At issue is the realization of elections. Or non -realization
Will Trump cancel the elections? Democrats are increasingly alarmed
by Aaron BlakeCNN
When President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month, the theme was the important question of the end of the Ukraine invasion of Russia. But at one point, Trump made a provocative deviation to talk about internal politics.
Zelensky noted that in Ukraine the law does not allow elections for periods of martial bills.
“So you say that during the war you can’t have elections?” Trump reacted. “So let me just say, in three and a half years-then you mean that if we are [os EUA] At war with someone, will there be no more elections? Oh, that’s good. “
It was a laugh. Trump questioned aloud what “false news” would do with his comment.
But increasingly, Democrats are not laughing.
A growing number of Democrats argues that Trump will do something to try to cancel or control the elections to maintain his power.
This may seem ridiculous to some. Trump did not explicitly say that he plans to cancel the elections and said last month that “probably not” would apply for a third term, which the Constitution prohibits anyway. But the president has certainly raised such possibilities before and has done many undemocratic things. And their extraordinary measures to assume more control over the electoral process and send troops to US territory are already making the alarms sound (a judge said on Tuesday that Trump was actually “creating a national police force with the president as his boss”).
Illinois governor JB Pritzker said on Sunday that Trump’s threat of sending troops to cities like Chicago was part of the plan.
“The other goals are that he would like to prevent the elections in 2026 or, frankly, to take control of these elections,” said the Democratic governor during CBS’s “Face The Nation.”
“He will simply claim that there is a problem with the elections and then he will have troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, it is allowed to do that.”
Pritzker, who can have his own ambitions in the White House race, remembered how Adolf Hitler took only 53 days to turn Germany a dictatorship.
“I can tell you that the manual is the same,” Pritzker claimed. “It’s undermining the media. It is creating chaos that requires military intervention. These are things that happen throughout history and Donald Trump is just following this manual.”
California governor Gavin Newsom presented a very similar theory last week.
Asked about his own plans to run for presidency in 2028, Newsom ignored them, casting doubts about whether this election would be fair or even if it would happen.
Newsom spoke of how the internal agenda law recently passed by Trump made immigration and customs (ICE) the federal agency to apply the law with the highest funding, claiming that Ice is increasingly becoming Trump’s “private police force”. Newon predicted that federal agents would be sent to voting places and then anticipated that Trump would try to suspend the elections completely.
“I don’t think Donald Trump wants another election,” Newsom said at an event organized by the politician.
Pritzker and Newsom are the most influential democrats to propagate such theories. But they are not the only ones.
The representative Yvette Clarke of New York said people should not laugh at what Trump said alongside Zelensky.
“See Trump to fantasize about dragging the United States to a war as a pretext for canceling our elections,” Yvette Clarke said in X. “The room may have laughed, but he’s not playing.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes – who manages the elections of that state – said Trump’s pressure to end correspondence vote is part of a standard.
“What does this pattern lead?” Sources asked the local Ktar News. “It leads to greater erosion of our trust in the elections, which could lead Trump to determine that there is an emergency and cancel the 2026 elections.”
Sources added, “This is where all the evidence point out, and every step, Donald Trump gives us one more reason to believe this can be true.”
And Philadelphia district prosecutor Larry Krasner said last week to CNN’s “Early Start” show that Trump’s use of troops is an attempt to create an excitement.
“The only crisis here is Donald Trump and he wants a crisis because he wants an excuse to cancel the elections in the future,” Krasner said.
“He is talking about the cancellation of elections because of a crisis where there is no crisis. The United States need to wake up. This is serious. We have elected employees who say nothing and do nothing.”
All of these warnings may seem quite alarmists and conspiracy. Trump certainly has no legal power to cancel the elections under federal law.
But Trump also sympathized with these ideas often and demonstrated a true disrespect for democratic norms and electoral law:
- Trump not only tried to nullify the 2020 elections based on lies on electoral fraud, but later transformed those who invaded the US capitol on January 6, 2021, something similar to right -wing heroes;
- Trump has repeatedly talked about the idea of trying a third term in 2028, although this is expressly prohibited by the Constitution.
- By 2020, Trump suggested postponing the elections, although he had no power to do so;
- In 2022, Trump stated that the supposed electoral fraud “allows the revocation of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution”;
- And last year, Trump made strange comments suggesting that Christians who voted for him in 2024 would not have to vote in 2028 because he “would have everything so well resolved.”
After these last comments caused controversy, Fox News host Laura Ingraham invited Trump to clarify them. Trump stated that his critics, who said he wanted to cancel future elections, were being “ridiculous.”
But Trump repeatedly refused to refute these criticisms directly.
The US President has also recently sought to expand his control over the elections-and made it unilaterally through executive action. At the beginning of his term, he sought to reinforce the requirements of proof of citizenship for the electoral registration. And recently, he began to press to end correspondence vote and voting machines.
Trump doesn’t seem to have power to do any of this. But what democrats are increasingly suggesting that it can happen is not a legal attempt to control or cancel the elections, but an extralegal attempt – or one that takes advantage of a manufactured crisis.
And the idea that Trump could take all of this too far is a concern that may not seem so ridiculous to many Americans.
A poll from Public Religion Research Institute last year showed that 49% of Americans said there was a real danger of Trump using the presidency to become a dictator (and this was not just a case where all supporters assumed that the other side would do it; only 28% had the same concern for Kamala Harris).
The question, as always with Trump, is whether it is being provocative only by provocation or if you really have plans to infiltrate the electoral process to try to maintain power.
Democrats are increasingly asking people to start paying attention.
