Trump Wants To Steal the Midterms – But the Dems Actually Have A Plan To Fight Back
'Start the Steal,' Part 3: Democrats, election officials, and activist groups talk with Zeteo about how they’re planning to defend the midterms from ICE agents at the polls, ballot seizures, and more.
This week, we are running our ‘Start the Steal’ series, with three months left in the 2026 midterm elections. The president and his allies are conducting a scorched-earth campaign to rig the coming elections, and we believe it’s the biggest story in America right now. To keep reporting this story the way it needs to be told, we need your support. In this new age of American authoritarianism, independent media is more important than ever. Subscribe to Zeteo and never hit another paywall. And read on for Part Three of our special series, below. – Mehdi
Wargames:
Democrats and election officials are preparing for unprecedented threats from the Trump administration to November’s midterms.
Much of the secretive wargaming across the nation is focused on what to do if President Trump sends armed federal agents or U.S. troops to intimidate voters at polling locations or raid election offices.
Senior election officials and Democratic leaders are urging people to take Trump’s authoritarian threat seriously – but they emphasize that Americans need to get out and vote in overwhelming numbers and reject his fearmongering.
Since early last year, Donald Trump and his Republican Party have been working constantly to rig the 2026 midterms and other future elections in any way they can. In response to this flagrantly authoritarian endeavor, a vast, loose network of elected Democrats, legal nonprofits, and aligned groups and activists has dedicated an astounding amount of resources and time to preparing for the many credible ways that the president could attempt to steal elections, if his party loses. It’s happening all over the country.
For this article, Zeteo interviewed numerous knowledgeable sources in a variety of states and cities – people in governors’ offices, sources on Capitol Hill, state attorneys general offices and prosecutors, secretaries of state and other top election officials, prominent liberal attorneys, pro-democracy advocates, and others – to catch a glimpse of just how much these Democratic politicians and their allies are prepping for an all-out onslaught from the Trump-Vance administration ahead of, and after, November.
Overwhelmingly, these sources said that what was most unsettling to them was that for many months, they’ve been wargaming and meticulously planning how to defend their upcoming elections from Trump in ways that mirror how they’d plan to protect elections from a foreign adversary, not the president of the United States.
The Trump administration is engaging in numerous dirty tricks, intimidation tactics, and voter suppression salvos during this election cycle. But perhaps the most depraved among the lot is the administration’s ongoing public threat to sic men with guns – FBI agents, ICE officers, or even U.S. troops – on voting sites or election offices in counties that President Trump has deemed enemy territory, to both intimidate Democrats and potentially even seize ballots and election materials.
Election officials and lawyers noted how surreal it is, even after a decade of Trumpism, to treat the nation’s duly elected president as the primary threat to the freedom and fairness of American elections. Several of the sources said that they’d never before thought they’d have to spend this much time and energy figuring out exactly what they’d do if the U.S. government – acting like a far-off regime we’d typically hear about from victims who fled it – sends armed agents to harass voters and election workers.
Any deployment of National Guard troops or federal law enforcement like ICE would be illegal, as federal law prohibits armed federal agents from being sent to polling places “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
The Trump-Vance administration, however, has a lengthy track record of breaking laws and norms, and defying the courts, when they want. The president would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to legally justify armed agents at the polls – though there would almost certainly be no genuine justification for doing so.
The second greatest fear expressed by many Democrats, election officials, and others working to prepare for Trump’s threats to the midterms is the prospect of the feds attempting to seize ballots.