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Trump Openly Mulls Dystopian Plan for Stealing the Midterm Elections (newrepublic.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Sunflier@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

President Donald Trump is openly hinting at taking over the midterm elections by declaring a national emergency.

Newsmax’s Wayne Allen Root interviewed Trump just after midnight Tuesday morning, and said that Trump had the right to declare a national security emergency next month, forcing through photo identification, proof of citizenship, limits on mail-in ballots, and other heavy voting restrictions. Trump seemed to like that suggestion, but didn’t want to tip his hand.

“Let me just say stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that,” Trump said.

Trump is afraid of massive Republican losses in November’s midterms, and has been unsuccessfully pushing his allies in Congress to pass the draconian SAVE Act. With that appearing more unlikely each day, Democrats and other Trump critics are raising concerns that he may take drastic action, such as declaring a national emergency and maybe deploying legions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the polls.

In fact, Democrats have been trying for close to a year to get documents from the Department of Homeland Security regarding its policies and memos on sending ICE agents to polls. Agents were seen at polling places in Texas during its May primaries and in California in June, but when Democrats used the Freedom of Information Act to investigate, they were sent useless press clippings.

If Trump tries to invoke national security to take over federal elections, it would shatter precedent and could set off lawsuits and protests across the country. His repeated, disproven claims about voter fraud and rigged elections suggest that he’ll make the same excuses in November. The question is how to ensure a fair and accurate result that can stand up to his attacks.

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[-] Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 1 points 35 minutes ago

Called it six months ago.

[-] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

If Trump tries to invoke national security to take over federal elections, it would shatter precedent and could set off lawsuits and protests across the country

Oh no... not lawsuits and protests! That will spell doom for him. No way he could ever recover from that.

[-] hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago

News at 6: Trump and his Heritage Foundation pals do more illegal shit with zero repercussions.

Establishment politicians: We fOlLow the LawS, dRasTic mEasUrEs are AntI-aMeRicAn!

Trump and Co.:

[-] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

Do it, I know where every person in my town appointed by him lives, I know the location of the local republican office. If he does this, it's war and Im not fallowing the Geneva convention. So go ahead, try.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

If he does this, it’s war

Americans have been putting up with stolen elections for a long fucking time. How many people are willing to get into a shooting battle with the ICE-aligned PD or chud-filled national guard over Republicans holding seats in states and districts they've been squatting in for decades?

Even if people are individually angry, there is no collective organization that opposes the current administration. At best, you have good hearted pacifists who play the game by the rules and get rolled every two years. At worst, a bunch of grifters and bait-and-switchers promising to take your money and votes for a sense of false hope, then blame civil rights groups and minority voting blocs for not fighting hard enough whenever they lose.

Sure, you can say you're at war. But it's you and what army? Name, rank, and serial number soldier.

[-] Sunflier@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago

willing to get into a shooting battle with the ICE-aligned PD

Very big assumption that it'd just be a shooting battle. It'd probably be more like car bombs.

[-] Tiger666@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 hour ago

Dude, did you not see the UNARMED woman standing up to ICE with a gun to her face?

You have no idea how fast a grass movement happens.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

You're not going to beat an ICE agents gun with your face. Let me know when it's an armed woman.

You have no idea how fast a grass movement happens.

Occupy, Tea Party, BLM, Anti-vaxers, #MeToo, Palestine protests. Grassroots movement pop up fast and die out even faster.

[-] nomy@lemmy.zip 1 points 36 minutes ago

The Tea Party might be a bad example as they pretty successfully mainstreamed a whole bunch of crazies and got them elected. We're still dealing with them. I wish any left movement had half the organization and backing the Tea Party did.

[-] Wakmrow@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Don't yuck other people's yum

[-] 7101334@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

How many people are willing to get into a shooting battle with the ICE-aligned PD

Quite a few, if necessary to defend our rights. Why do you think they got run out of Minneapolis? People started barricading the street and doing armed patrols. In a number of other locations, people actually started shooting. Some were never apprehended, some got insane sentences. But stealing an election openly and shamelessly is a whole different ball game.

Even if people are individually angry, there is no collective organization that opposes the current administration.

Lmao wtf are you talking about? Are you just a liberal who never left the house? There is substantial organization against Trump's Gestapo.

[-] GalacticRobot@lemmy.world 0 points 38 minutes ago

Ahh yes. Ask Washington DC how that's working out. They have National Guard there posted and now have legal authority to do so until Jan of 2029. Trump has already said this will be part of the plan for national elections is to send ICE and National Guard to ensure 'safe' voting. If it's not being dispelled in DC, or really anywhere (more people have been kicked out of the US than basically anytime in history), how do you actually expect things to be different?

ICE didn't get 'run' out of Minneapolis, they finished their job, they nabbed 3400 people, and deported 1700 of them. Oh and killed a few Americans while they were at it. Minneapolis was about as effective at handling ICE as the BLM was at actually changing black policing in the US.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Quite a few, if necessary to defend our rights.

This is a fantasy.

[-] WraithGear@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

the problem isn’t that people won’t, it’s that people don’t want to be the crazed lone gun man.

one of the reasons i hate no kings, among a TON of issues. it’s their stance on armed protesting. they are organized around cooperating with police to ‘other’ anyone they find is armed, but armed protestors is not to stand there with a conceal carry you are not going to draw, it’s to stand there with your weapon out as an open threat to tyrants. you need solidarity.

i kinda believe that no kings is not there to do anything but provide a circus, so that people who would otherwise protest with leverage, gets corraled with the group that would stop protesting because the police tell them to go home.

if you protest with a gun by your self, you will be charged with branishing, if you are white… worse if you are not.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago

they are organized around cooperating with police

One might even suspect they are organized as a means of building solidarity with the police. That the police (and the national guard and the military at-large) are positioned as a neutral unbiased arbiter, and not a reactionary gang leveraged by private industry to intimidate and displace the working class.

i kinda believe that no kings is not there to do anything but provide a circus

Definitely felt like it was a manufactured outlet for dissent. Especially when you had those protests in Europe that had to be rebranded as "No Tyrants", for fear of offending actual kings.

[-] ViceroTempus@lemmy.world 2 points 50 minutes ago

I mean the 50501 OG leadership got ousted pretty early on in the movement, by what seemed to be DNC "centrist" types, which is why the 50501movement reddit got made by the OG leadership afterwards. So I do find it believable that No Kings was meant to waste our energy and frustrations so we didn't do anything truly effective with that energy.

[-] WraithGear@lemmy.world 2 points 45 minutes ago

the largest national protest in america, and it didn’t even make the news other then as a foot note punctuating trumps fucking birthday military parade.

and the goal? to show everyone how mad we were and to back the democratic centrist. it was a fucking joke and a waste of my fucking day. it angered me that such potential was wasted. no demands, no leverage, no threat, just everyone waving a flag. the police didn’t even bother to show up. a disgrace

[-] 7101334@lemmy.world 1 points 38 minutes ago

It was fun to show up in keffiyehs and watch the old libs clutch their pearls, at least.

And to pass out anti-ICE info to middle-aged and older folks who may not have necessarily been aware of those resources.

But yeah fuck No Kings.

[-] ViceroTempus@lemmy.world 1 points 40 minutes ago

Yup, if your "protest" doesn't have the background of potential violence when your needs aren't met. That's a parade not a protest. Something that a lot of these "pacifist" types either don't understand, or choose to ignore. The whole point of a protest is to show you're a threat, that things will go poorly if we can't negotiate in good faith.

[-] 7101334@lemmy.world 1 points 40 minutes ago

...You left the part out of your quote where I specified examples of it already happening

[-] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Battle of Algiers style my bruh. individual actions that can't be connected to a "group." So what if no one is behind me. It's live in a terrible nation and die because I'm gay and disabled or die fighting a fruitless battle. I choose the latter because that's with in my control. I can't speak for everyone, but I took the "you first" idea very seriously.

[-] ViceroTempus@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Damn right. A lot of these naysayers probably haven't even knocked on their neighbor doors to build that organization. I mean I did, got a BBQ going, invited my neighbors and got to know them. Once I built rapport, I asked how they felt about ICE and if they would be interested in mutual defense in case they show up on our street. We have been stockpiling food, medicine, and ammunition since then.

Admittedly getting anybody to do more than though has been met with push back. Maybe that will change after midterms, maybe it won't. Either way I'm with you, and agree that a way forward is individual actions that can't be connected to a group. They started the war, and now the livestock who aren't yet affected think that their chastisements matter. But really their opinion matters to me as little as it matters to their masters. Which is to say, not at all.

People who want brown, black, disabled and neurodivergent people to sit down and take it should be the first ones volunteering to be in a Concentration Camp. After all, according to them, it's not a big enough deal to get violent over. So let's see them prove it.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago

Battle of Algiers style my bruh. individual actions that can’t be connected to a “group.”

I'm sorry, what? It could absolutely be connected to the National Liberation Front. That's who the French were trying to run down and were willing to torture half the damned city to find. Arguably, it was the French hyper-police response to the guerrilla group that sparked enough backlash to yield a national revolt.

Even then, the French haven't properly decoupled from Algeria to this day. We're a far cry from any kind of Battle for Algiers in this country, much less a multi-generational independent government grappling with the long history of humanitarian crimes perpetrated against our people.

[-] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

I said style, not that the USA is like Algeria. I'm glad you read up on it at some point. But, the point is that groups are not forming because it's abit too risky. Like, if a group did form, it'd be the wet dream of the dictatorship. A real scape goat. A real entity. Not the fake ones they make up. that's why it has to be loose as fuck. Individuals doing things. Like the take down of flock cameras recently. That's not a group, that's individuals.

I would like everyone to unite, but sadly, too many are afraid. I am not. So I will be brave for them.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

m glad you read up on it at some point.

One hell of a movie.

I would like everyone to unite, but sadly, too many are afraid

I might suggest it's less an issue of fear than division. Getting people to work together is hard, especially when cynacism runs as high as narcacism.

[-] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I hear you, but, for sure it's fear, even my most staunch liberal friends are saying that they are afraid. I will also agree that there is cynicism, but it's the fallout flavor / flowey flavor. Absurdism is in on there somewhere. Nihilism has done a number on us. (Minor edit changed "Ai" mistype to "in" )

[-] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

This isn't shocking and has been floated around the real question how will people respond to it. It doesn't help they gave him that semi king status where anything as a Presidential act is fine to do.

[-] ProfThadBach@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago

As a former National Guard officer I am concerned that the Guard will be turned on us and most of the Guardsman will not push back. I live in the South and I know most of the state governors will do nothing. I hope the blue state governors do something. I hope the Guardsman remember their oath. I am not hopeful. Prepare for the worst.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I hope the blue state governors do something.

glancing from Tim Walz to Gavin Newsom to Josh Shapiro

I wouldn't hold my breath.

[-] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 19 points 14 hours ago

This was the plan since day 1. Don’t act surprised now or when there are armed men at polling stations on Election Day.

[-] Napster153@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago

Would it be common sense to organise against this? Would it not set a good precedent for Americans to encircle the polling stations and make their grudge known?

[-] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

It may come to that.

[-] rethnor@lemmy.zip 5 points 13 hours ago

I think he'll take action much closer to the actual election. When it's too soon for the courts to say anything about it.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago

He's desperate and scared. He can't dig himself out of his shithole. He has nothing to lose by nullifying the midterms. The only hope the USA has is that he dies.

[-] chahn.chris@piefed.social 10 points 16 hours ago

He can try, states are going to vote though.

America held elections during the literal civil war, we can hold elections while an orange vapor balloon tried to fat on them.

We just need everyone to see what’s going on and overcome fear. Once people hear about this nonsense I expect any remaining people that aren’t awake yet but can be reached will wake up and they won’t tolerate it.

[-] starlinguk@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

Why doesn't he just pull an Orbán and quit? He's rich and nobody's going to sue him. Why live like this when you don't have to?

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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026

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