“We have achieved so much that, if you think about it, we shouldn’t even have an election”.
The president of the United States, Donald Trumputtered this phrase this week to talk about the legislative elections in November. In those elections The entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are renewed and the democratsaccording to the surveys and in what would continue the historical trend of punishment of the party in power, have serious options to regain control at least of the Lower House.
That scenario, which would return the country to a divided government but also to the idea that has been fading in the last year that there are effective checks and balances, is what experts like the historian Kevin Kruse, who believes that “the legislatures will present a severe corrective for the president. His actions are unpopular on all fronts and, as we have seen in the small preview that they offered elections in 2025, voters seem ready to punish him by supporting the Democrats.
“If the Democrats can regain control of the House, the Senate or both we could finally see some real efforts to rein in their madness and demand real accountability”says the Princeton professor in an email.
The fear of impeachment
That potential victory for the Democrats, who mainly and for the moment are organizing their strategy around the majority disenchantment with the direction of the economy (Trump only has 40% approval in that area), it is precisely what the president fears. And the Republican is aware that not only your agenda would be stopped, but that his government could be subjected to investigations and, himself, to a third “impeachment”.
This is what he said on January 6, in the fifth anniversary of the assault on the Capitolat a meeting of Republicans (held at the renamed Trump-Kennedy Center). And it is the ghost that Republican operatives have put into their strategy since last summer to try to motivate voters.
“The joke” and the facts
Las Trump’s words about skipping the electionlatest iteration of an idea that he often repeats, cause chills, even though the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has tried to justify saying them “in joke“And it is that the steps are not jokes that Trump is already giving. “In all areas of the executive branch he is trying to do things you may not have authority to do or what of course have never been tried”said Trey Grayson, who was Secretary of State in Kentucky.
Seeking to influence the elections, for example, Trump has already promoted ideas such as redesigning districts to favor the results for Republicans, a fight in which the Democrats have responded, in which the courts have been involved and where the Supreme Court can make momentous decisions before November.
Trump has also resurrected campaigns that he already launched during his first presidency and after the 2020 defeat against Joe Biden, such as the attack on voting by mail or the voting machines.
Their problematic actions they go further. He has filled his government with electoral “denialists”, allies of the “big lie” of fraud in 2020 that sparked the assault on the Capitol. Although the organization and execution of elections falls on the statesthose senior positions in Departments and agencies such as Justice, National Security or FBI They have the power to affect or at least hinder the state function. His government has also drastically reduced the role of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency in protecting elections.
In another of the most problematic tactics, Justice has begun to request private information from millions of voters in 43 statessomething to which the federal government is not entitled without authorization from Congress and which Congress has not given. But eight states have already provided them, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, and 23 of those who have refused to do so and the District of Columbia have been defendants.
Behind the strategy, according to experts in elections and electoral laws, is both the idea of influencing the electoral roll and that of expand false narratives about supposed problems with the electoral systeml that could be brandished and agitated if candidates aligned with Trump lose.
Military deployment?
One of the biggest concerns that is spreading is that of that Trump is going to try to deploy troopswhether it’s active military or, as he has already done in Democratic-run cities during his first year, members of the National Guard that he puts under his authority. Although federal law prohibits such military deployment in voting centers or voter intimidation, the invocation of the Insurrection Act with which he has threatened this week in the face of growing tensions in Minneapolis precisely due to the actions of federal agents opens horror scenes.
Rachel Bitecofer, political scientist and Democratic analyst and strategist, who in 2024 wrote the book ‘Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts’, believes that “the legislative elections will be electorally very strong for the Democratsjust as in 2018 they were already a rejection of Trump. In fact,” as he explains in an email, he estimates that “this year’s rejection will possibly be even more intense given the institutional purges, authoritarian consolidation and state violence that is being seen.”
That expectation It is, however, and according to Bitecofer, “dangerous in itself.” “As it becomes more obvious throughout the year that the Republicans are approaching a decisive defeat in the midterms, I anticipate that Trump will become more desperate and more dangerous”he reflects.” Authoritarian leaders who face rejection at the polls typically do not moderate, they escalate”.
There are those, like political scientist Calvin Jilson, who believe that this scenario is “more than anything a nightmare of the left“which, according to the professor at Texas Southern Methodist University told ‘Newsweek’, it is doubtful that it will become a reality. Across the ideological spectrum, however, there are fears, and signs, that Trump is willing to go further than expected. It’s not just what Democratic election authorities or party leaders like Chuck Schumer declare. Steve Bannon has stated on his podcast that he hopes to see ICE agents patrolling voting centers. And in another podcast Cleta Michell, lawyer and Trump ally who advised him in 2020, said in September that Trump could make electoral changes declaring a national emergency. It would not be, by any means, the first in his arsenal.
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