By JOHN LESLIE

Many activists and observers have predicted that Trump will attempt to subvert the 2026 midterm elections in order to thwart the Democrats’ election chances. The Washington Posthas reported that people around Trump “are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.” While the China claim is not credible, Trump could use this as the basis for what would essentially be a self-coup, allowing him to deepen his authoritarian turn.

Since retaking the White House, Trump has launched military attacks on Iran and Venezuela, commenced an assault on civil liberties, undermined due process, attacked union rights, sought to dismantle the “administrative state. Trump’s anti-immigrant onslaught includes the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an unaccountable national political police with a budget larger than some countries’ militaries.

Working-class people are still suffering from high consumer prices and an uncertain jobs market. While the stock market is doing well, we are experiencing what some economists are calling a “jobless boom.” Meanwhile, Trump has been battered by controversy and scandal. He has faced questions about his role in the Epstein sex trafficking scandal and his popularity ratings have hit rock bottom.

Trump: “I’ll get impeached!”

The Democratic Party has tried to make excuses for its weak response to Trump’s reactionary offensive by declaring that a victory in the midterm elections of 2026 will be essential to its efforts to stop Trump. Speaking to a House Republican Retreat in January, Trump said, “You (have) got to win the midterms because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

In this context, Trump has doubled down on his posturing regarding election integrity and has repeated false claims of electoral fraud while presenting little actual evidence of illegal voting.

The Justice Department has demanded the voter rolls of almost every state. According to the Brennan Center, “At least 47 states and Washington, DC, have received requests for their complete voter registration lists. Most states have provided a publicly available version (which does not include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers) or have not provided the voter registration lists at all. The DOJ has sued Washington, DC, and 24 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers … cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon have been dismissed.”

Despite claims by Trump and his minions, voter fraud in the U.S. is very rare. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Heritage Foundation says that, based on 30 years of data, across which 32 elections were held, only 39 cases of voter fraud were identified out of over 100 million ballots cast in those elections.

Rhetoric from Trump and his supporters has increased the fear that he may try to steal the midterm elections or use force to intimidate voters. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon suggested the use of ICE agents to “surround” polling places on election day and on Feb. 18, Trump suggested sending National Guard troops to Atlanta, saying, “We could take care of Atlanta so fast.” Guard troops remain in DC, Memphis, and New Orleans—all cities with significant Black populations.

Further, Trump has called on the GOP to take over or “nationalize” elections in 15 states. Some have raised the alarm that voting machines could be seized in November—just as Trump’s spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, did in Puerto Rico in February. Trump told The New York Times in January that he regrets not seizing the machines in swing states in 2020.

The SAVE Act

The so-called SAVE Act is another step towards the disenfranchisement of eligible voters through stricter voter ID requirements, restrictions on voter registration drives, the possible reduction of early voting days, restrictions on mail-in voting, and the purge of voter rolls will impact constituencies most likely to vote for Democrats; Black voters and women. Since passage of the SAVE Act has stalled, Trump has tried to get the same results by executive order.

Some Democrats in the House voted for the SAVE Act. The ineffectiveness of the Democrats as an opposition has been demonstrated repeatedly. Since Trump’s return, the Democrats track record has been one of acquiescence coupled with oppositional rhetoric. For example, the Democrats have criticized ICE enforcement as heavy-handed and violent but have refused to vote to disband ICE.

Why defend the elections against the right?

All the rights working people have in terms of union rights, free speech and assembly are under attack. This is a bipartisan effort that began under Biden, but has deeper roots in the so-called War on Terror (WoT). The WoT meant the growth and consolidation of the national security state. This includes the formation and expansion of ICE as a national political police force. The Democrats helped build ICE and will now only commit to “reforming” it. But body cameras and badges will not address the fundamental institutional problem.

As socialists, we have no illusions about bourgeois elections. We understand that elections do not fundamentally change anything. No reforms won through elections are permanent as long as capitalist parties control the political system. We also understand that the two major parties, which are both capitalist political institutions, can never serve the interests of the oppressed and exploited.  We disagree with the notion that socialists can capture or realign the Democratic Party. By assimilating themselves into the Democratic Party, radicals must necessarily adapt to that party.

Yet elections are a basic democratic right, which needs to be protected. Working-class and oppressed peoples need our own political party—a party that leads the struggle every day of the year in workplaces, in the street, and in elections.

Elections alone will not stop Trump from instituting his reactionary program or from trying to steal the election. The struggle ahead will require working-class methods—strikes, boycotts, factory or workplace occupations and, importantly, united-front mass actions built by the unions and other popular organizations.

There has been resistance in the streets to Trump’s repression and anti-immigrant crackdown, first in Los Angeles, DC, and Chicago, and then in Minneapolis. We can learn from these protests—and take even further steps. Building a broad popular movement against Trump and authoritarianism requires that we build a movement on a democratic foundation with popular assemblies in workplaces and neighborhoods. Ultimately, we need a broad-based congress of labor and its allies among the oppressed  to mobilize working people nationwide.

Photo: Patrick Semanski

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