Michael Sozan talks about his recent article written with Ben Olinsky, and their critically important and comprehensive report: “The Trump Administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Elections to Entrench the Imperial Presidency,” which lays out the existential threat posed to democracy this November and isn’t getting the attention it so desperately deserves right now.
SCOTT HARRIS: First, I’m happy to start by welcoming to Counterpoint, Michael Sozan, a senior fellow for democracy and government at the Center for American Progress. He’s co-author with Ben Olinsky of the recently published article, “The Trump Administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Election to Entrench the Imperial Presidency.” Michael, thank you so much for making time to join our Counterpoint audience this evening. Appreciate it.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely, Scott. I appreciate you having me on.
SCOTT HARRIS: So briefly, tell our audience about the work you and others do at the Center for American Progress. I’m sure most of our listeners have heard of the group think tank and the work you guys do, but yeah, tell us about some of the things that you’re working on recently.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely. So we are a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. We work on a range of issues, not only democracy issues, but economics and the environment, rights and justice, national security, a whole slew of issues. And our north star is really about trying to make life better for everyday Americans with bold and common sense policies. And I happen to work on the democracy team. And of course we’ve been busy in recent years. We focus on ways to try to build a strong, modern, vibrant democracy where everyone can feel truly represented. A democracy for the 21st century. And in recent years, frankly, we’ve had to work a little bit on the defensive, which is really trying to figure out how to counter this authoritarian chapter that we find ourselves in. And so a lot of my work is about just trying to make sure that people can be represented in this democracy and that people can achieve the American dream because of that.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Michael. So your recent article, “The Trump administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Election to Entrench the Imperial Presidency” provides a critically important and comprehensive examination of Donald Trump’s multi-pronged schemes to interfere with and manipulate the results of this November’s midterm election.
And I find it very helpful because week after week I go on the show and there’s one sort of outrageous policy or executive order or investigation launched by the FBI against the voting rights groups, what have you. It’s just nonstop. Every single week there’s something new. And thankfully, your article really puts in one place all these schemes taken together. And I know you’ll emphasize the fact that we shouldn’t look at all these schemes separately, that we need to understand them as one singular threat to our democracy. So at the outset here, I would just ask you to summarize some of the most alarming 15 interlocking tactics that you document in this article that Donald Trump and the Republican party are employing to prevent the regime from being held accountable by voters this November.
I know we can’t get to all 15, but maybe you could cover what you feel are the most important.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely. I will cover just a few. And I thank you for the taking a step back to zoom out a bit, which is this report really is an attempt not only to discuss the 15 interlocking subversion tactics that the Trump administration is using, but to really look through the lens of history to figure out why they’re doing that. And my co-author, Ben Olinsky and I have written several reports in the series about the imperial presidency. We’ve been at it for a couple years. And this report is through this lens, as you mentioned, which is political science and history prove that imperial-minded leaders aimed to disrupt and control elections to ensure that they and their allies stay in office. And that is at root what they’re trying to do here, consolidate their political power, especially where they know they’re unpopular with the American people right now and they’re staring down the November midterm elections and they appear to be pretty nervous about it.
So they have already embarked on many of these election subversion tactics. And we also write in this report, which I hope your listeners can check out, a number of tactics that we expect to be upcoming and that Trump himself in recent days has signaled may be upcoming. So for example, some of the tactics that we’ve already been seeing, of course, are the administration casting doubt on election integrity with the lie about widespread election fraud and then weaponizing the federal government by installing election deniers in key positions. And they’ve already been gutting important agencies and election safety programs and demanding that state election officials turn over sensitive voter data. And we’ve seen that. We’ve also seen Trump pressuring Congress over and over again to pass the SAVE Act, which is a voter suppression mechanism and trying to curtail voting by mail and issue executive orders which have been repeatedly struck down.
And I also think though, your listeners might be interested in what could be coming down the pike. For example, really doing more seizing of voting machines, election-related materials, maybe deploying the military or ICE agents to interfere with the election. As he alluded to last week, Trump is open to declaring a national emergency to take over the elections. And ultimately, we may even see a repeat of 2020 where Trump and his allies tried to interfere with state election certificates and even pressure perhaps the Senate and the House not to seat duly elected members and therefore that would be the ultimate step of trying to keep their political party in the majority. So I actually ran through many of the tactics there. Sorry to be maybe a little long-winded, but it’s a way of getting perhaps a bit of insight into the scope of these tactics, many of which we’ve been hearing about, but the report lays out how they each feed one off of the other.
SCOTT HARRIS: No, thanks for that summary. And give the website out so our listeners can find this article and we’ll repeat it before we conclude a little later this evening, but where can folks find the article?
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely. So it’s on the front page of our website. Our website is americanprogress.org. So one word, americanprogress.org.
SCOTT HARRIS: Okay. So as you just mentioned a moment ago, President Trump and Stephen Miller, whose long title is White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security, they have both openly talked about invoking the Insurrection Act and/or declaring a national emergency to invoke martial law with the intent of interfering with the midterm election and/or seizing ballots or closing down key polling stations and Democratic party majority cities. I wonder if you could provide more detail about what this tactic could look like on Election Day or the days that follow. And I have another question about the military and their role here possibly, but we hope doesn’t come.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely.
SCOTT HARRIS: But yeah, I’ll follow up with that in a minute. But, talk about what this scenario could look like.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Absolutely. And let’s start with the fact that any attempt to deploy the military to interfere with the election or to deploy ICE agents or any other federal personnel to interfere with the election is absolutely unconstitutional and illegal. The Constitution gives no right to presidents at all to unilaterally interfere with elections. In fact, the Constitution gives the authority over conducting elections only to the states, with Congress as a backstop. And multiple federal courts have held that in recent months as they continue to block the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally set new election rules.
We also know with the backdrop that the administration has already demonstrated its willingness to deploy military forces in domestic contexts, sending troops into multiple Democratic-governed cities under various pretexts as we’ve seen. Most of those orders have been reversed. So therefore, I think many of us think that we really need to be very open to the possibility that the administration might try to do this in the election context.
And that could be on Election Day, as you indicate. It could be right after the election as well. They might try to seize the voting machines, voting-related materials to try to engineer some sort of vote totals under the guise of protecting against voter fraud. We also, Scott, may see this in the days or weeks leading up to the election when early voting starts. Maybe they’ll want to go into a few secretary of state’s offices to try to take over voter registration systems. Again, if they did this, it would very likely be under the false pretense of voter fraud.
And we saw, we heard the president with our own ears a few weeks ago in that prime time address to the nation from the White House. He said that the 2020 election was interfered with by foreign adversaries, namely China. He said that these threats continue.
And so I think there’s a chance he’s laying the pretext to declare some sort of national emergency and try to use National Guard or active military troops or various federal forces who he thinks are loyal to him, like ICE agents to try to manipulate the election results.
SCOTT HARRIS: Now, one thing that you mentioned here that’s hopeful on one side is that there have been a number of federal courts that have struck down some of the attempts for the Trump administration to interfere in elections. But I think with a record of the U.S. Supreme Court and giving a widespread immunity to Trump for all manner of crimes, there’s a lot of concern that our Supreme Court may not hold up in terms of honoring some of the basic provisions of the U.S. Constitution when push comes to shove or Trump appeals cases to the Supreme Court where he’s appointed three members and there’s a super-majority of right-wing justices there. So that’s one question.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Yes.
SCOTT HARRIS: And I’ll let you do that one. My other question has to do with the military and their response to illegal and unconstitutional orders, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Okay, good. You’re spot on about the U.S. Supreme Court. I think many of us continue to be wary about the right-wing justices on that court and how they continue to act in many cases in the administration’s partisan interests. And yes, that recent decision of Trump-the U.S. that we’re all familiar with now was really one of the most shocking power grabs on behalf of a president in our U.S. history. And it’s very worrisome. I do think there have been some bright spots by the U.S. Supreme Court, some surprises, but I think that we always have to be very cognizant that they might come up with some creative ways to try to advantage the president.
But luckily, I feel like we’ve got pro-democracy forces, some of the most brilliant attorneys around working on these cases. Many of the states are getting pre-prepared with their legal arguments. So I think people will be ready for this. And I think that the lower courts have acted very responsibly along the way, especially in recent weeks in really pushing back on the administration. I also think apart from the courts, it is incredibly important that every pro-democracy American, no matter what political party you belong to, if you belong to one at all, everyone across the ideological spectrum, it gets ready and already is using their voice to speak up and say, “Free and fair elections must occur. We do not accept otherwise in our democracy. As flawed as our democracy may be, we have to have free and fair elections.”
And that people are ready to do whatever they need to do peacefully, nonviolently, to use their power to speak up. And I think that creates also the atmosphere that puts a little bit of pressure on the Supreme Court in a healthy way on elected representatives, just any stakeholder to know that the people are not going to tolerate any sort of attempt to sabotage this election.
SCOTT HARRIS: As Donald Trump and his administration threatened to use the military to interfere with the election or manipulate the outcome, the big question I have is will military officers in the Pentagon and across the country obey illegal and unconstitutional orders? We know that Donald Trump fired many generals across the entire Pentagon hierarchy soon after taking office this time. And he’s also fired the judge advocate generals. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the term, but all these lawyers that.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Yes.
SCOTT HARRIS: …the lawyers in the Pentagon that are supposed to interpret the Constitution in terms of the role of the military.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Yes, and replaced them largely with loyalists.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right. So yeah, what do you think? I mean, obviously we can’t know for sure, but is there a chance we have officers that may commit to a coup?
MICHAEL SOZAN: There is always a chance, sadly, but I think and predict that the military will discharge its duties appropriately and constitutionally. I mean, American laws barring military involvement in elections were not enacted arbitrarily. They reflect lessons from U.S. history about why governments have to keep military power firmly under civilian control and that the civilian leadership, along with the military leaders, need to uphold the law and not act with partisan agendas or in a way where the military can go astray or act allegiant to a certain leader.
I mean, this is one of the reasons we even fought the revolution was that we wanted to have a stability with our military and for it to act in a way that is protecting the safety of everyday Americans. And as you probably know, for example, one of many examples, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act, which was bedrock legislation that bars the military from conducting law enforcement activities.
That includes monitoring polling sites. This is already in the law. And it’s been really good that along the way, we’ve had several U.S. senators and members of the U.S. House that have questioned hearings on the record, key military leaders trying to pin them down and recognize that troops should not be anywhere near the polls. And so what I hope and what many I think in the military plan to do is uphold the solemn oath that they take to defend the Constitution, to act according to the law. And it might come down to them as we saw famously months ago when a core group of senators reminded the military to follow the law on the Constitution. I think that might be put to the stress test. And we’ve got to hope that we have some responsible military leadership in place and responsible rank and file troops who will refuse to obey unconstitutional orders for the good of democracy.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re speaking with Michael Sozan, a senior fellow for democracy and government at the Center for American Progress. He’s co-author along with Ben Olinsky of the article, “The Trump Administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Election to Entrench the Imperial Presidency.” Michael, thank you again for this article. And we’ll certainly refer our listeners to the website where they can get and read it themselves before we say goodnight. But here’s a question for you. Democrats and other pro-democracy groups say they’re preparing to combat a Trump authoritarian dismantling of our free and fair democratic elections this November. They talk about tabletop gaming out scenarios and planning the response, but it all seems to be very reliant on lawyers in courts.
And along with many other people, I think that’s a failure of imagination in terms of what we know Donald Trump is capable of, which is employing political violence. We saw it on Jan. 6, 2021. That was an attempted coup. It was an insurrection. And although the incompetence, I believe, of Merrick Garland, our attorney general in not prosecuting Trump and the other higher-ups in that coup attempt for two-and-a-half years really destroyed the case against him.
But I think we have to observe that we, at some basic level, can’t rely on courts and lawyers because we’ve seen through history that doesn’t always work out when you have a would-be dictator or an authoritarian or a fascist who’s bent on destroying democratic processes. What are your thoughts?
MICHAEL SOZAN: You raise a very good point and that is why this is a moment in our history where it is going to be all hands on deck. Yes, the courts will be an important player here. And the officials and the everyday Americans and the organizations that bring lawsuits to stand up for voting rights are going to be critically important. They already have been. And so the courts is a main route, but it’s not enough. We will need to rely on brave state and local election officials who do their jobs day in and day out across the ideological spectrum. Those who are often members of their communities where they’re trusted, they’re administering elections and overseeing polling places. We need to help fortify them.That’s one positive part about our decentralized election system is that there are approximately 10,000 voting jurisdictions across the nation. We do not have a centralized way for a president to control.
And again, the Constitution would not allow that anyway. So the state officials are going to be important as well. Congress is going to be important. All pro-democracy members of Congress, we know that they may be largely in one party right now, but they can be across the spectrum there as well. We need Congress to be actively involved. And then what I alluded to earlier, we need civil society and everyday individual citizens across the nation to really stand up and make your voices heard; whether it’s already getting in touch with your local state or federal lawmakers; whether it’s writing letters to the editor; whether it’s using your social media; whether it’s having a plan with your network to get ready to peacefully protest when you think that a red line is crossed or even before.
There are ways for society to stand up. It has worked in other nations around the world. It’s helped to overthrow autocrats in nations around the world. There’s a track record here. We saw the track record of success from the civil rights era and at other times. So that’s why I have a bit of optimism, even though I’m very clear-eyed about the challenges that are about to come our way. And you’ve described many reasons to be clear-eyed. I also feel optimistic that if people use their voice and flex their political power peacefully, we can get through this and have a free and fair election.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Michael. I, too, share optimism, but I am very fearful of our nation sleepwalking into another Trump fascist coup. And I wanted to ask you as we conclude here, the lessons of history in terms of courts and lawyers not being adequate to stop a fascist or an authoritarian coup. What I see from history is the only really effective counter to a dictator’s attempt to extinguish democracy is massive protests in the streets too big to contain or disperse; peaceful protests that halts all business as usual in a country and really kind of upends the kind of business as usual thinking of people, particularly in Wall Street, who seem to be just standing aside, not giving a hoot about democracy as long as they get their tax cuts. So massive protests seem to be something that we should all be preparing for in the event our courts don’t stop an attempted Trump coup.
What do you think?
MICHAEL SOZAN: Yes, that’s right. And this is not a moment for business as usual, to use your very good phrase. Unfortunately, some of the pillars of society that we might want to rely on in these situations like the business world, like maybe some sectors of the media, like maybe some universities or others who have capitulated, we cannot necessarily rely on them. And many of them were very, very slow in the beginning months of the Trump administration. I think many of them are waking up now, perhaps some of them even regretting cutting deals with this administration. But ultimately the power is with the people. And as you said, this is a distinct moment that is troublesome, but that if people unite in nonviolent ways, it has a track record of success.
And I’ll just say also, we saw with the No Kings protests, there were eight million people at the last protest. That’s the single largest protest against a president in U.S. history. I think that the American people have been awakened to what’s going on, but it is a matter of whether people will speak out and not be lulled into thinking that democracy will somehow rescue itself or that our checks and balances are going to work automatically because we’ve seen how they have been stress tested and have failed in some ways. And that’s why I think you are spot on that learning the lessons from history, we have to push back collectively against election sabotage. And hopefully as we’re going to chart a new course forward, a more pro-democracy course and actually then be able to work together again to craft and build a democracy that really answers the moment and that really truly represents all Americans.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said, Michael. Thank you for this. And I wanted you to repeat the website so our listeners can get a look at this very comprehensive and important article that you and Ben Olinsky put out. Again, the title of which is “The Trump Administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Election to Entrench the Imperial Presidency.” How can our folks find that?
MICHAEL SOZAN: The website is americanprogress.org, one word, americanprogress.org. You’ll see this article should be on the front page right when you click in. And then if you want to explore some more of our democracy-related writings and proposals, there’s a democracy webpage as well that you can look for there. So really appreciate that, Scott, and really appreciate you focusing a spotlight on this issue. There are less than 90 days to the election, and people need to know more and more about the election subversion tactics that the administration is using.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yes. And this article is really critically important to understand better all these various tactics that you put together in one place. Michael, thanks again. Appreciate it.
MICHAEL SOZAN: Thank you. Bye-bye.
SCOTT HARRIS: Take care. Goodnight. That’s Michael Sozan, a senior fellow for democracy and government at the Center for American Progress.
