Trump is taking aim at the midterms

[Septua]

This is the primary concern in my mind:

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-national-guard-ice-presence-for-midterm-elections-by-richard-k-sherwin-2025-10

Under normal circumstances, the president would seek to improve his party’s electoral standing. Yet Trump is doubling down on some of his most unpopular policies. For example, his latest statements suggest that he is committed to sending more National Guard troops to Democratic Party-controlled cities, even though 58% of Americans oppose such deployments. While the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the use of federal troops for domestic policing, the Insurrection Act of 1807 provides an exception for responding to violent uprisings against the state, and Trump is already threatening to invoke it.

That is why Trump and his advisers are increasingly using terms like “terrorist” and “insurrection” to describe anyone who opposes their agenda. Trump recently claimed, falsely, that Portland, Oregon, has been taken over by left-wing “domestic terrorists” (adding, preposterously, that the city doesn’t “even have stores anymore”). Similarly, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who increasingly appears to be running things, has called federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration “terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” He has also said that the Democrats are not a political party, but a “domestic extremist organization.”

Such labels matter, because Trump himself has explicitly described how he thinks extremists should be handled. If “radical left lunatics” cause trouble on Election Day, he told Fox News last October, the problem “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” That allusion to Election Day is no accident. Moreover, the vagueness surrounding the enemy’s precise identity serves Trump’s purpose. It is enough, as he recently told an audience of 800 top military leaders, to say that America faces an “invasion from within … No different than a foreign enemy.”

In the end, scapegoats for suspended elections will be found and prosecuted by Trump’s Justice Department. Friends will be rewarded, foes will be punished, and Trump will have fulfilled his most infamous campaign promise. “In four years,” he told supporters in July 2024, “you don't have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good. You’re not going to have to vote.”

[SSJVegeta]

1. Like the 1934 german referendum elections

The guardian needs to be instructed by leadership to protect protesters if they are federalIzed. Much like the Oregon NG General has said he would do.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. STOP spreading myths and fomenting panic

Timothy Snyder makes a good argument against spreading the kind of nonsense in your post:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220719691

Here are the facts (as Snyder says, we must fight attempts to sow panic with known facts):

States run elections, the feds cannot cancel or suspend them.

Elections were held during actual wars, including the Civil War, and following 9/11.

Nationwide martial law, or even martial law in just the major blue cities, is a physical impossibility- they couldn’t control LA with 10,000 troops, and the troops in DC ended up on litter patrol Judges have currently blocked deployment of troops in Portland and Chicago.

The facts outweigh and outflank the lies.

They have power, but outside of the executive branch and the MAGA faithful, they have very little actual control.

And don’t forget the most important fact of all:

Trump is not omnipotent, and the states and the people are not powerless

[durablend]

5. You keep saying this

But when ICE starts yeeting people off the voting lines "because", then we're going to have a problem.

[Fiendish Thingy]

6. THEY'RE going to have the problem, not us.

Do you think the states, the governors, will sit by idly while Trump’s Gestapo disrupts elections?

I have two millennial kids, but I’ve never heard the term “yeeting” before- is it a typo?

There won’t be a problem with ICE disrupting elections in Portland or Seattle, since all voting in those states (and many more) is completely by mail (Trump’s EO banning mail in voting has been ignored, as he has no authority over state run elections).

[EdmondDantes_]

7. Yeet is throwing with force

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/yeet-meaning-and-history

But yeah, these sort of posts are fear mongering.

[Fiendish Thingy]

9. I suspect that, wherever possible, Latinos will vote by mail

Texas and Florida are likely candidates for ICE intimidation at the polls, but we shall see how the courts handle such a challenge. They have dismissed the lies and blocked deployment of troops in Chicago and Portland, so we shall see.

Voters in those states will need extra support- I hope planning is already in progress.

[democratsruletheday]

11. absolutely true FT....this thread sucks

it's weak minded and inaccurate for starters.

[Septua]

12. I like to read rational evaluations of reality.

But I pay more attention to Marc Elias' opinions on Trump and MAGA reality.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/is-the-2026-election-already-in-danger

The Constitution gives the states the power to set the time, place, and manner of elections,” the election lawyer Marc Elias points out. “It gives the President no [such] power.” Yet, almost one year before the midterms, Donald Trump has called for a nationwide prohibition on mail-in voting, an option favored by Democrats, as well as restrictions on voting machines. The Justice Department has demanded sensitive voter information from at least thirty-four states so far, with little explanation as to how the information will be used.

Will we have free and fair congressional elections in 2026? “I am very worried that we could have elections that do not reflect the desires and the voting preferences of everyone who wishes they could vote and have their vote tabulated accurately,” Elias tells David Remnick. “That may sound very lawyerly and very technical, but I think it would be a historic rollback.” Elias’s firm fought and ultimately won almost every case that Trump and Republican allies brought against the 2020 election, and Elias continues to fight the latest round of incursions in court. And while he rues what he calls “re-gerrymandering” in Texas—designed to squeeze Texas’s Democratic representatives out of Congress—Elias thinks states run by Democrats have no choice but to copy the tactic. “Before Gavin Newsom announced what he was doing, I came out publicly and said Democrats should gerrymander nine seats out of California, which would mean there’d be no Republicans left in the delegation. . . . At the end of the day, if there’s no disincentive structure for Republicans to jump off this path, [then] it just continues.”

Trump's got control of the Executive branch, control of the Congress, control of the DOJ and has said he will ignore the Courts if they interfere with his agenda. I'd say that's pretty damned omnipotent.

[Septua]

13. There's nothing nonsensical or mythical in that link.

It is reality in Trump world.

[gulliver]

3. He'll do the same thing he's been doing

Watch for some popular legislation coming out of the Congress and being signed with fanfare.

Watch for Trump to troll in order to pick his own preferred debate opponents from the left. He wants people hyperventilating about fascism and racism and phobias. The media wants that too, needless to say. So, we on the Democratic side have a challenge to keep our mic in the hands of the people who use it right.

[chouchou]

4. Mr. Sunshine probably won't be around in a few years ..or even months but,..

.I suspect he'll do the ol' Give-the-population-money-so-they-will-vote-for-me.
He pulled that crap years ago and got his way and frankly, there's enough American-Idiots will fall back in line.
(But..But...He gave us money! Yeah...97 cents per day for 4 years and cause your life to go down...for again..97 damn cents.)

[EdmondDantes_]

8. He's doubling down on what his most ardent supporters want

He really only has one electoral trick of making his opponents less popular. He did it with Clinton and Harris, and failed to do it to Biden. The more name calling he does, he's just trying to muddy the water since he has a low ceiling of popularity. There's a reason he never got above water in approval ratings. Biden's high was 57% in February 2021. Trump's was 49% in January 2025 in comparison. He has to try to drag us down.

[usonian]

10. I'm also taking aim at the midterms.

[Septua]

14. Addendum: If he gets enough rope and...

..we get lucky, he might just hang himself.