Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration has been methodically implementing a multifaceted strategy to exert federal control over the 2026 midterm elections. Because the U.S. Constitution clearly grants states primary authority over running elections, legal experts and nonpartisan observers describe the president’s efforts as an unprecedented scheme to interfere with, and likely attempt to manipulate the outcome of the election where control of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are at stake.
Predicated on provably false conspiracy theories about massive voter fraud, the Trump regime has, without evidence, accused the Chinese government of interfering in the 2020 election that the president lost; pressured and threatened Republican state lawmakers with primary challenges, public targeting, and the loss of political support if they refused to enact mid-decade congressional redistricting; pressured and threatened states that refused to turn over their unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Justice by using criminal prosecution warnings, the withholding of federal election security funding, and aggressive federal lawsuits; attempted to end mail-in voting; and to pass the SAVE America Act that would likely disenfranchise some 20 million voters. His administration has seized ballots and election data in Georgia and Arizona, as it launched FBI investigations of a voting rights group in Ohio.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who talks about his recent article written with Ben Olinsky, titled, “The Trump Administration is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Elections to Entrench the Imperial Presidency.” The piece offers a comprehensive examination of Trump’s multi-pronged plot to subvert this November’s midterm election.
MICHAEL SOZAN: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
That would be the ultimate step of trying to keep their political party in the majority. So a bit of insight into the scope of these tactics, but the report lays out how they each feed one off of the other.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Michael. I am very fearful of our nation sleepwalking into another Trump fascist 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. 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, 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.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Michael Sozan (26:36) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.
