by John Ambrosio
Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud. In 2024, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025, said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast that the United States is “in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” In other words, if the left capitulates to its master plan for an authoritarian takeover of the country, which is unlikely to happen.
America is teetering on the edge of a political precipice. The 2026 midterms are arguably the most consequential elections in modern U.S. history. The nation has reached a historical turning point, a crossroads that will determine if what remains of liberal democracy will survive, if we continue to have relatively free and fair elections, or if the country descends further into a neofascist mafia-state authoritarianism.
Democrats are poised to win the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate. No one knows what Trump and his MAGA allies will do, how far they will go, which red lines they will cross to prevent this from happening. That is, if they will declare a national emergency, interfere with the administration of elections, seize ballots and voting equipment, pressure state-wide elected officials and Republican-dominated state legislatures to overturn the results or refuse to certify them, or some other scheme to flood the zone with chaos, confusion, and uncertainty.
Trump and his MAGA allies will not only fiercely contest election losses in the courts, state legislatures, and the far-right media ecosystem, as they did in 2020, but their refusal to accept defeat will almost certainly lead to a constitutional crisis. A Democratic majority in the House, and perhaps in the Senate, would reclaim and reassert their constitutional authority as a co-equal branch of government, launch investigations into Trump’s unprecedented corruption, and may impeach him. Of course, Trump will stonewall congressional investigations, as he did in the past, by refusing to cooperate, ignoring subpoenas, and tying them up in court.
Let’s be honest and clear-eyed about this: Trump is completely unhinged. The U.S. has a mentally unstable and deranged president, a mad king who lives in his own invented reality and commands the world’s most powerful military, with his finger on the nuclear button. He is a pathological liar and malignant narcissist, and has a pathological obsession with never appearing weak and always being seen as a winner. While Trump does not wander the White House talking to portraits of presidents on the walls, as Nixon did, he lives in his own distorted reality and surrounds himself with craven opportunists and sycophants who reflect this unreality back to him and only tell him what he wants to hear.
Add to this the fact that Trump is hellbent on exacting vengeance on those he believes have treated him unfairly, failed to show adequate fealty, or did not vote for him. He is obsessed with attacking anyone who defies his will, injures his fragile ego, inflames his bottomless pit of insecurity, or seeks to hold him accountable for his lawlessness. Trump is more dangerous now than in the past, not only because he is increasingly unstable and delusional, but because he is politically weaker than ever before. Aspiring autocrats are never more dangerous than when they are backed into a political corner with no discernable exit.
To prevent a humiliating defeat at the polls, Trump will likely intervene in the midterm elections in ways that, until now, have been unthinkable. Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress have been preparing the ground, relentlessly seeking to undermine public confidence in the integrity of elections and making it increasingly difficult for voters who are likely to support Democrats to register, cast their ballots, and have them counted. If this strategy fails, they will likely resort to more aggressive tactics, such as preventing Democratic members-elect from being seated on January 3rd, a standoff that would be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. This is not far-fetched. It is important to remember that 147 Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election after the January 6th insurrection.
Six years later, Trump and his MAGA allies have completely taken over the Republican party, which has been radicalized by white Christian Nationalists, neofascists, ethnonationalists, and others who have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Trump persuaded judges to approve search warrants, on the basis of previously debunked conspiracy theories, to seize ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, which may have been a dry run for the midterm elections. It is notable that Tulsi Gabbard, the former Director of National Intelligence, accompanied FBI agents as they confiscated the ballots. This suggests that Trump may use manufactured claims of foreign interference in the elections to seize voting equipment or ballots.
Trump and MAGA Republicans claim that all elections won by Democrats are, by definition, fraudulent since their black and brown supporters are considered illegitimate or counterfeit voters, as opposed to white Americans who overwhelmingly vote Republican. They claim the electoral system is unreliable and vulnerable to being hacked and hijacked, that large numbers of undocumented immigrants and dead people vote, and that Democrats can only win elections if they cheat. As others have noted, every accusation by Trump and his MAGA allies is a confession, a projection of their actions and intentions onto their perceived enemies.
Trump’s approval rating has plummeted and is at an all-time low. Public support for his immigration policies and handling of the economy, two of his strongest issues, are underwater. Inflation persists, prices remain high, and the cost of living continues to rise. Trump’s senseless and erratic tariffs, unprovoked war with Iran, and random violence and extreme cruelty of his mass deportation policy have become a political albatross for Republicans.
Democrats have a nearly 9 point lead in the generic ballot, which indicates whether voters favor Democratic candidates or Republicans. Independents, who often determine the outcome of elections, favor Democrats over Republicans by 25 points. Trump is even shedding Republican voters, especially Hispanics, who are frustrated with his indifference to their economic concerns and with breaking his campaign promises to release the Epstein files, not start unprovoked wars, and only deport immigrants who commit crimes.
Despite this, Trump is distracted and obsessed with his vanity projects and White House renovations. Republican-aligned crypto, A.I., and online gambling super PACs are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money into the midterm elections, far outspending Democrats. But it is unclear to what extent this spending will blunt what is likely to be a blue wave election.
The question remains: Given the increasingly dire political situation faced by Republicans, why does Trump appear uninterested in persuading non-MAGA Republicans and others to support his deeply unpopular policies? Why does he not pivot, at least rhetorically, and repeatedly claim that the affordability crisis is a Democratic hoax and that people who oppose data centers in their communities are economically backward, when his position on these issues is clearly at odds with the views of most voters? Why does he not even pretend to care about public opinion and appears to be sabotaging the electoral prospects of the Republican Party?
Does he believe the fix is already in, that Republican efforts to change the rules and tilt the electoral playing field in their favor will prevent Democrats from achieving a majority in the House or Senate? Or does Trump have a failsafe strategy to prevent this from happening? Is he just narcissistic and delusional or does Trump have a backup plan?
Jonathan Freedland argues that Trump does not fear a Democratic majority because he has become largely insulated from accountability and has immunity from prosecution for crimes he commits in office, thanks to the Supreme Court. In addition, Congress has no mechanism, other than impeachment, to enforce its will on the administration, which requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict. As happened in 2019 and 2020, Republicans will likely refuse to convict Trump, whatever his crimes. And if Democrats prevail despite the best efforts of Republicans to rig the election, Trump can always blame election losses on his absence from the ballot and claim that he is indispensable to the party’s electoral success.
Even if Democrats win a majority in the Senate, they will have little leverage over a lawless and unhinged president who controls all the levers of power in the executive branch, including the Justice Department, has a MAGA majority on the Supreme Court, and can pardon anyone accused of carrying out crimes on behalf of the White House. While Democrats can shine a national spotlight on Trump’s unprecedented self-dealing and corruption, abuse of power, and lawlessness, it is not clear if this will have a significant effect on his political support.
After all, this is precisely what happened with the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6th insurrection, which gathered volumes of credible evidence and testimony from Republicans and others, including many administration officials, that clearly implicated Trump and his allies in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But in the end, it mattered little because most Republicans simply dismissed it as a politically-motivated investigation, or did not care, and because the Biden administration slow-walked the criminal prosecution of Trump, which enabled him to circumvent justice.
Showcasing the massive corruption of Trump and his allies, and linking it to the economic struggles and insecurity of ordinary Americans, would likely resonate with the broad electorate. Focusing discontent and anger on the oligarch class, on the tech billionaires who want to build, or have already built, data centers in their communities, would likely be a more effective political strategy than focusing primarily on the threat of MAGA authoritarianism.
If a massive blue wave sweeps away Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, the political leverage of Democrats will largely depend on the size of their majorities, especially in the Senate, assuming they are disciplined and can hold most of their fractious coalition together. But even if Democrats win all of the Republican-held seats that are currently in play, they will not have enough votes to overcome certain Republican filibusters. While a resounding electoral defeat might change the political calculus of some Senate Republicans, Trump can veto whatever legislation Democrats are able to pass, knowing they will likely not have the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to override it.
Of course, if Democrats have a majority in the Senate they could decide to eliminate the filibuster rule, or carve out exceptions for specific pieces of legislation which, given political reality, is likely their only option if they hope to pass any significant legislation. This would mean that the majority party in the Senate could ignore and run roughshod over the wishes of the minority party. While the Budget Reconciliation process already allows the majority party to pass some legislation by itself, this would become the norm for all legislation. Since Republicans already pass many of their political priorities this way, and have seen no need to consult or compromise with Democrats, eliminating the filibuster rule will not significantly worsen the political deadlock and partisan polarization in the Senate: it is already the norm.
Voters may reasonably be skeptical of Democratic Party promises, since they controlled the House, Senate, and presidency during the first two years of the Biden administration. While Democrats were able to pass some significant legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, Biden was unable to protect and expand voting rights, civil rights, abortion rights, and other political priorities. And despite repeatedly arguing that Republicans posed an existential threat to democracy, they failed to hold Trump and his MAGA allies accountable for their criminal assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The unfortunate reality is that Republicans have a backstop to prevent a rollback of their authoritarian agenda: a MAGA-majority Supreme Court that will reject any legislation passed by Democrats that they do not like with the specious claim that it was not foreseen by the founding fathers, whose original intent in crafting the Constitution only they can divine, or because there is no precise historical analogue. This is why, if the Democrats win a trifecta in 2028 and control the House, Senate, and presidency, the first item on their legislative agenda should be to reform the Supreme Court. The Court will likely ignore legal precedent and the clear letter of the law and invent legal doctrines to prevent Democrats from dismantling the legal and political architecture of authoritarianism and implementing their own political priorities.
To breach the MAGA judicial blockade, Democrats will need to create a more ideologically balanced court and circumscribe its appellate jurisdiction to review certain kinds of federal cases, such as bills to protect and expand voting rights. Democrats should be able to enact their political priorities when they have congressional majorities and control the White House, and should not be undercut by a rogue Supreme Court intent on achieving its ideological goals.
What are Democrats and civil society organizations doing to prevent Trump and MAGA Republicans from subverting democracy? The legal pushback against the expected deluge of Republican litigation is being spearheaded by the Brennan Center for Justice, the Democracy Defenders Fund, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, the Washington Litigation Group, Democracy Forward, and other groups. It remains to be seen how the MAGA-majority Supreme Court will respond to the frivolous lawsuits, specious legal arguments, and emergency appeals the Trump administration is sure to make in an effort to overturn the results of close elections in Republican-controlled states.
In addition to the legal front, the Democratic Party’s New Battlefield Project plans to train at least ten thousand volunteers as “democracy protectors” to monitor the polls and protect against voter intimidation by ICE and other federal agents. The project’s primary goal is to “help state Democratic committees build up a vast coalition of volunteers to monitor the polls, push voters to cast their ballots early, and create a network to respond to disinformation.”
Liberal and left-wing activist groups, such as Indivisible and the Sunrise Movement, are also planning mass protests while legal scholars “are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.” The No Kings Network, which organized some of the largest protests in U.S. history, aims to “boost voter turnout” and is “launching a campaign to encourage early voting that will peak with rallies on October 17th.”
As Richard Hasen, a legal scholar and law professor argues, “it is going to be up to the states, the courts, and the American people” to save democracy. According to Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution only “Congress may alter state rules for conducting congressional elections. And that power extends only to federal elections.” Although Republicans were unable to pass the SAVE Act, which sought to restrict access to voter registration, and the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s attempt to use the U.S. Postal Service to limit access to mail-in voting (but did not rule on its legality), it is vital that states vigorously defend their right to administer elections, that district and appellate courts adhere to the Constitution in adjudicating the expected flood of Republican litigation, and that civil society, especially religious and secular community leaders, serve as a bulwark against the slide into authoritarianism.
Trump does not care about public opinion because he believes he is untouchable, since he was not prosecuted for his coup attempt, was allowed to run for reelection, was given immunity by the Supreme Court for crimes he commits in office, and views himself as the embodiment of the national will. On one hand Trump is doing everything in his power to rig the midterm elections, while at the same time his erratic, damaging, and counterproductive actions and policies have put Republicans in an electoral bind.
How do you explain this ostensible contradiction? One answer is that Trump does not really care about the electoral prospects of the Republican Party, or individual Republicans, only about how a Democratic majority in the House or Senate could impact his ability to rule by presidential fiat. Because he is psychologically incapable of admitting that his views on key political issues are out of touch with reality and the preferences of most voters, Trump continues to stubbornly support data centers, inflationary tariffs, and the war against Iran, while issuing a flurry of executive orders aimed at giving Republicans an advantage in the midterm elections.
Will Trump choose the nuclear political option, such as declaring an emergency and confiscating voting machines and ballots, to shield himself from congressional investigations and efforts to hold him accountable? Will he use the midterms as an opportunity to expand executive power and further consolidate his authoritarian regime? Will enough Republicans, looking toward a post-Trump era, refuse to go along? Will there be an authoritarian breakthrough?
As a deeply unpopular and politically-weakened lame duck, Trump may not succeed in subverting democracy, especially if a sufficiently large blue wave materializes, but he will nonetheless inflict enormous damage on the country in attempting to do so. If Democrats win the House, or both chambers of Congress, at least one-third of the country, including a majority of Republicans, will consider their victory fraudulent, just as they did when Biden was elected in 2020. The far-right media ecosystem will disseminate and endlessly repeat Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud until the MAGA faithful view it as a kind of common sense and self-evident truth. Trump’s aim is to envelop the elections in such a dense fog of confusion and uncertainty that people will give up trying to know the truth.
Unlike 2020, this time MAGA Republicans will have the full force of federal agencies and executive departments, including the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, behind the effort to overturn the election, as well as Trump loyalists who administer elections in various states. Given recent history, the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court will likely exploit or invent legal loopholes, ambiguities, and grey areas of the law in order to rule in favor of Republicans. But if the Court appears nakedly partisan in deciding election disputes, and disenfranchises Democrats on the basis of bogus claims of election fraud or foreign interference, there will be a national crisis. In the end, the courts will not save us from a lawless president and his MAGA allies, only a blue wave of sufficient magnitude and a vigorous defense of the election results will do that.
Because the U.S. is extremely polarized and voters of both parties view elections as an existential threat, electoral losses tend to increase the level of fear and further erode the mutual trust that is essential to liberal democracy. In this context, elections do not temporarily resolve conflicts. Instead they amplify them. Whatever the outcome, the midterm election is just the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle against Trump’s neofascist mafia-state authoritarianism, a revolutionary movement that is reaching beyond the borders of the U.S.
While a Democratic victory in the midterm elections would certainly be welcome, it will likely only be a temporary reprieve in a deeply divided and politically polarized nation with an angry and volatile electorate. For more than a decade Trump and his MAGA allies have slowly and deliberately injected political poison into the bloodstream of American society, where it will continue to circulate and fester for the foreseeable future.
As the cliché goes, every crisis is an opportunity that opens a window of possibility for radical change. Trump is increasingly unpopular and the MAGA coalition is fracturing. The outcome of the struggle against neofascist authoritarianism in the U.S. will depend on the infrastructure of resistance that is in place at the time of the crisis. As Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist political theorist argued in a different context, “the decisive element in every situation is the permanently organized and long-prepared force which can be put into the field when it is judged that a situation is favorable, and it can be favorable only in so far as such a force exists, and is full of fighting spirit.”
The outcome of the struggle against neofascist authoritarianism in the U.S. is not preordained; it all depends on the willingness and commitment of Americans to do what is needed to keep their republic.
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