Donald Trump greets a child during Halloween on the South Lawn of the White House, October 30, 2025.
(Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Donald Trump, a man who loves to hold grudges and plot revenge, has never come to terms with his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. To this day, he refuses to admit that he was defeated fair and square, preferring the comforting fantasy that the election was stolen.
The 2020 myth has become central to Trump's political identity. This bolstered his efforts to overturn the election results that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. His position as a noble victim of injustice helped keep the MAGA movement united during the Joe Biden years. And it allowed him to portray his victory in 2024 as nothing less than a triumph over political evil.
With Trump now in the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court currently in lazy Republican hands, the president wields enormous power in Washington. But his desire for revenge was not satisfied. As well as his desire to constantly control the political system.
The most serious threat to Trump's power is the 2026 midterm elections, which could result in the Democratic Party taking control of the House of Representatives and, if they are especially lucky, the Senate. And Trump can't stand it.
July 26, 2024 at a rally in Florida Trump made a wonderful promise to his followers: “Christians, come out and vote, just this once. You won't have to do this anymore. Four more years, you know what, everything will be fixed, everything will be all right. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. We will fix everything so well that you won't have to vote.” Now, back in power, Trump intends to fulfill his promise. He continues to talk about how he was robbed in 2020 and push for changes to the electoral system to prevent this alleged travesty from happening again. But as is often the case with Trump, his accusations contain more than just a hint of psychological projection: the real purpose of his vaunted election reform is not to prevent the election from being stolen, but to allow Trump to be the one who steals.
Some of Trump's attempts to fix the system so his supporters don't have to worry about voting have been thwarted by the political system. March 25 Trump signed a decree with strict new election rules, including much stricter citizenship verification requirements and restrictions on the use of mail-in ballots. Less than two months later, Federal Judge Denise J. Kasper overturned this unilateral move, noting: “The Constitution does not give the President any specific authority over [voting rules]” Republican legislative efforts to pass Trump-friendly election reform are stalled in Congress, where Republicans are unable to overcome the filibuster in the Senate.
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But Trump still has broad discretion to appoint officials involved in overseeing elections, directing federal law enforcement agencies and deploying the National Guard. And there are many signs that this president is interested in using his powers to shape the outcome of the midterm elections.
Much more than during his first term, Trump has actively appointed hyperloyalists to his administration, many of whom embrace the myth of a stolen 2020 election and want to use executive power to prevent Democrats from winning in 2026. One of the faithful is Heather Honey, whom Trump appointed in August as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security. Her main qualification for the role is that she has been an outspoken election denialist since 2020, actively promoting the false claim that Pennsylvania had a fraudulent vote that carried the state to Biden.
New York Times reports that in March, before her appointment, Honey spoke with a group of right-wing activists and argued that the White House should declare a “national emergency” as a way to change election rules.
Honey continued, “And therefore we have some additional powers that don't exist right now, and therefore we can take these other steps without Congress and we can compel states to do things and so on.” She added that the plan may not be feasible.
Honey is part of a larger trend as Time Notes:
Over the past few months, Mr. Trump has promoted many of his fraud allegations to senior administration positions. Now, as government insiders, these activists can use their newfound power to discredit future results or revive old grievances to make the case for federal intrusion into local voting systems.
The downside to the rise of figures like Heather Honey is the dismissal and punishment of those who thwarted Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. One example is Chris Krebs, who, as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, confirmed the security of the 2020 elections. For this, Krebs was fired by Trump and stripped of his security clearance. Trump also pushed the Justice Department to investigate Krebs.
And Trump could go much further in his authoritarian quest. Sign up for Mother JonesAri Berman stated possible scenario of military intervention, according to which
Trump's mass deportation program could become a massive election control apparatus deployed against his political opponents. This could include the president federalizing the National Guard (as in Los Angeles And Washington, DC) and orders the military to patrol polling places, requires citizenship checks at polling places, authorizes ICE raids in Democratic areas ahead of elections, and arrests political leaders who disobey his policies.
Ahead of the midterm elections, the department is likely to conduct high-profile investigations into alleged voter fraud and will lean toward states adopting restrictive policies that could include removing eligible voters from the rolls, challenging mail-in ballots and targeting Democratic election officials. Indeed, Project 2025, a notorious conservative project of the second Trump administration, went so far as to call for the department to use one of the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan laws to harass election officials who make recommendations that Republicans disagree with.
One Trump associate who appears to support this policy is Steve Bannon. As Berman notes, Bannon said in August, “They at MSNBC and CNN are terrified that, hey, as we take control of cities, there will be ICE officers outside polling places. You're damn right.”
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If Trump does try to steal the midterm elections, how can he be stopped? Two writers who have explored this issue are Berman. V Mother Jones and David Graham V Atlantic— both point to the courts as a likely test. It's true that in federal courts, where most election disputes are decided, Trump usually loses. Sending troops to the polls would be completely illegal—perhaps even illegal enough for the Supreme Court, which has largely been disinclined to test Trump's power.
The problem is that Trump brazenly broke the law and allowed a slow judicial rebuke to come later. Given the prospect of military interference in the elections, faster action is needed. The only path left is mass mobilization for civil resistance.
Earlier this month, Ezra Levin, organizer of the No Kings campaign, said Traffic lights“If they overturn the election results next year, you're going to need some kind of response that doesn't allow society to move on.” Everything we have seen in Trump's second term shows that he is willing to break through the political system unless he meets opposition. As for stopping his plans to steal the 2020 election, it's possible that the skating rink will have to be stopped with bodies in the street.
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