Don’t Depend on the Midterms
We must plan for Trump’s Party to reject election outcomes that would deny them control of Congress
To arrest Trump’s deconstruction of institutions of governance and democracy, many hope that the 2026 midterm elections will give the sole remaining pro-democracy party control of the House.
This is a false hope, I fear.
Trump ignores laws and Congress anyway
Consider what Democratic Party control of the House would mean in 2027-28. The House would refuse to pass legislation to advance Trump’s agenda, use the power of the purse to constrain Trump’s actions, and use their powers of investigation and oversight.
But Trump will ignore all that. He’ll still do whatever he wants. Because he’s doing that now: “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president;” “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
And the current GOP-controlled Congress is proving to President Trump that he doesn’t need the Legislative Branch anyway. They are willingly abdicating the ample powers they are given under Article I of the Constitution which they have sworn to uphold. The chairman of the House Appropriations is shockingly complicit in weakening his own committee’s powers: “appropriations is not a law, it's the directive of Congress.”
It is better to fight for laws and norms you are trying to preserve by defending such laws and norms rather than concede to the behavior of those actively dissolving them. Yes, it is meaningful to work to elect a pro-democracy House majority in 2026.
But I don’t expect Trump’s Party to allow that to happen.
Election denialism moves to Congress
Election denial has become as fundamental to the doctrine of today’s Republican Party as the Trinity is to Christians or dialectical materialism is to Marxists. Election denial is the shibboleth for approbation by the Party Leader. Election denial is a requirement on applications for jobs in the Trump Administration.
With election denialism now embedded in the DNA of Republican politics, it is logical to assume that it will drive the Party’s approach to the 2026 midterms.
Trump has said he cannot lose a presidential election unless it’s stolen. And so Trump’s Party will say it cannot lose a Congressional election unless it’s stolen.
The Election Denial Industrial Complex (EDIC) is now institutionalized with a well-practiced playbook of conspiracy theories and lies deployed to characterize an election as stolen. They’ll blame illegal immigrants or transgender Jewish space lasers for denying the Will of the People. They’ll spread such stories in districts around the country, especially in the most vulnerable seats.
With incitement from The Leader, the EDIC will intimidate poll workers and ballot counters and flood the zone with phony accusations of fraud. They will pressure county and state election boards not to certify results. They’ll create an alternate narrative with alternative facts to give House Republicans the tools to challenge election results – empowering a self-interested faction with the ability to hire themselves for their own jobs.
A case from 1985 is instructive.[1] Because of a dispute over uncounted ballots in an Indiana seat, the Democratic-controlled House refused to seat the incumbent Democrat (Frank McCloskey) or his Republican challenger and instead created a task force with independent auditors to do the counting. The House eventually voted to seat the incumbent per the results of the investigation. It was not without partisan rancor: Democrats claimed the Republican Secretary of State had certified before all recounts were completed.[2] Republicans complained the task force’s counting was tilted.
The game plan for 2026
The EDIC has the motive, opportunity and means (in many jurisdictions) to prevent the seating of duly-elected Democrats in order to preserve the majority for Trump’s Party. Here’s how it would go down:
The EDIC spends 2026 spreading conspiracy theories about “election integrity;”
EDIC activists in select districts hype disinformation about voting “irregularities” and attack the credibility of non-partisan election officials;
As election results come in, the EDIC mobilizes to challenge the validity of outcomes in a sufficient number of districts that would otherwise change control of the House;
House Republican leaders echo and amplify these bogus claims of voting “irregularities,” promising not to seat any person (i.e. Democrat) where such “irregularities” exist;
In states where Republicans control state government, relevant officials refuse to certify certain House election results (won by Democrats); and
In the weeks before the start of the 120th Congress (January 3, 2027), EDIC floods information channels with (false) accusations that Democrats are trying “steal” the election, demanding that Democrats whose victories they dispute not be seated.
Here’s where things get procedurally complicated. The first order of business of a new Congress is to establish a quorum, a simple majority of duly-elected members, by a vote. But in this scenario, there are competing claims about who are the duly elected members. The Clerk of the House can only include on the official roll those Members-elect with a certificate of election, in due form, on file with the Clerk. And only those Members whose names appear on the Clerk's roll are entitled to vote for a new Speaker and participate in organizational proceedings prior to the administration of the oath. We could see competing individuals claiming to be the elected representatives of the same district tussling outside the Clerk’s office demanding their name be placed on the roll. Bedlam, confusion, anarchy.
The solution to bedlam, confusion, anarchy is order -- order enforced by those granted a legal monopoly on violence: the military and the police. And the person with the greatest power to control such forces is President Donald Trump.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that President Trump would order the military to take up positions around the Capitol, portrayed as a need to defend the building from “antifa” or some other imaginary enemy, in order to ensure an “orderly and peaceful start to the new Congress” composed of the “legitimate duly-elected Members” – those chosen by the EDIC and loyal to Leader Trump. This would be supplemented by his Party’s paramilitary wing led by the January 6 criminals he let free.
If you think this is unimaginable, just recall what was unimaginable three months ago. Or four years, three months and one day ago.
So with all these authoritarian tools at their disposal, Republicans inside the Capitol conspire to seat enough of their incumbents despite having lost their elections, in order to establish a quorum, elect a Speaker, and organize the new Congress.
And they need not be done. This illegitimate GOP House majority could move disqualify duly-elected Democrats who had been sworn in in order to enlarge their majority. The McCloskey case shows us how by passing a resolution (see the text of H. Res. 146[3]) making a determination that their chosen Republican was the duly elected one, not the Democrat sworn in days or weeks ago.
Because an attribute of authoritarianism is that when everything is possible, anything is possible.
They’re already doing this kind of stuff. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is delaying scheduling a special election to replace Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died on March 5, because it would seat another Democrat in a House with a small margin of GOP majority.
What to do?
I’m not an election lawyer, a campaigns professional, or even a House rules specialist (thus conceding I may have made errors above). Perhaps there are paths to deterrence or prevention my scenario misses.
But one thing we must do is worst-case-scenario planning. War game this: run multiple red team/blue team exercises in DC and in state capitols. Get all the possibilities on the table. And plan and organize.
Two things we are experiencing in Trump 2.0 is (1) what was once imaginable can become real and (2) it can be much worse than we expect. That is true of the 2026 midterms too. Plan accordingly.
[1] There is also the 1997 case of a California Republican incumbent (Bob Dornan) who challenged the validity of his election loss to a Democrat (Loretta Sanchez) claiming that votes by non-U.S. citizens had tipped the balance (sound familiar?). A bipartisan investigation launched by the Republican-led House found invalid ballots but not enough to overturn the result, and the Democrat kept her seat.
[2] Sound familiar? See Katherine Harris, Florida, 2000.
[3] H. RES.146 Resolved, That, based on a recount of votes in the electfon of November 6, 1984, conducted pursuant to House Resolution l, Ninety-ninth Congress, agreed to January 3, 1985, the House of Representatives determines that Frank Mccloskey was duly elected to the office of Representative from the Eighth Congressional District of Indiana and is entitled to a seat in the Ninety-ninth Congress. https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-resolution/146/text?s=2&r=2