CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

“Anything to Win – Anything”: Ten Trump Threats to the Midterm Elections

Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain

All the signals are flashing red. On the square, the @GOP would take a beating this fall, largely because of Trump’s unpopularity. So he’s setting up Plan B–do whatever you need to do to win. Anything. Anyone who says ‘Well, he wouldn’t do THAT’ hasn’t paid attention.” – David Axelrod, July 11, 2026

All the signals are flashing red. On the square, the @GOP would take a beating this fall, largely because of Trump’s unpopularity. So he’s setting up Plan B–do whatever you need to do to win. Anything. Anyone who says ‘Well, he wouldn’t do THAT’ hasn’t paid attention.”

– David Axelrod, July 11, 2026

I’m no fan of the former top Obama strategist David Axelrod, his party (the dismal capitalist-imperialist Democrats), or US bourgeois electoral politics more broadly, God knows, but Axelrod ain’t wrong here. Anything indeed. We should be long past “Trump wouldn’t do that” by now, no?

News flash: the putschist Trump’s fascist regime and party are working relentlessly and in numerous ways to rig if not cancel the 2026 mid-term elections as part of their enduring coup against previously normative bourgeois democracy.

Below I discuss eight interrelated ways in which this fascist attack on what’s left of “free and fair elections” in the United States has been unfolding and two ways in which the coup will likely continue to develop under Trump47. I suggest going through this list and perhaps adding to it or revising it before listening to the deranged and depraved wannabe dictator Trump speak to the nation on “election integrity” tomorrow night, when he is scheduled to make extreme claims of “foreign interference” in US elections (more on this at the end of this essay) past and present.

1. The Trump campaign to nationalize the elections – to place them under the control of the federal fascist Trump regime in defiance of the US Constitution, which strictly assigns the management of elections to the states.

Last January, the unconstitutionally re-elected January 6 instigator and insurrectionist Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump chillingly told the New York Times that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his 2020 election loss.

As part of this assault on previously normative election law and procedure, Trump in March of 2025 issued an executive order (EO) purporting to require documentary proof of US citizenship as a requirement for voting vote and directed instructed the US Attorney General to hunt for and prosecute election crimes. The order was based on the false claim that the nation’s voting system is plagued by fraudulent noncitizen voting.

Trump has demanded voter files from all US states, directing the federal government to weed out suspected noncitizens and other unqualified voters. Sixteen states have so far complied.

Last March, Trump ordered the creation of a federal state by state list of eligible voters and purported to restrict the use of mail-in ballots. Trump’s handpicked Postmaster General has recently said that the US Postal Service will not deliver mail-in ballots to states that don’t turn over their voter rolls to the Trump administration.

Earlier this year, Trump ordered the creation of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. SAVE pools federal data from Social Security, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies for states to use to verify the citizenship of registered voters.

Last year, the Trump regime floated the idea of the federal government prosecuting state and local election officials for “failing to secure voting computer systems.” That was a warning: the officials could face arrest if outcomes don’t go Trump’s way in their states or locales.

Last week, Trump’s DOJ sent out letters threatening state election officials with criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting. The message is clear: if election outcomes in these states don’t go the Trump party’s way, the officials could face federal charges.

In addition, Trump has furthered the project of federal election takeover by ordering: his Director of National Intelligence to seize voting machines in Puerto Rico; the FBI to raid the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, a county he lost in a swing state in 2020; the DOJ to subpoena the 2020 election records of Maricopa County, Arizona, another county Trump lost in a swing state. Trump has also demanded federal access to voting equipment in Missouri and to 2024 election records in Wayne County, Michigan.

2. Shrinking the Electorate by Restricting Voter Eligibility. The false claim of rampant noncitizen voting lay behind the Trump-initiated Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (“SAVE America”) Act , which has passed in the US House of Representatives multiple times since 2024. After repeated........

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