Trump Has Good Reasons to Cancel the Midterms

Will there be another election?

Americans have asked that question before, and when they did, the reassuring answer has always landed on a variant of “why wouldn’t there be?” Even in 1864, in the throes of the Civil War, Lincoln submitted to a challenge from a long-forgotten Democrat, General George McClellan, albeit in a deeply flawed campaign in a rump Union where troops faced pressure to vote Republican.

There have been hiccups in the electoral road since then—worries about Islamist terror attacks in 2004 after 9/11, logistical concerns during the pandemic, New York’s 2001 mayoral primary in which a delay denied a Democrat a likely victory—but fear of a canceled election is at a fever pitch not seen in living memory.

60% of respondents to the Feb. 9-12 Yahoo/YouGov poll believe President Trump is “not likely to accept” a scenario in which Democrats “win enough seats in November to take control of the U.S. House or U.S. Senate.” How far might he be willing to go to preserve the status quo?

The president has repeatedly suggested that elections ought to be canceled—“when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” he said last month—or, if held, their results annulled should he or his party lose. From the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021 to pushing for novel efforts at state gerrymandering to the Save America Act (which would make it difficult for women who change their surnames when they marry to vote) to directing the FBI to seize voting records to demanding that states turn over their voter rolls to his paramilitary Department of Homeland Security, Trump has done more than any American living or dead to subvert and undermine confidence in the system.

Trump ran for re-election in 2024 in large part because victory was his best path to avoid imprisonment. Sentencing for his felony convictions, in suspended animation as sitting president, will hang over his neck again when he returns to civilian life on January 20, 2029. Thus, schemes to subvert the constitutional two-term limit by, for example, having him run as JD Vance’s veep with the intent of taking over when Vance submits his planned resignation.

If I were Trump or paid to advise him how to stay in office beyond current legal limits and political traditions, however, I’d tell him not to wait until 2028.

I’d cancel the 2026 midterms.

Trump’s approval ratings are so low that the Republicans appear to have coerced Gallup into abolishing presidential approval ratings, by threatening to boycott it as a supplier of internal polling for campaigns. Voters say the economy is poor. ICE’s viciousness has destroyed Trump’s best issue, immigration.

As things stand, Democrats will take back the House of Representatives—probably by dozens of seats—and possibly the Senate. Hakeem Jeffries and his colleagues will regain committee chairmanships along with investigatory powers they can use to drag Trump and his cronies through endless depositions and subpoena dramas. Trump tells friends he’ll be impeached again; he’s probably right. Republicans might lose the Senate too, opening the (unlikely) possibility of removal from office.

If you’re Donald Trump, 2027 will be unpleasant.

Unless you do something radical.

Consider the counterfactual: no election, no losses, no committee hearings. Without 2026 elections, it’ll be easier to cancel 2028. No 2028, no prison. All Trump needs is a pretext—a “national emergency”—to cancel the midterms. Not forever…like an African coup leader, there will be solemn promises to hold elections at some unspecified point in a future that will never come.

The excuse part is easy. Terrorist threats. War with, for example, Iran. Cyberattack. Anti-ICE protests/riots. Illegal immigrants will try to vote.

Overcoming institutional guardrails would be more challenging, but still achievable. Under martial law (which has been declared 60 times in U.S. history), the Supreme Court and federal court system will be closed by the current rubber-stamp GOP Congress, so no redress there. Congressional Republicans, happy to keep their majority status and still in thrall to MAGA, will bite their tongues. The military is trained to follow orders from civilian political leaders.

Trump’s ace in the hole is ICE: his tens-of-thousands-strong paramilitary goon squad, personally loyal to him. They are unaccountable and unidentified, licensed to kill. And they’ll be in charge of a sprawling gulag archipelago of detention centers perfect for holding protesters and dissidents, and they have new partnership agreements with local police departments.

Who can stop an election cancellation? Not leftist street protesters; there is no organized socialist party or other activist organization open to or capable of sustained, daily, mass-scale hell-raising. If such a formation were to miraculously materialize for the first time since 1968, it would feed Trump’s narrative about the need to quash civil unrest.

If you’re looking to the media to lead the charge against Trump, let me point you to Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, Bari Weiss’s CBS News and the other voluntarily self-defanged news outlets who have sold themselves out to the GOP for pennies on the dollar. The revolution will not be live-blogged.

Those weighing what to do (or not) after the suspension of the election will ask themselves: am I willing to place my body in the line of fire over the right to choose between two corporate political parties, neither of which cares about me and neither of which has had the guts to stand up against Trump or his fascists?

In a midterm election?

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou.”)