President Donald Trump is increasingly leaning on the powers of his office to shape next year’s midterm elections, taking steps that critics warn blur the line between normal politics and outright authoritarianism.
In recent weeks, Trump has pressured Republican lawmakers in Texas and other GOP-controlled states to redraw congressional maps to favor his party, a move he insists could deliver “five more seats” in Texas alone. He has also directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the leading Democratic fundraising platform, while demanding detailed voter files from nearly 20 states, a sweeping effort to question voter eligibility on a massive scale.
The president has gone further still, vowing to outlaw voting machines and mail-in ballots, even though Republicans once opposed mail voting at his urging before he reversed course ahead of the last election. “You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,” Trump declared during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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Analysts say these tactics amount to a coordinated attempt to tilt the playing field well before ballots are cast. “Those are actions that you don’t see in healthy democracies,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy. “Those are actions you see in authoritarian states.”
Bassin warned that Trump’s track record fuels the unease. He pointed to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as evidence of how far he is willing to go to cling to power. “The one thing we know for certain from experience in 2020 is that this is a person who will use every measure and try every tactic to stay in power, regardless of the outcome of an election,” he said in an AP report.
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Unlike in 2020, when congressional Republicans, state officials, and even members of Trump’s administration resisted his demands, Trump now commands near-total loyalty from the GOP and has filled his administration with allies willing to follow his lead.
The push comes as Republicans cling to a slim three-seat majority in the House. Trump has made clear he doesn’t want a repeat of 2018, when Democrats regained control of the chamber, blocked much of his agenda, and set the stage for two impeachments.
While redistricting maneuvers in Texas and beyond could benefit Republicans, scholars caution the gambit may backfire by energizing Democratic voters. Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist, warned that the broader strategy is troubling. “It’s the overall pattern that’s alarming and that the reason to do this is for pure partisan advantage,” he said. Diamond noted he once outlined a 12-step process by which democracies slip into autocracy — and the last step, he said, is “to rig the electoral process.”
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Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department has threatened legal action against states that fail to turn over voter registration data, targeting California and Minnesota most recently. Democrats, in response, have advanced their own redistricting moves in California as a counterweight to GOP efforts in Texas.
Some of Trump’s proposals echo past schemes floated by his allies, such as the 2021 push to seize voting machines, though constitutional limits make it unlikely he can carry them out. Still, election officials see his rhetoric as an attempt to intimidate and shift the rules in advance. “Let’s see this for what it really is: An attempt to change voting going into the midterms because he’s afraid the Republicans will lose,” wrote Ann Jacobs, chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, said Trump has fewer levers to control elections than his threats suggest, since the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, authority over election procedures. But he cautioned that the true danger lies in Trump’s willingness to stretch presidential powers in ways rarely tested before.
For now, the nation is left weighing whether Trump’s campaign to reshape voting is a political bluff or the next phase in his long-running effort to stay in power.
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