'Legal warfare': Dems fear avalanche of GOP dirty tricks in 2026 midterms

The 2026 midterms elections are a little over 16 months away, and Democrats are hoping that unpopular policies by President Donald Trump — from tariffs to severe Medicaid cuts — will enable them to retake the U.S. House of Representatives and flip some GOP-held seats in the U.S. Senate. In November, Democratic strategists will be looking at two gubernatorial races — one in Virginia, one in New Jersey — as a referendum on Trump's presidency and their prospects in next year's midterms.

The Bulwark's Lauren Egan, in an article published on June 29, emphasizes that in 2026, Democrats will also be observing possible legal tricks Republicans will use in the hope of holding the U.S. House.

"In conversations with leading campaign operatives and Democratic-allied lawyers," Egan reports, "there is a growing concern that the party is not effectively focused on — and resourced-up for — the legal fights ahead around voting rights, election laws, and election certifications. Such legal warfare has popped up in every recent election cycle. But these Democrats warn that Republicans' post-election legal challenges in 2026 could be substantially more aggressive than in the past. Already, the party has seen how that could play out."

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Egan notes that after incumbent Justice Allison Riggs' defeated a GOP challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, in a North Carolina Supreme Court race in 2024, Griffin "spent six months attempting to get thousands of votes tossed out in order to reverse his loss."

Although Riggs prevailed in the end, her campaign spent more than $1 million in legal fees.

Reyna Walters-Morgan, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member based in North Carolina, told The Bulwark, "I absolutely believe that one of the strategies in the Riggs case was to try and reduce the amount of resources that the party had to work with because if you're spending money on lawsuits, you can’t spend money on other things that are just as important."

A DNC operative, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Bulwark, "I don't think that (DNC officials) are fully prepared to help states even do the basic litigation prep work that it takes. We are going to lose a lot of races probably in states where, if they had the money, they could contest what Republicans are doing."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) is sounding the alarm as well.

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Murphy told The Bulwark, "People say, 'Well, we survived Trump the first time, we're going to survive him the second time.' No. He's carrying out a fundamentally different plan — a well-organized, well-thought-out plan — to install himself and his allies in power forever that he never even contemplated carrying out and implementing in his first term."

According to Egan, the DNC has hired attorney Dan Freeman — known for his work with the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division — to fight back.

Freeman told The Bulwark, "The law requires free and fair elections. I think we are well-positioned to successfully protect them, but it's going to require a lot of work — and that's exactly why we are staffing up inside the DNC in a way. If all of our elections are outside the 'margin of litigation,' we will have a restful November and December next year. But I'm not expecting that that will be the case in every election that counts, in every election that matters to us."

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Lauren Egan's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.