Trump Asks GOP Congress to ‘Nationalize’ the 2026 Midterm Election, Attempting to Rig the Outcome

Interview with David Daley, FairVote senior fellow and author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, conducted by Scott Harris

nationalizing the midterm elections

Since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been openly fearful that his unpopular violent authoritarian agenda, combined with rising inflation and massive cuts to social safety net programs, will set the stage for Democrats to take back control of the House and maybe the Senate in the 2026 midterm election.

Concerned that Democratic congressional control could result in his third impeachment, in July, Trump ordered Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to launch an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering of his state’s legislative maps with the goal of giving Republicans an additional five House seats. While North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio also adopted Trump’s scheme, California voters approved their own plan to counter Texas by redistricting congressional maps that will give Democrats five more seats there.  More red and blue states may follow suit.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to eliminate Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. If conservative justices issue that ruling in the next two months, Republican-controlled southern states would be able to redraw district maps of 12 to 19 House seats now held by Democrats in majority minority districts, giving an advantage to Republican candidates.  Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with David Daley, senior fellow at the group FairVote, who examines Trump’s recent call for congressional Republicans to “nationalize” the midterm election through the adoption of the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, voter suppression legislation that would disenfranchise 10s of millions of voters — as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called on ICE agents to surround polling places this November.

DAVID DALEY: Trump can’t do this. The Constitution stands in his way. We have a decentralized election system in this country. Our elections are run at the state level. They’re run sometimes at the precinct level. At the county level. The federal government does not run our elections. They cannot simply step in and federalize our elections. So I say that and I can hear some of your listeners saying, “Yeah, well, the Constitution says all sorts of things and he’s run roughshod over all of that.” But in this case, things are very, very clear.

That does not however mean that we shouldn’t be concerned and alarmed and very vigilant because certainly if you were looking to do a wholesale takeover of elections ahead of the midterms, you would be doing some of the things that they are talking about right now. So I think one of the most concerning fronts is what’s underway right now in Georgia, where Trump is still attempting to prove that in 2020, the election was taken from him in Fulton County.

The FBI, under the watchful eye of Tulsi Gabbard went in and claimed all kinds of voting machines and tapes and ballots from 2020. The fear there is that this is the kind of move that the administration could take in swing states in order to try and stop a full and fair counting of ballots in important states. Or that the presence of Gabbard suggests that Trump is looking for some legal fig leaf to proclaim a national emergency and to step in and federalize elections, or perhaps to find a way to force a state Republican takeover of this blue Fulton County Atlanta election board. So lots of opportunity for mischief.

You combine that with what’s happening right now in Minnesota, the enforcement by ICE and immigration officials in masks really terrorizing a city. We’ve all watched the execution of American citizens protesting these activities. And what we have seen there is a city where citizens are afraid to go out to school, to work, to church, to buy groceries.

And the question becomes, if people are that nervous to go about daily life under what has essentially been federal occupation, how will they feel on Election Day? What if what we are seeing in Minnesota is a dry run for the kinds of activities you might see in Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee in October and November of this year. You have masked ICE officers intimidating citizens into staying home for fear that they will be asked for papers or find themselves on the other side of a very aggressive enforcement process.

SCOTT HARRIS: Please describe the SAVE Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, in the House and Senate. I think there’s two different versions and there’s a concern that Trump will urge Republicans in the Senate, particularly to override the filibuster for this bill.
DAVID DALEY: I don’t think these senators will override the filibuster for this, but certainly if they did, it contains a lot of the election denialists’ biggest goals as far as national voter ID. And it would be very, very rigorous. And that would get in the way of tens of millions of Americans from casting ballots. There are 69 million married women in this country who have a license that does not have their official name on it. All of these people in these instances could conceivably be on the wrong side of voter ID laws on Election Day, prohibition on mail ballots. Lots and lots of things in these bills that would be problems that would put additional barriers between American citizens and the ballot box.
SCOTT HARRIS: David, what’s the most important thing that people generally, the opposition Democratic party can do to safeguard the elections, given all these threats out there?
DAVID DALEY: I think we have to be hypervigilant, hyperaware. The states that can count ballots early should be doing everything they can to make sure that they are counting ballots early because what the administration is going to attempt to do is what they’ve done in previous elections. They’re going to say, “Well, on Election night, Republicans were ahead and then you counted all of these mail ballots and all of these absentee ballots and then our leads shrunk.” So whatever we can do in advance to counter that narrative in all of these states, they ought to begin the process of counting early votes as early as they can. And if you can be a part of this, if you can get out, if you can volunteer, if you can help protect elections and count ballots and become part of this process, we need you this year more than ever.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with David Daley (17:56) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. See more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.

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