So this article has a narrow scope, it only considers two ways Trump might interfere:
This interference could take many forms. But recent events have increased experts’ level of concern about two possibilities in particular:
That the Trump administration will try to seize ballots and voting machines from key jurisdictions before votes have been fully counted.
That Trump will deploy ICE or other federal agents to the vicinity of critical polling places, so as to deter turnout among voters in general — and those with undocumented family members, in particular.
So for context, the people who don’t think Trump will succeed are:
and Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and prior Biden-era deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights department.
For context about the Brennan Center:
The Brennan Center for Justice is an American liberal[2][3][4] nonprofit law and public policy institute. The organization is named after Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan Jr. The Brennan Center advocates for public policy positions including raising the minimum wage, opposing voter ID laws, and calling for public funding of elections.[5][6] Its operations are centered at the New York University School of Law. The organization opposed the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by nonprofit organizations.[7][8]
The stated mission of the Brennan Center is to “work to hold our political institutions and laws accountable to the twin American ideals of democracy and equal justice for all”.[9] Its president is Michael Waldman, former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.
So why does the article say the attempts will fail?
“There is a very high risk that the administration will use every tool at its disposal to get voting machines or ballots in the course of an upcoming election,” the Brennan Center’s Weiser told me. “But I don’t think there is a high risk that they will succeed.”
“I think every magistrate judge in the country would understand the difference between a search warrant to seize materials for an election that happened five years ago and a search warrant to seize election materials from an election in progress,” Levitt said. “I understand why people are worried. But it’s not remotely the same.”
So Weiser and Levitt think rule of law will prevail and the courts will not grant Trump the authority to seize election materials during the election.
What about ICE?
Even just having ICE presence at polling stations could deter certain voters, it’s hard to say what the aggregate effects of these measures might be, from the article:
Their reasoning is simple: If ICE is harassing residents and causing traffic jams in heavily Democratic precincts, fewer Americans will make it to the voting booth in those areas. And voters with undocumented family members may be especially likely to stay home.
“Trump wants to project ICE as an all-powerful force everywhere,” Levitt said. “And they are, as Minneapolis is proving emphatically, not. There simply aren’t enough ICE personnel to blanket a modestly large city. We live in a big country. And it is hard to control through fear.”
Even in the Twin Cities — where Trump deployed some 3,000 immigration enforcement agents — ICE’s presence seems to have mobilized Democratic voters, rather than deterring them. In a special election on January 27 for Minnesota House district 64A, the Democratic candidate defeated her Republican opponent by a 91-point margin. In 2024, a Democrat had won the seat by 66.6 percentage points.
“There is clearly an effort afoot to interfere in our elections and that is something that people should be alarmed about,” Weiser said. “But this can be thwarted. And it must be.”
So the argument is that ICE doesn’t have enough manpower for this strategy to work across the US, and attempting to use ICE this way could backfire and result in stronger Democratic wins like we saw in Minnesota.
What isn’t mentioned are other ways Trump could attempt a coup or election interference that might ignore the constitution - the two individuals who are doubtful Trump will succeed are assuming the law will be respected and followed, and they don’t consider other possibilities.
Even Putin holds elections. He held elections in annexed Ukraine, too.
And holding elections at all keeps Trump’s rule somewhat stable. If we know we’ll get another election, “we can all vote a little harder to get him out”. If elections simply don’t happen anymore, then people may seek other means to remove Trump, like assassination.
Or just ignore the result. They might not be able to block every voting booth in the country, but they could easily block the newly elected Democrats being sworn in or even allowed inside the buildings. Then they start making laws without them. Who’s going to stop them?
not sure why you think that’s “foolproof” - he has no authority to do that, and it seems tantamount to a coup to stop elections without constitutional grounds
Yeah… People seem to be forgetting that bush stole an election via the brooks brothers riot in one county. With just how fucked up the American electorial system evolved it only takes one country to vastly change the course of American history.
As far as the courts, just in the last couple years we’ve seen the judicial branch is more than willing to reinterpret history and law to empower the current administration.
The bigger the blowout is, the less marginal risk that any given precinct being fucked with can alter the outcome in his favor. Even greater reason to mobilize the vote as much as possible.
The electoral college also has nothing to do with the midterms.
It’s important to identify threats, but it’s also critical not to aggrandize their power and make them appear invincible. They are desperate to instill defeatism into the ranks of their opposition. But their bravado betrays their weakness.
They absolutely rely on the obedience of various pillars of support throughout society to retain their power and legitimacy. Those pillars can be convinced and/or forced to cease their obedience and in some cases to actively provide support to the opposition. None of this is new or unique to America. Tyrannical regimes have been removed from power many time through nonviolent mass movements. We can learn from them if we choose to.
I can only add that if we keep on showing up to resist, to make our peaceful non-consent loud and obvious like we did on the last Friday in January, the less support any of this planned and possible election fuckery will have. The people who desperately want to get or keep power do not want to actually have to take on the public hate of the entire country, like ICE has. But it’s up to us.
I’m concerned that they’ve already undermined trust in the elections so much that neither side will accept a losing outcome as legitimate. The larger attack on democracy has already succeeded. I hope I’m wrong.
I think the GOP’s support for trump has always been an endgame. Demographically speaking - their party was dying. This was always one last chance to drive the bus completely off the cliff - destroy education, trust in institutions, the US’s international cooperation from aid to NATO, wreck it all, if they can’t drive the bus forever then no one gets to.
Like we see from the files, it’s a cabal of evil fucks from a huge variety of motivations - racists, sexists, climate denial, oligarchs and techbros all lining up together to fix this whole liberal democracy problem.
that would be good to know, but based on their analysis here I would absolutely not be surprised that they just ignored extra-judicial methods like a full-on coup …
So the argument is that ICE doesn’t have enough manpower for this strategy to work across the US
Anyone who doesn’t understand this, has no idea how much goes into everyone voting in person within the same 12 hour period…
What I think he’ll try, is claiming Dem states aren’t competent to run elections and appointing his own people to run, and rig, the elections in blue states.
And he’ll specifically target states run by neoliberals he knows won’t fight back.
Cali has a shit ton of electoral votes, and Newsom would prefer Republicans steal the election if he’s not the Dem candidate, so he’d probably just make some token complaints, have an intern post some memes, and then let it happen hoping it gives him a shot at 2032
What isn’t mentioned are other ways Trump could attempt a coup or election interference that might ignore the constitution
There really aren’t any other ways which don’t fall into either “entirely protected speech” or “instigation of civil war”.
Trump is free to claim his party won the midterms, and even file nuisance suits in the courts. And we shouldn’t assume he wouldn’t try to just declare who won or try and interfere with the formation of the much-bluer 120th Congress. But all permutations are either things he’s as free as anyone to do, things that likely won’t work, or things that would start a civil war.
Trump literally instigated an insurrection … I don’t know why “starting a civil war” doesn’t seem like a straightforwardly likely path for him … in particular I think that will be most likely at the end of his term, just like last time. The question is whether his coup will be successful this time, even though it failed last time. He has been more careful this time to appoint positions with loyalists (think JD Vance rather than Mike Pence), and has been purging the military with this in mind.
We are far from being confident that Trump won’t succeed in another coup attempt.
At least I take comfort knowing that even if he does succeed in a coup, he doesn’t have much life left - it won’t be as bad as when the fascists won in Spain (36 years of fascist rule under Franco), or as bad as Stalin’s rule (29 years).
Trump is 79 years old right now, he is very likely to survive the next 3 years (the rest of his term), but the average life expectancy of men in the US is 76 years, and his life expectancy is probably less than a decade.
This is a cult of personality, I find it unlikely MAGA will have much success post-Trump.
a secession is different than a coup, a coup is successful if there is a transfer of power (or the constitutional transfer of power fails, like when Trump tried to prevent Biden from taking office) … and yes, even if Trump led a coup and was in power for a short time like the short life of the Confederacy, I do think retaining power after his constitutional term would be a “success” in the sense that I mean
and I do think the Confederacy successfully seceded from the Union, even if it didn’t last long
and in a broader sense the Confederacy succeeded in many ways even if we acknowledge they lost the war - after Lincoln’s assassination, the South was met with appeasements and there was a failure to integrate or enforce rule of law in the South … from the perspective of Black lives at the time, I would say the South definitely succeeded in maintaining their power and control, and we see this even in the ways that massacres of tens of thousands of Black folks in the South after the civil war went unpunished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedmen_massacres
I think it’s a rhetorical distinction, but an important one to be aware of.
It would be terrible for us to waste time arguing over whether or not “Trump can succeed!” when we both agree that any such success is likely to be short lived, lead to immediate violence, and most probably result in a violent removal of his administration from power.
(Not to say that we necessarily agree on those things – just that it’d be a waste of time arguing if we do.)
Agreed on most of that - but I don’t know that violent removal of his administration from power after a successful coup is the most likely outcome - the US military was in the hands of other side in the case of the Confederacy … a successful Trump coup would maybe lead to schisms within the military or between state National Guards and federal forces (maybe), but it’s also possible Trump just takes and holds power and there is no domestic military force that is willing or able to remove him. Maybe California and other states would band together, but I’m not sure they would have the military to fight off the US military if they are loyal to Trump after a coup.
It’s possible Trump’s coup will be more like what happened in Russia, where they find a way to do it without much bloodshed by undermining the democratic institutions of elections, media, etc. so that it all appears to be constitutional and legal, but the government has clearly become autocratic.
So this article has a narrow scope, it only considers two ways Trump might interfere:
So for context, the people who don’t think Trump will succeed are:
Wendy Weiser, the VP of the Brennan Center,
and Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and prior Biden-era deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights department.
For context about the Brennan Center:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennan_Center_for_Justice
So why does the article say the attempts will fail?
So Weiser and Levitt think rule of law will prevail and the courts will not grant Trump the authority to seize election materials during the election.
What about ICE?
Even just having ICE presence at polling stations could deter certain voters, it’s hard to say what the aggregate effects of these measures might be, from the article:
So the argument is that ICE doesn’t have enough manpower for this strategy to work across the US, and attempting to use ICE this way could backfire and result in stronger Democratic wins like we saw in Minnesota.
What isn’t mentioned are other ways Trump could attempt a coup or election interference that might ignore the constitution - the two individuals who are doubtful Trump will succeed are assuming the law will be respected and followed, and they don’t consider other possibilities.
Isn’t the most foolproof method -and one that Trump has floated previously- just to not hold the elections?
Even Putin holds elections. He held elections in annexed Ukraine, too.
And holding elections at all keeps Trump’s rule somewhat stable. If we know we’ll get another election, “we can all vote a little harder to get him out”. If elections simply don’t happen anymore, then people may seek other means to remove Trump, like assassination.
Or just ignore the result. They might not be able to block every voting booth in the country, but they could easily block the newly elected Democrats being sworn in or even allowed inside the buildings. Then they start making laws without them. Who’s going to stop them?
not sure why you think that’s “foolproof” - he has no authority to do that, and it seems tantamount to a coup to stop elections without constitutional grounds
When has that stopped him?
Also, ICE doesn’t need to be everywhere, they need to be at a few dozen key locations in swing states.
Yeah… People seem to be forgetting that bush stole an election via the brooks brothers riot in one county. With just how fucked up the American electorial system evolved it only takes one country to vastly change the course of American history.
As far as the courts, just in the last couple years we’ve seen the judicial branch is more than willing to reinterpret history and law to empower the current administration.
The bigger the blowout is, the less marginal risk that any given precinct being fucked with can alter the outcome in his favor. Even greater reason to mobilize the vote as much as possible.
The electoral college also has nothing to do with the midterms.
It’s important to identify threats, but it’s also critical not to aggrandize their power and make them appear invincible. They are desperate to instill defeatism into the ranks of their opposition. But their bravado betrays their weakness.
They absolutely rely on the obedience of various pillars of support throughout society to retain their power and legitimacy. Those pillars can be convinced and/or forced to cease their obedience and in some cases to actively provide support to the opposition. None of this is new or unique to America. Tyrannical regimes have been removed from power many time through nonviolent mass movements. We can learn from them if we choose to.
Excellent post. Thank you for taking the time.
I can only add that if we keep on showing up to resist, to make our peaceful non-consent loud and obvious like we did on the last Friday in January, the less support any of this planned and possible election fuckery will have. The people who desperately want to get or keep power do not want to actually have to take on the public hate of the entire country, like ICE has. But it’s up to us.
yes, I do think they under-anticipate the way that ICE could be used surgically - just flipping a few elections could be crucial …
I’m concerned that they’ve already undermined trust in the elections so much that neither side will accept a losing outcome as legitimate. The larger attack on democracy has already succeeded. I hope I’m wrong.
I think the GOP’s support for trump has always been an endgame. Demographically speaking - their party was dying. This was always one last chance to drive the bus completely off the cliff - destroy education, trust in institutions, the US’s international cooperation from aid to NATO, wreck it all, if they can’t drive the bus forever then no one gets to.
Like we see from the files, it’s a cabal of evil fucks from a huge variety of motivations - racists, sexists, climate denial, oligarchs and techbros all lining up together to fix this whole liberal democracy problem.
Didn’t the Brennan Center come up with scenarios in his first term but didn’t anticipate an angry mob ransacking Congress as one of them?
that would be good to know, but based on their analysis here I would absolutely not be surprised that they just ignored extra-judicial methods like a full-on coup …
Anyone who doesn’t understand this, has no idea how much goes into everyone voting in person within the same 12 hour period…
What I think he’ll try, is claiming Dem states aren’t competent to run elections and appointing his own people to run, and rig, the elections in blue states.
And he’ll specifically target states run by neoliberals he knows won’t fight back.
Cali has a shit ton of electoral votes, and Newsom would prefer Republicans steal the election if he’s not the Dem candidate, so he’d probably just make some token complaints, have an intern post some memes, and then let it happen hoping it gives him a shot at 2032
There really aren’t any other ways which don’t fall into either “entirely protected speech” or “instigation of civil war”.
Trump is free to claim his party won the midterms, and even file nuisance suits in the courts. And we shouldn’t assume he wouldn’t try to just declare who won or try and interfere with the formation of the much-bluer 120th Congress. But all permutations are either things he’s as free as anyone to do, things that likely won’t work, or things that would start a civil war.
Trump literally instigated an insurrection … I don’t know why “starting a civil war” doesn’t seem like a straightforwardly likely path for him … in particular I think that will be most likely at the end of his term, just like last time. The question is whether his coup will be successful this time, even though it failed last time. He has been more careful this time to appoint positions with loyalists (think JD Vance rather than Mike Pence), and has been purging the military with this in mind.
We are far from being confident that Trump won’t succeed in another coup attempt.
At least I take comfort knowing that even if he does succeed in a coup, he doesn’t have much life left - it won’t be as bad as when the fascists won in Spain (36 years of fascist rule under Franco), or as bad as Stalin’s rule (29 years).
Trump is 79 years old right now, he is very likely to survive the next 3 years (the rest of his term), but the average life expectancy of men in the US is 76 years, and his life expectancy is probably less than a decade.
This is a cult of personality, I find it unlikely MAGA will have much success post-Trump.
This entirely depends on what you mean by “succeed”.
Would you consider the Confederate States of America (nominally founded during and extinguished by the 19th century US civil war) a “success”?
a secession is different than a coup, a coup is successful if there is a transfer of power (or the constitutional transfer of power fails, like when Trump tried to prevent Biden from taking office) … and yes, even if Trump led a coup and was in power for a short time like the short life of the Confederacy, I do think retaining power after his constitutional term would be a “success” in the sense that I mean
and I do think the Confederacy successfully seceded from the Union, even if it didn’t last long
and in a broader sense the Confederacy succeeded in many ways even if we acknowledge they lost the war - after Lincoln’s assassination, the South was met with appeasements and there was a failure to integrate or enforce rule of law in the South … from the perspective of Black lives at the time, I would say the South definitely succeeded in maintaining their power and control, and we see this even in the ways that massacres of tens of thousands of Black folks in the South after the civil war went unpunished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedmen_massacres
I think it’s a rhetorical distinction, but an important one to be aware of.
It would be terrible for us to waste time arguing over whether or not “Trump can succeed!” when we both agree that any such success is likely to be short lived, lead to immediate violence, and most probably result in a violent removal of his administration from power.
(Not to say that we necessarily agree on those things – just that it’d be a waste of time arguing if we do.)
Agreed on most of that - but I don’t know that violent removal of his administration from power after a successful coup is the most likely outcome - the US military was in the hands of other side in the case of the Confederacy … a successful Trump coup would maybe lead to schisms within the military or between state National Guards and federal forces (maybe), but it’s also possible Trump just takes and holds power and there is no domestic military force that is willing or able to remove him. Maybe California and other states would band together, but I’m not sure they would have the military to fight off the US military if they are loyal to Trump after a coup.
It’s possible Trump’s coup will be more like what happened in Russia, where they find a way to do it without much bloodshed by undermining the democratic institutions of elections, media, etc. so that it all appears to be constitutional and legal, but the government has clearly become autocratic.
How close is the Levitt family tree to the Leavitt family tree?
not sure, but I doubt it’s that close