Trump plans to pull trigger soon on nationalizing elections: report

President Donald Trump is planning to nationalize the 2026 midterm elections by falsely claiming China stole the 2020 presidential election from him.

“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House 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,” reported The Washington Post on Thursday.

The plan would allegedly mandate voter ID and ban mail-in ballots during the November midterm elections. Trump also promised earlier this month that he will “search the depths of legal arguments not yet articulated or vetted” so he can find “an irrefutable one” to present “in the form of an Executive Order.”

Trump’s Democratic critics accused him of trying to steal the upcoming midterm elections.

“We’ve been raising the alarm for weeks about President Trump’s attacks on our elections and now we’re seeing reports that outline how they may be planning to do it,” Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Post. “This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.”

Non-Democratic experts share Warner’s assessment. Marc Hyden of R Street, a Republican advocacy group, recently wrote that Trump definitely lost the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to accept that imperils Republicans’ political future.

“The 2020 presidential election results have been argued in numerous court cases and been the subject of myriad audits and studies, and nobody—no matter how hard they’ve labored—has proven that the election was stolen,” Hyden wrote. “Why Trump simply won’t accept this is beyond me, especially considering his return to the White House, and he should remember that his stolen election claims helped Democrats flip Georgia’s two Senate seats in 2020.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail T. Jackson insisted to AlterNet earlier this week that there is indeed voter fraud.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered noncitizen voters,” Jackson told AlterNet. “The President has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting. Noncitizen voting is a crime. Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”

By contrast, as Republican columnist George F. Will recently wrote in an editorial, “Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything. His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence.”

Trump has a lengthy history of claiming that it is impossible for him to lose anything unless it is stolen from him. During a 2016 presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton accurately noted that Trump accused the Emmy Awards of being rigged against him when he was snubbed for his work on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Trump also baselessly alleged fraud and demanded a new election earlier that year when he lost the Iowa Republican caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Throughout the subsequent general election Trump repeatedly claimed he would only accept the result if he won, and repeated this assertion during the 2020 cycle. Trump declared victory even though Democratic nominee Joe Biden ultimately won by a clear margin in the popular vote (81.3 million to 74.2 million) and the same Electoral College margin (306-232)

Trump subsequently attempted 64 court challenges including 187 allegations, and the 2022 report “Lost, Not Stolen” by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists) determined that “twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result."

As George F. Will wrote, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

Despite his legal losses, Trump continues to claim that he won, and used that argument to attempt a coup on January 6, 2021. Five years later, Trump is plotting to similarly ignore the democratic process to guarantee he does not lose, especially as Democrats would likely impeach Trump if they took control of the House.

“Here is the reality: the president has no authority to run federal elections,” said University of Kentucky law professor Joshua A. Douglas. “The Constitution, through the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4, assigns that power to the states, while allowing Congress to make or alter election regulations. Courts have already blocked the president’s executive order on voter registration rules. Neither an executive order nor presidential bombast can override our decentralized constitutional structure.”

Trump has instead said he will deploy “sheriffs” and “law enforcement” at the polls, but according to Douglas “federal and state law prohibit voter intimidation, and longstanding restrictions — including limits on the use of federal troops at polling places — would severely constrain any attempt to deploy armed officers. Should the feds try, courts would almost certainly issue immediate orders to prevent voter intimidation.”

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