November 3 is 260 days away. Between now and then, no story is more consequential to the survival of our republic than Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the midterm elections. These biennial contests have long been viewed as an interesting political exercise about the popularity of the president and his administration’s policies.
If only things were still so innocent and uncomplicated. The current president is applying maximum pressure trying to ensure the election keeps Republicans in power, whatever the cost to our democracy.
The latest misadventure by Trump and his minions was on Friday when Kristi Noem, the oft-criticized Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made it clear she believes her agency should be involved in election integrity, claiming she has the authority to find “vulnerabilities” in the election system to make sure they are “run correctly.”
The last thing this country needs is ICE agents or DHS involved in elections. Noem was in Arizona when she made these remarks, speaking to election deniers about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
The SAVE Act, which passed the House on Thursday, includes a provision that requires a photo ID to vote and one that would mandate people to prove their citizenship by producing a birth certificate or passport when registering to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 21 million Americans, or 9% of the voting public, lack easy access to these documents, and half of Americans don’t even possess a passport.
Young voters and people of color, who tend to vote Democratic, would be disproportionately affected by this requirement. Women who change their last names when they marry would face new hurdles when registering since the name on their birth certificate would not match current identification. Eighty-five percent of married women take their husband’s name or hyphenate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there is currently no pathway to passage of the SAVE Act in the Senate, deliberately avoiding calls for elimination of the filibuster. That didn’t sit well with Trump, who took to social media in a huff. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” he wrote. Whether it is constitutional or not.
Trump’s unyielding election denialism and his ever-increasing menu of illegal maneuvers to subvert the election come not from any evidence that U.S. elections are rife with fraud but from his inability to admit he lost in 2020. His tacit understanding is that Republicans will lose big in November— and that it will be his fault.
New polling in the wake of Alex Pretti’s killing at the hands of federal agents and recent, disturbing revelations in the Epstein files shows Trump’s approval rating average has hit an all-time low. He is currently 15 points underwater and less popular than Joe Biden was at this point in his presidency.
The fact that midterm elections tend to be referenda on a president’s policies does not bode well for Republicans’ chances in November. Trump’s approval on his top agenda items, immigration enforcement and the economy, are also underwater.
Historically, when a sitting president’s approval is above 50% he should expect to lose a handful of House seats in the midterm elections. The loss of three seats in 2026 would result in the Democrats retaking the majority.
When a president’s approval dips below 50%, the predictions are far worse. Trump, who hasn’t been at or above 50% approval for more than a year, may lose at least 32 congressional seats, according to an analysis by Gallup.
According to Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias, Trump’s election subversion timeline is right on schedule. First, he lies about voting and fraud, which he has been doing since Day One of his second term. When that loses steam, he tries to gain traction by going to the courts. When those cases inevitably fail, as they have almost every time since he started this practice in 2016, he resorts to abusing executive power. This is roughly where we’ve been and where we are.
Since he can’t win in a court of law, he makes his case in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, he has achieved significantly more success there.
It is worth mentioning that Trump had no problem with the 2016 or 2024 presidential election results, the ones he won. Only the results of 2020 remain in doubt in his mind.
But he has done a masterful job conning millions of people into believing that one election was rigged — this despite mountains of evidence that it was free and fair, according to multiple independent organizations including the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank and the University of Maryland Center for Democracy. Even the far-right Heritage Foundation’s own data shows fewer than 100 noncitizens have voted since 1982!
But lack of evidence has never stopped this president.
A frustrating paradox of our current political state is that democratic mechanisms are being used to undermine democracy itself. Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way call Trump’s form of governance “competitive authoritarianism,” a hybrid regime where democratic institutions — elections, the courts, the media — still exist but are forcibly skewed in favor of those in power, tipping the scales so they may remain in power.
Election subversion is one tactic of “competitive authoritarianism.” It is used to legally hold onto power by corrupting elections to prevent the true winner from taking office. It allows for elections to take place, while supplying a patina of legitimacy. Think Hungary and Viktor Orbán, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey, or Venezuela under Hugo Chávez.
For a man who claims to be worried about the safety of our elections Trump has a dangerous way of showing it. He dismantled the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helped states keep our elections safe, especially from the increased threat of cyber attacks. He fired or sidelined election security personnel. He threatened to prosecute election officials in states where he didn’t like the outcome in 2020.
He demanded voter files from all 50 states and the District of Columbia in order to purge legitimate voters from the rolls, which he has no authority to do. Twenty-four states, including some red states, have not complied. So he took them to court, unsuccessfully so far.
He is now promising an executive order that would require photo identification to vote and ban mail-in ballots. He seems undeterred by the fact that he issued a similar order last March and was blocked by a federal court.
Recent election wins by Democrats, low approval ratings, and defeats in court are fueling Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to find ways to manipulate the system to guarantee Republicans wins in November.
This election is shaping up to be one of the most consequential of my lifetime. The very foundation of our constitutional republic, based on the principles of freedom and democracy, is at stake.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
