Trump Is Laying The Groundwork To Interfere In The 2026 Midterms. But State Democrats Could Disrupt His Plans.
Trump is installing election deniers at DHS who want him to abuse emergency powers to change state election rules. But Democrats who won key states in 2022 could be a bulwark against his efforts.
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This week, Steve Bannon sparked another wave of speculation about whether or not President Trump will seek a third term by claiming “there is a plan” for this unconstitutional maneuver. Trump himself further fanned the flames on Monday by saying, “I would love to do it.” But on Tuesday, he changed his tone, stating, “It’s pretty clear. I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad!”
Now, of course, the 22nd Amendment is very clear, and even Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has affirmed the amendment’s clarity on presidential term limits in interviews during her book tour. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t try, and it’s still something we should take seriously.
But I do think the reason Trump likes to keep this speculation alive is to appear more powerful than he is, and to avoid the weakness that comes along with presidential lame duck status as he approaches his final years in office.
In the short term, I’m far more focused on the Trump Administration’s active efforts to subvert the 2026 midterms - an election that President Trump sees as a real threat to his power.
As we know, President Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the January 6 insurrection tested the guardrails of our democracy. That time, democracy won, but Trump and his allies identified the vulnerabilities in our system. Now, they’re laser targeting those same vulnerabilities. But Democrats and state election officials have learned from that experience, too, and there are tools they can use to combat any efforts in 2026.
Before I dive into what the Trump Administration is planning and the ways Democrats can and will combat it, we need to be clear about the “why” up front.
President Donald Trump is politically weaker than he appears. Multiple polls have found Trump’s approval numbers dipping below 40%, he’s underwater on all key issues, Republicans are down by 9 points in the latest generic ballot polling, and Democrats are outpacing Republicans in party identification, according to Gallup.
This fear of losing the midterms is why Trump is pressuring Republicans to implement mid-decade gerrymandering, seeking to normalize National Guard deployments in Democratic cities, ordering the Justice Department (DOJ) to monitor elections in California and New Jersey, and requesting voter data from states.
These moves are all coming from a place of deepening political weakness. Now that we’re grounded in that underlying truth, let’s dive into Trump’s 2026 scheme.
Last week, one of the most important stories of the year was published in The New York Times. It was headlined: “Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances.”
The article extensively detailed how the Trump Administration has gone to great lengths to install election deniers in key positions of power.
Most notably, you have Heather Honey, a well-known election denier who was appointed to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Honey is also reportedly operating in an advisory capacity to the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Another election denier, Marci McCarthy, was installed as the Director of Public Affairs at CISA. This comes after CISA has seen a dramatic downsizing, as around 25 election experts were ousted.
Trump has been obsessed with how elections are conducted, as evidenced by his targeting of voter registration rules, mail-in voting, and early voting. It’s in this area that his new appointees to DHS are aiming to interfere.
Heather Honey has given us a clue as to what the Trump Administration might attempt to do ahead of the 2026 midterms. Honey has suggested that President Trump could declare a “national emergency” and seek to mandate states to change their election rules. According to The Times:
On a call with right-wing activists in March, before her appointment to the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Honey suggested that the new administration could declare a “national emergency” and justify dictating new rules to state and local governments. She said this could be based on an “actual investigation” of the 2020 election if it showed there had been a “manipulation” of the vote.
“And therefore, we have some additional powers that don’t exist right now,” she said in March, according to a recording reviewed by The New York Times from someone who joined the call, “and therefore, we can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.”
She added, “I don’t know if that’s really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory.”
Of course, this is a move that would very likely be blocked by the courts. It fits the Trump Administration’s pattern of declaring false national emergencies to justify power grabs.
On Tuesday, Atlantic Staff Writer David A. Graham also published an excellent piece on Trump's plot titled “Donald Trump’s Plan to Subvert the Midterms Is Already Under Way.” Graham outlined the potential for election interference and depicted potential scenarios of what Trump could do before, on, and after election day. He cited Cleta Mitchell, who echoed Heather Honey’s call for an emergency declaration, but this time on election day as a pretext to deploy troops for voter intimidation. Graham writes:
The administration could try to get around the ban on troops at polling places in a few ways. Cleta Mitchell, a conservative lawyer who was involved in “Stop the Steal” efforts in 2020 and remains influential in the White House, suggested in September that Trump could use emergency powers. “The chief executive is limited in his role with regard to elections, except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States,” she said on a conservative talk show. “I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.” Trump might allege foreign interference in the elections—asserting, for example, that Iranian hackers had changed voter results—in order to claim that national security required him to intervene.
This is, of course, blatantly illegal. False emergency declarations are just some of the many abuses of power the Trump Administration is considering ahead of the midterms.
After election day, we could see similar efforts to what we saw in 2020. There could be immediate efforts to stop vote counts in districts where Republicans appear ahead, also called the “red mirage,” to prevent the counting of more Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots. This could come in the form of public calls from Trump himself, echoing his “STOP THE COUNT!” post in 2020, as well as lawsuits to stop the count, or throw out votes that have already been counted.
Fortunately, with 2020 as precedent, zero federal courts had the appetite for this, including the Supreme Court. Similar attempts to seize voting machines will also likely be blocked, but unfortunately, Trump is now surrounded by loyalists who might not prevent him from trying this, like they did in his first term.
President Trump and his allies could also deploy a similar pressure campaign targeting local election officials, seeking to pressure them not to certify vote counts over false allegations of fraud. But here is where Trump runs into the biggest bulwark against his efforts: battleground states run by Democrats.
Elections are run by states. Full stop. This is why, in hindsight, we could come to see the 2022 midterms, where election deniers lost state-level races in all key battleground states, as among the most consequential in modern history.
In the 13 races in six battleground states where an election denier was running for Governor, Secretary of State, or Attorney General, all 13 of them lost. Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all now run by Democratic Governors who will oversee the 2026 midterms. And in Nevada, there is a Democratic Secretary of State.
I broke this down last week in an appearance on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour on a Nightcap panel with Stephanie Ruhle, Chris Hayes, Tim O’Brien, and Jake Lahut:
It’s Democratic states, especially the swing states I mentioned above and states with swing districts like New York and California, that hold the key to the House majority.
These Democratic state officials could be a bulwark against Trump’s efforts to interfere in the 2026 elections. They have National Guards of their own and could simply refuse to comply with any unlawful executive orders seeking to change their local election rules. They could also file lawsuits combating Trump’s attempts to interfere with vote counting or certification. There are a lot of tools at their disposal.
Could you imagine if election deniers, like Kari Lake, had won battleground state governorships in 2022? We’d be in an entirely different ball game heading into 2026.
I outline all this to say that yes, the Trump Administration is clearly plotting and laying the groundwork for more overt interference in the 2026 midterms than they’ve already done through gerrymandering. But these moves are no more legal than they were in 2020, and while Trump might have more loyalists who could help him with this plot, Democrats, journalists, and everyday Americans know what to expect and can prepare ahead of time. This isn’t our first rodeo.
