Trump’s Election Intimidation Strategy

As we move inexorably closer to the 2026 mid-term elections, history and some current polling material tells us that the party out of power in the White House can anticipate winning a substantial number of seats in the House (and perhaps even the majority). Increasingly, a chorus of legitimate concerns has been raised about whether the elections will be allowed to proceed. Cancelling elections during wars, civil or political unrest or just because the incumbent doesn’t like the idea of an electoral check on his power is a routine maneuver by totalitarian regimes. It has never happened in the United States: not even during the Civil War.

But, in 2026, a lot of people aren’t so sure that record will be sustained, and for good reason. Donald Trump has mused more than once about deferring elections either because things are moving along so smoothly under Republican control or because of his fanciful prediction that the outcome would be fraudulent, especially if Republicans lost. “When you think of it,” Trump told a reporter, “we shouldn’t even have an election” because he has been so successful during his first year back in the White House (during which his popularity has plummeted to the low thirty percents).

To say Trump is obsessed about elections is a serious understatement. Read any interview he gives, on any subject and his unsubstantiated allegation about the theft of the 2020 election will come up. Dozens of judges, appointed by everyone from Clinton to Trump, have rejected such assertions, but Trump continues to insist he not only won in 2020, but that he won massive victories in all three elections in which his name appeared. He continues to pressure states into passing mid-decade reapportionment of House seats to deprive Democrats – and especially minorities – of fair representation.

Trump is far more likely to manipulate the mid-terms than cancel them (although one would be foolhardy to rule out any possibility where Trump is concerned). He is auditioning his game plan in Democratic electoral strongholds right now for what is undoubtedly a maneuver to reduce Democratic victories in November. It is fairly obvious that the deployment of federal force – ICE and FBI agents, out of state national guard troops and potentially active duty members of the armed forces – has nothing to do with the president’s stated goals of arresting undocumented criminals or suppressing civil unrest. Few of those taken into custody by Trump’s goon squads have criminal records. It should be pointed out that Barack Obama managed to apprehend and deport as many criminal aliens as Trump without shooting citizens in their cars and inciting disorder as a self-fulfilling act of provocation to justify sending troops into urban areas where distrust of law enforcement is historically high. Meanwhile, Trump has pulled back on enforcement against businesses in more rural areas where large numbers of undocumented people are known to work.

Trump’s strategy is to normalize the presence of federal thugs wearing camouflage gear and masks, sporting semi-automatic weapons, flash bang grenades, pepper spray and tear gas in places where no such presence is required, and against the express wishes of local elected officials (including law enforcement officials). Trump launches the troops into Democratic-run cities on ludicrous pretexts, militarizes law enforcement and terrorizes the local population. Anyone who cannot see that gameplan being extended to employing federal armed forces to “prevent election fraud” in November is just not using their imagination.

This scenario doesn’t require cancelling elections; intimidating voters will do just fine. Trump doesn’t need to suspend all voting when frightening a crucial portion of the electorate will work just fine. We know that many minority Americans are understandably fearful of contact with law enforcement and even government agencies designed to provide benefits to them, to the point they avoid sending their children to Head Start or attending parent-teacher conferences. Running the gauntlet of heavily armed goons, facing hostile questioning while standing on long lines waiting to vote, being required to prove citizenship before entering a polling place – seriously, we know the impact when word of such intimidation tactics gets around.

Now, in a normal America, many of these voters could avoid unwarranted scrutiny on Election Day by choosing to vote in any of the proven methods for casting a ballot —  early voting, mail-in ballots, absentee voting without a note from your doctor or travel agent. But, of course, Trump is coming after those venerable voting methods that are disproportionately used by Democrats, 58% vs. 29% for Republicans. Overall, one-third of Americans voted absentee in 2024, most heavily older, white and overseas armed forces voters. But, even though many in these categories voted for him, Trump asserts such legitimate voting procedures are rife with fraud because he knows this), they may well facilitate the election of those who will seek to check his use of authoritarian power via congressional oversight. Allow such innovations as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting, Trump declared in 2020, and “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

So, when you see the National Guard patrolling subway and rail stations or are dumbstruck at the senseless brutality of masked ICE thugs smashing windows and doors, don’t view it as simply an assault on vulnerable minorities and protestors. Trump wants Americans to get used to viewing masked men in uniforms and para-military SWAT teams as a normal feature of life in American cities. It’s an assault on the Constitution and on democracy, and the message is clear: “Defy Trump or even threaten to challenge him, and we’re coming for you.”

And they are. On Election Day.

Correction…

Two eagle-eyed readers who know the Senate rules and precedents cold caught an error in my most recent DOMEocracy blog, “Votes Reveal Weakness of GOP Leaders.” In the blog, I argued that House speaker Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader John Thune had demonstrated limited ability to control their fractious conferences. I cited the votes extending ACA health benefits and on the motion to take up the bipartisan bill to constrain Trump’s initiatives regarding Venezuela as examples. I noted that Thune should have easily found the votes needed to employ a filibuster to prevent Senate consideration of the War Powers legislation. My overall point was sound – both leaders face deep challenges from hardline factions that confound their ability to pass major legislation. But the supermajority cloture requirement wasn’t the issue in this case because under Senate rules on a War Powers matter, approving the motion to take up such legislation requires only 51 votes, not the 60 needed to end a typical filibuster. Thune was able to break loose two of the five holdouts and table the resolution but the fact that he had to work that hard to come up with a simple majority illustrates my point that weak Republican leaders, combined with members who have the willingness to defy them, is a bad combination. Thanks to Charlie and Jim; it’s great to know people are reading the blog, even if it’s only to tell me I got it wrong!

Votes Reveal Weakness of GOP Leaders

Much attention is understandably being focused on two key votes this past week – one in the House and one in the Senate – that suggest that Donald Trump’s formidable domination of Republican legislators may be fraying. On Thursday, the House passed a key Democratic priority – a three year extension of the premium supports for health insurance – by a margin of 230-196. Seventeen Republicans joined all Democrats in support of the measure, which was forced to the floor through a once obscure parliamentary device called a discharge petition.

The same day, the Senate voted 52 to 47 to begin debate on a resolution to curtail the ability of the president from taking additional military action against Venezuela without first receiving specific authorization from Congress. Five Republicans joined with all Democrats to approve the procedural vote, which was approved without having to clear a filibuster. It remains to be seen if all of them, or more, will vote for the measure itself when it comes to the floor.

Trump was so exorcised by the impudence of senators asserting their Article I power – he characteized the measure as “tak[ing] away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America” — that he declared that the offending Republicans “should never be elected to office again.” A furious Trump called Sen. Susan Collins and “read her the riot act” in what another Senate Republican described as a “profanity-laced rant”: an interesting way to engage with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, not a person with whom presidents typically begin personal battles.

Press accounts of the two votes described the outcomes as a “rebuke” of Trump, although his disdain for the House-passed health measure may not excite the level of vitriol prompted by the Senate’s perceived knuckle-rapping over war powers. But the more significant signal sent by the two votes, regardless of whether either one ever becomes law, is how they expose the historically weak control of the two Republican leaders, neither of whom supported the bills they allowed to proceed to the floor, but lacked the gravitas to flex their muscle and prevent their passage.

Mike Johnson (R-LA), every Republican’s fifth choice for the speakership, holds the same weak hand as his three GOP predecessors – John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy: a thin margin over Democrats and a substantial hardline, anti-government faction in his own party that complicates the business of governing. Boehner recognized the vulnerable position his new Tea Party-driven faction put him in even before he was sworn in as speaker in 2011, and the anti-governing clique has grown ever stronger in the last fifteen years. As McCarthy found out in 2023, a small group of disaffected Republicans can force a no confidence vote to vacate the speaker’s chair, which cripples Johnson’s ability to cajole his nihilists into supporting all but the most extreme legislation.

The narrow margin also empowers the miniscule (and diminishing) “moderate” faction of House Republicans who, by joining with Democrats, can force legislation to the floor over the objection of the Speaker and the majority. Such was the case last year with the vote on the bill to require the Trump Administration to release all of the materials it holds on the Jeffrey Epstein case.

But a discharge petition does not leave a speaker with no cards to play. There are a number of parliamentary maneuvers a speaker can use to delay a vote or force a vote on an alternative measure on the same topic. What is significant about the health bill was that Johnson took no obstructive action to derail the vote. That inaction speaks volumes about the tenuousness of Johnson’s command of the Republican conference: he knows he cannot risk the anger of Republicans in Democratic-leaning districts whose constituents are now feeling substantial premium increases which they rightly blame on Republicans. By allowing the vote to come to the floor on the Democrats’ measure, Johnson exposes his weakness and that of his party on this issue that could play a decisive role in the mid-term election this November, as well as his own inability to manage a raucous and faction-riven GOP conference.

Similarly, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) could easily have orchestrated a filibuster threat against the Venezuela measure, as Trump almost certainly would have preferred to its passage, notwithstanding his recent tirade to end the filibuster. But Thune also has a razor-thin margin and must contend with the demands of senators like Collins and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) whom he cannot afford to lose on other legislation. Moreover, those senators were joined by three others — Rand Paul (KY), Todd Young (IN) and Josh Hawley (MO) – who are indisputable conservatives who nevertheless refuse to abandon the Senate’s constitutional duties on matters of war and peace. Thune could have gone to a reliable ally and ginned up a filibuster with a reasonable assurance the supporters of the bill would not find the 60 votes needed for cloture, but his own operational vulnerabilities forced him instead to allow the vote and incur Trump’s wrath.

These weaknesses of the two Republican leaders make it difficult to predict the future of the two bills. While it has been widely assumed the House health bill will languish in the Senate, it is also possible that, given the widespread support for extension of the premium supports – 59% of Republicans and 57% of MAGA supporters – Thune will cave and allow the bill to come to the floor as he did with the Epstein measure. Its passage is all but certain (since the majority of those impacted by the premium hikes live in states with Republican senators). Johnson is less likely to allow a vote on the Senate’s Venezuela measure, but will have to contend with his front line members will surely be averse to sitting on their hands when two-thirds of Americans oppose a Venezuela policy driven by Trump’s desire to control that nation’s oil.

Thin margins, faction-ridden members, an uncertain ability to legislate on consequential legislation and a looming mid-term election with an underwater president in the White House are all sufficient reasons for concern about congressional Republicans. Recent events reveal the deep weakness of the party’s captains as they head into very stormy political seas.