Donald Trump makes it clear every day that that he doesn’t fear losing anything during the upcoming midterm elections, either because there will be no midterms or, if there are, he will rig them so tightly that Republicans will retain control of both houses of Congress.
He told his followers during his presidential campaign that if they will vote for him they may never have to vote again, and he plainly meant it. He’s sort-of backed off on that, but he is openly doing everything he can to rig November’s midterm elections, and every election after that, so that he wins.
But not to worry. It ain’t gonna happen. None of it.
Under a headline that read, “Trump Can’t Steal the Midterms: The case for being vigilant without panicking” (The Bulwark newsletter, Feb. 17), Nicholas Grossman explains why none of Trump’s stated attempts to kill or rig the midterms can work. He took Trump’s actions/threats one at a time and explained, in great detail and with deep background, why each is doomed to fail. What follows is mostly my brief condensation of Nicholas’ points, but if you’d like to read the entire newsletter, click here.
Nationalize the elections: Trump has said he wants to “nationalize” the elections and put Republicans in control of running them.
But elections are administered at the state and county levels and, as Grossman writes, “No matter how much Team Trump disregards norms and laws, there’s no mechanism for taking over state elections, reversing losses, or preventing newly elected members of Congress from sitting, especially if Republicans lose by substantial margins.”
So the midterms will happen, they will be handled at the state and county levels as always, and every indication is that Democrats will win by a landslide. Reasons for that optimism: numerous Republicans aren’t running for re-election; anti-Trump protests have been huge across the nation, and all indications are that the protests will turn into votes; the president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms, especially when the president’s approval rating is as low as Trump’s is; Democrats have won every election since Trump took office, often by big margins; Trump’s party consistently underperforms when he isn’t on the ballot, as many of the lower-propensity voters who powered him to victory don’t show up; and all the polls agree. Trump and company are going down.
Gerrymander the states: Trump persuaded Texas to redistrict in such a way that it could give Republicans five more seats in the House, but then California did the same to provide five Democrats, thus neutralizing the Texas gains. So then Trump pushed other red states to follow Texas’ lead. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio did so, and Florida is in court to get the opportunity.
However, other red states declined, such as Indiana, where the Republican-led state senate voted down an aggressive gerrymander despite Trump’s urging. Meanwhile, blue states started following California’s lead, so there is reason to believe that all this partisan gerrymandering will turn out to be a wash. Even if Republicans max out their gains they could only net up to four new seats, which could be overwhelmed by big voting margins. A blue wave that swings the House by anything close to 40 seats – Democrats gained 41 seats during the midterms in Trump’s first reign — and puts the Senate in play would be impossible to stop.
Station ICE agents at polling places: Trump has threatened to send ICE agents to polling places. The idea is that ICE agents stalking around polling places, especially in areas with large nonwhite populations, would strike fear in the hearts of many people, especially Brown people, and keep them from voting.
That is a plausible possibility, but doing it would most likely backfire in Trump’s face. For one thing, the agents would have to deal with angry, camera-wielding U.S. citizens everywhere they went – think Minnesota. For another, there are not nearly enough ICE agents in existence to cover enough polling places to make a difference. And, thirdly, they could cause a voting backlash and thus defeat their own efforts.
Seize ballot boxes: Trump has said that he wishes he had seized ballot boxes in the last election, and he has hinted he might seize them in the upcoming midterms. They could then claim fraud, withhold votes, and disenfranchise select voters.
But changing electoral outcomes by seizing ballot boxes would require big numbers, careful planning and surgical precision. They’d need to identify which races would be close losses, and which locations represent the margin of votes for each. Then they would have to send a large number of agents to all of them, and the agents would have to get in and remove many ballots, enough of the right ballots to flip the outcome, all before these various locations could count and report. That would require considerably more capacity, coordination and competence than the Trump administration has displayed.
Reject the new Congress: Trump has suggested the possibility of preventing newly elected congresspersons from taking office, as House Speaker Mike Johnson did with Adelita Grijalva after she won a special election in 2025. Or Trump could simply declare the new Congress illegitimate. He might try, but there is no mechanism to make either happen.
As for Johnson refusing to seat representatives, the current Congress ends at noon on Jan. 3, 2027, and a new one takes office. Johnson will no longer be speaker and will have no authority over seating new members.
And if Trump tries to declare Congress illegitimate, states will defend their vote counts and assert their citizens’ rights to congressional representation. There will be lawsuits and court orders galore. Newly elected legislators will demand to be seated, perhaps going so far as to meet elsewhere, claiming to be the legitimate Congress. Mass protests will spring up throughout the country, especially in Washington, D.C. Even if Trump tries to steal Congress this way – which, really, is unlikely — he couldn’t sustain it.
Get Congress to pass the SAVE Act: This is the big one. The SAVE Act, or the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is a proposed federal law that would require all Americans to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship — like a passport or birth certificate — when registering to vote in federal elections. It also would require voters to show government-issued photo identification at the polls.
Republicans insist that the legislation is necessary to secure elections against an onslaught of fraudulent voting by undocumented immigrants, even though there is no evidence that such fraud is taking place anywhere and overwhelming evidence that it is not.
Democrats say the legislation would remove millions of legitimate voters from the rolls – most of them Democrats by far — and would intimidate many others from voting. More than half of Americans do not have passports, and many others do not have birth certificates. Married women who took their husbands’ names would have to produce notarized wedding information to explain why the name on the birth certificate is not the same as the name on the voting list. The measure also would give the Department of Homeland Security access to voter rolls.
Republicans are openly saying they cannot win the midterms if they fail to enact the SAVE Act and they are coming under intense pressure from Trump to get it done. In a recent social media post, Trump said Republicans will lose the midterms if the bill fails so it must pass “one way or the other,” even if that means resorting to “a Talking Filibuster, à la ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has been reluctant to comply with that idea. He points out that such a move would involve using tactics that haven’t been employed for decades, and it could paralyze the Senate indefinitely with no guarantee of success. He says a round-the-clock filibuster would hold up important bills that the Senate must pass, such as housing, farm and highway bills. It also would prevent other legislative activity, punish senators who typically work a three-day week in the Capitol, slow if not halt confirmations, and subject Republicans to politically tricky votes lawmakers toil to avoid in the months before they face voters
Bottom line: This is an ideal time to telephone your senator – 202-224-3121 – and strongly suggest he/she vote against the SAVE Act. It could be the most important thing you do today.
I’ve said it before many times and I will say it again: We must win, we can win, we are winning and we will win – if we participate now and vote in November. Please, do your part. Today.
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