Trump is telling us exactly how he plans on stealing the midterms: expert

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump has already tipped his hand about how he plans on stealing the 2026 midterm elections, warned a prominent election attorney in a YouTube video posted on Monday.

"Donald Trump is telling us every day what he plans to do in this year's midterm elections," Democracy Docket's Marc Elias said on Monday. "He's showing us that he's trying to rig them in advance and telling us that he will subvert their results if he can. And look, while we have been able to stop him so far in court, there's no guarantee that we'll continue to prevail in every case in the weeks ahead. And then we get to the post-election. And then the rules change entirely."

He added, "It's not usual that you have an adversary — it's not usual you have a candidate who says that they wished they had sent in the National Guard to seize ballots the last time they could. I mean, if you wanted an indicator of what is likely to happen in the future, while it is true that past performance is no guarantee of the future, it's certainly instructive. But it's not just Donald Trump's past behavior. It is what he has been saying since he became president, but yet there's this cold sophistication that has captured much of the punditry, the commentariat, the legacy media and the big-time journalists. It's almost like they feel like they're more sophisticated, they're more in the know, if they don't actually pay attention. They don't actually respond and take Donald Trump literally when he says that he wants to subvert elections."

Among the threats that Elias warned against, he said Trump is going to "make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat."

He continued, "The harder-for-you-to-vote portion is already on full display. He has deployed the Department of Justice to try to gain access to states' sensitive voter data. My law firm and I, we fought him in 30 states. So far in those 30 states, the Department of Justice has not won a single case and has lost 26. My law firm obviously is undefeated. And we have fought him in other cases, cases involving the US Postal Service, where they tried to weaponize the US Postal Service into being a tool of voter suppression. You probably know about that. You probably heard about that. That case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, not once but twice. And in the end, a 7-2 majority said, no, the Postal Service can't be weaponized for 2026. And a six-vote majority cast serious doubt that it'll ever be able to go into effect, even in future elections."

After describing how Trump has also gerrymandered key congressional districts, although some of that was rolled back by the Supreme Court, he also characterized Trump's "all-of-government approach. By that, it means that he has every agency and department trying to figure out ways that it can contribute to trying to make it harder for people to vote in general and Democrats in particular. So they've been collecting data. They are weaponizing a benefits database called the SAVE database into something that Republican states can use to disenfranchise voters. Any day now, they're going to issue these state citizenship lists, they tell us."

He added, "This is going to be another faulty set of lists that'll go out to states with an implicit threat that if the states don't remove voters that Donald Trump's administration wants removed, well, Todd Blanche and the FBI may just show up on their door. Like I said, it's an all-government approach. It's using every tool available in the weeks that are left between now and November 3rd."

Speaking with AlterNet last month, Dr. Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University, echoed Elias' alarm about Trump trying to steal the midterms.

"I have no doubt that Trump is willing to order some sort of a coup against democracy to try to overturn the elections," Levitsky told AlterNet. "He has shown over and over again that he is not a democrat and is perfectly willing to engage in really old-school authoritarian tactics to overturn elections."

Levitsky added "We don't know for sure whether he can get away with it. There are some troubling signs. One of them is that we're just completely unprepared for a sort of radical seizure of power in this way. The courts have been pretty good, not great, on Trump's efforts to sort of overstep his bounds on elections, but courts move slowly. And it's just not at all clear, if on election night Trump were to order the seizure of ballot boxes, declare some kind of an emergency, mobilize troops, that courts could move quickly enough to stop it. So at the very least, it would create a massive, massive crisis."

In contrast, Justin Levitt — a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden as, respectively, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights — dismissed Trump's power to steal the midterms.

"I've got a guy right by the exit on the freeway where I live who does the same thing, and I'm not terrified that that guy's going to steal the 2026 elections," Levitt said. "I'm telling you, as weird as it may seem, treat the president the same as the guy screaming by the freeway exit."

From Your Site Articles