymore. 4 extra years, you realize what, it’ll be mounted, it’ll be effective. You gained’t need to vote anymore, my stunning Christians. We’ll have it mounted so good, you’re not gonna need to vote.” Now that he’s again in workplace, Trump intends to make good on that promise. He continues to speak about how he was robbed in 2020—and to push for adjustments within the election system to stop a recurrence of this supposed travesty. However as is so typically with Trump, his accusations comprise greater than a whiff of psychological projection: The actual objective of his vaunted election reform is to not forestall stolen elections however to permit Trump to be the one doing the stealing.
A few of Trump’s makes an attempt at fixing the system so his supporters don’t have to fret about voting have been thwarted by the political system. On March 25, Trump signed an executive order with stringent new election guidelines, together with a lot greater proof of citizenship necessities and restrictions on the usage of mail-in ballots. Lower than two months later, federal decide Denise J. Casper struck down this unilateral transfer, noting, “The Structure doesn’t grant the President any particular powers over [voting rules].” Legislative efforts by Republicans to enact Trump-friendly electoral reform are stalling in Congress, the place Republicans can’t overcome the filibuster within the Senate.
Present Problem
However Trump nonetheless has vast latitude when it comes to appointing officers concerned in election oversight, directing federal legislation enforcement companies, and deploying the Nationwide Guard. And there are various indicators that this president is serious about utilizing these powers to form the result of the midterms.
Way over in his first time period, Trump has been actively appointing hyper-loyalists in his administration, lots of whom adhere to the parable of the stolen 2020 election and need to use govt energy to stop Democrats from profitable in 2026. One of many devoted is Heather Honey, whom Trump appointed in August to be the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity within the Division of Homeland Safety. Her primary qualification for that position is that since 2020 she has been a vocal election denier, closely selling the false declare that there was fraudulent voting in Pennsylvania that tipped the state to Biden.
The New York Instances reports that in March, previous to her appointment, Honey spoke to a gaggle of right-wing activists and argued that the White Home ought to declare a “nationwide emergency” as a means of adjusting election guidelines.
Honey went on to say, “And due to this fact, now we have some extra powers that don’t exist proper now, and due to this fact, we are able to take these different steps with out Congress and we are able to mandate that states do issues and so forth.” She did add that this plan may not be “possible.”
Honey is a component of a bigger pattern, because the Instances notes:
Prior to now few months, Mr. Trump has elevated a number of proponents of his fraud claims into high-level administration jobs. Now, as authorities insiders, these activists might wield their newfound energy to discredit future outcomes or rekindle outdated claims to argue for a federal intrusion into domestically administered voting techniques.
The flip facet of elevating figures reminiscent of Heather Honey is firing and punishing those that prevented Trump’s try to overturn the 2020 election outcomes. One instance is Chris Krebs, who, in his capability because the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, affirmed the security of the 2020 election. For this, Krebs was fired by Trump and stripped of his safety clearance. Trump additionally pushed the Division of Justice to analyze Krebs.
And Trump might go a lot additional in his authoritarian quest. Writing in Mom Jones, Ari Berman outlined a attainable situation of navy intervention whereby
Trump’s mass deportation agenda might evolve into an enormous election policing equipment deployed in opposition to his political opponents. That might embody the president federalizing the Nationwide Guard (like in Los Angeles and Washington, DC) and ordering the navy to patrol the polls, demanding citizenship checks at polling stations, authorizing ICE raids in Democratic areas within the runup to the election, and arresting political leaders who don’t comply together with his insurance policies.
Within the runup to the midterms, the division will probably undertake high-profile investigations into alleged voter fraud and lean on states to undertake restrictive insurance policies that would embody eradicating eligible voters from the rolls, difficult mail-in ballots, and concentrating on Democratic election officers. Certainly, Mission 2025—the notorious conservative blueprint for the second Trump administration—went as far as to name on the division to make use of one of many Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan Acts to prosecute election officials who difficulty steering Republicans disagree with.
One Trump crony who appears to be on board for this coverage is Steve Bannon. As Berman notes, in August Bannon stated, “They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking management of the cities, there’s gonna be ICE officers close to polling locations. You’re rattling proper.”
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If Trump does attempt to steal the midterms, how can he be stopped? Two writers who’ve investigated the matter—Berman in Mother Jones and David Graham in The Atlantic—each level to the courts as a possible test. It’s true that within the federal courts, the place most election litigation is settled, Trump often loses. Sending troops to polling locations can be wildly unlawful—possibly even unlawful sufficient for the Supreme Court docket, which has principally not been inclined to test Trump’s energy.
The issue is that Trump’s sample has been to overtly break the legislation and let the sluggish authorized rebuke come later. With the prospect of troops interfering in elections, a faster treatment is required. The one path that continues to be is mass mobilization for civil resistance.
Earlier this month, Ezra Levin, a “No Kings” organizer, told Semafor, “In the event that they subvert the election outcomes subsequent yr, you’re going to need some type of response that doesn’t permit society to maneuver on.” The whole lot we’ve seen in Trump’s second time period exhibits that he’s keen to steamroll by the political system until he meets opposition. By way of stopping his plans to steal the 2020 election, it might be that the steamroller must be stopped by our bodies on the road.
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