President Donald Trump and Republicans are engaging in an all-out effort to challenge the results of next week’s midterm elections, in a desperate campaign to cling to power for the next two years – spreading unfounded fears of noncitizen voting, selectively and vindictively targeting political opponents and liberal state leaders, conducting arrests and threatening to criminally prosecute Democratic election officials, and having the Justice Department argue in court that an election isn’t legally legitimate unless Trump’s side wins it.
To help sway the election in Republicans’ favor, the DOJ is apparently violating its own policies by attempting to interfere with how states administer elections and determine the validity of votes. And even as its lawsuits flounder, the Trump-Vance administration has zero intention of taking its foot off the gas between now and Election Night, and possibly beyond.
The White House refuses to rule out intervention at the polls by U.S. military and federal law enforcement, including armed ICE agents. (Such actions would ordinarily be flatly illegal.) America is witnessing a sharp, last-ditch escalation of Trump and his party’s already vast attempts to corrupt the 2026 midterms, an enormously high-stakes election that will determine whether the Senate and the House can rein in at least some of the president’s fascist terror campaigns. (Currently, polls point to an electoral “bloodbath” for the GOP, a staggering repudiation of Trump’s agenda.)
This escalation is happening at the explicit direction and guidance of the Trump White House, with sources familiar with the matter and administration officials telling Zeteo what may seem obvious to casual observers – the effort to rig the election is coming from the top, beginning and ending with Trump.
“The president and the White House are steering all of this,” a Trump adviser says.