‘Doomsday Scenario’: How Trump and Republicans Could Steal Power – Even If They Lose
Jan. 3 could be the new Jan. 6 if Republicans challenge election wins by Democrats and try to steal power in the House.
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This week, we are launching our ‘Start The Steal’ series, at the critical three-month stretch left in the 2026 midterm elections. The president of the United States and his allies are conducting a scorched-earth campaign – on a gigantic, historic scale – to rig the coming elections and suppress the opposition’s vote. We believe this is the biggest story in America right now – but the only way we can keep reporting this story the way it needs to be told is with your support. This is why we all need to support independent media, especially in this new age of American authoritarianism. Subscribe to Zeteo and never hit another paywall. – Mehdi
What is the ‘Doomsday Scenario’?
Democrats may win enough seats to take back the House, but Republicans can challenge those wins and attempt to steal control of Congress.
The first path toward this doomsday scenario would be if Republicans replace the current House clerk. The second path is for Republicans to work in lockstep to challenge election results.
Democrats and their allies say this nightmare scenario is unlikely – but they’re taking it seriously. President Trump knows about the Jan. 3 scenario, though his level of interest in it is unclear, sources say.
If Democrats can overcome President Donald Trump’s election-interference efforts and win the midterms in November, they could face one final hurdle to seizing power in Congress and thus providing a check on Trump’s runaway executive power: mass refusal by Republican lawmakers to allow Democrats to take their seats in Congress.
It’s what multiple activists, lawyers, and elected Democrats independently describe as a “doomsday scenario” that experts warn would kick off a constitutional crisis – if Trump and House Republicans ever tried to force it through.
As Election Day 2026 rapidly approaches, Republicans are trying to beat their long November odds of keeping the U.S. House of Representatives, where a GOP majority would continue to protect Trump from a Democratic onslaught of accountability, or even impeachment. The leaders of the GOP know how steep their odds are this year, so Trump and his party are engaging in a massive, diversified, and corrupt campaign to tilt the elections in their favor.
“It’s like tracking a new Jan. 6-style plot every week,” one Democratic lawyer involved with efforts to fight back against the Trump-led blitz told Zeteo. This source, like others, requested anonymity to discuss details of internal deliberations and planning that they were not authorized to speak about publicly.
One of the numerous nightmare scenarios that different Democratic-aligned groups are tracking is what some of them are calling a potential “Jan. 3 ploy.” Of all the ways Trump and his party are currently attempting to rig and attack American elections, this particular doomsday scenario would be a needle-threading doozy – even for Trump, who has a stranglehold on his party and has already shown a willingness to assault the democratic order to the point that Americans died as a result of a riot he caused. And yet, it is a symptom of how close this president and the Republican Party are to pulling the republic in the direction of complete democratic rupture that a once far-fetched-sounding outcome cannot be simply laughed off.
Democratic lawmakers and their allies are not dismissing the idea. While they emphasize that it is much more likely that President Trump attempts other, different election-subversion schemes, they are nonetheless taking an expect-the-unexpected approach to 2026, and future election years. The Trump-Vance administration and the current iteration of the conservative movement have radically changed what should be reasonably included in the realm of possibility, especially when it comes to the Republican Party’s ruthless efforts to pervert and corrupt the American democratic process in the service of a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose electoral philosophy.