Yesterday Trump made a big deal announcement; he’s supposedly bringing a steel plant to Iowa. The Indian-owned Mesabi Metallics, he claimed, would create 6000 construction jobs and 2000 manufacturing jobs by the time it begins production in 2030. Trump credited his tariffs for inducing foreign companies to want to build plants in the US.
Iowa representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, in a tight race, and Senate candidate Ashley Hinton, who is currently running slightly behind Democrat Josh Turek, were both at the presidential announcement. And that makes sense. Trump is of course lying about how tariffs work, and he also gratuitously lied about Iowa polls during the announcement. But even given that, by Trump standards, this was a remarkably normal campaign event. He had something that looks like accomplishment if you squint and don’t notice the 2030 due date. He told voters to squint at that accomplishment and encouraged them to think about it when they vote in the midterms. That is more or less how campaigns are supposed to work.
The fact that Trump has been reduced to doing sort of normal campaign events is, though, is a telling indication of the repeated failure of his main and only midterm plan—that is, cheating.
Everyone knows that Trump wants to cheat, and that he is trying to cheat. This leads many people on social media to insist, vociferously, that elections don’t matter, that Trump has already rigged them, and that there is therefore no way that Democrats can possibly win the House, let alone the Senate. Reporting on polls, or discussion of what Democrats might do if they win the House, are inevitably peppered with dooming protestations that evidence and planning are all useless and futile. Trump, some earnestly insist, has already won.
But if Trump has already won, then it is odd for him to be doing desperate Hail Mary campaign events where he burbles about the benefits of a factory that isn’t planning to open for another four years. If Trump is still looking for a magic button that will hand him the election—and he is—it is reasonable to conclude he hasn’t found it yet.
Trying to cheat and succeeding are two different things
Spiraling doomerists often talk as if Trump has a secret plan to steal the midterms that no one is talking about, but which will be put in place at the last minute just before election results are verified.
But we know that there is not a singular assuredly successful secret plan because Trump keeps trying not very secret plans which keep failing. If you have a surefire method of success, you don’t keep rolling out new and innovative ways to not succeed at doing the thing you’ve already figured out.
Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2026 midterms started practically the day he entered office, and have been ongoing ever since. The most obvious scheme, and the one that has perhaps been most successful, is his push for mid-decade racist gerrymandering. With the help of the Christofascist partisan hacks on the Supreme Court, states like North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Tennesse and Ohio redrew their electoral maps. Republicans hoped this would net them potentially 15-20 seats or more and provide them with an unbeatable hold on the House.
But things started to go wrong almost immediately. States New Hampshire, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, and South Carolina balked at redrawing maps. California drew a retaliatory blue gerrymander picking up five seats for Democrats. Finally the Supreme Court struck down an effort by Missouri to hand Trump an additional seat.
In addition, the Democratic wave appears to be so imposing that even +15 and +20 R House seats may be in danger. Right now it looks like the Republican gerrymanders will net the GOP at least six seats and maybe a few more. That’s substantial, and will allow southern states to disenfranchise Black voters at rates unseen since Jim Crow. But it is not going to give Republicans control of the House, as Trump hoped. On the contrary, polls are so dreadful for Republicans currently that fiftyplusone gives them only a 2% chance of holding the House; the median outcome shows Democrats picking up 45 seats.
Given a Supreme Court majority that hates both Black people and the Constitution, gerrymandering the House was the most straightforward way to cheat. As it’s become clearer and clearer that that gerrymandering wasn’t going to work, Trump has scrambled for other options.
The biggest of those other options is the SAVE act, an ugly package of voter suppression and manipulation which Trump has pushed relentlessly. The Republican Senate, though, has consistently blocked it—in part because provisions targeting mail-in ballots and married women who changed their names could backfire against MAGA constituencies. Similarly, Trump’s tried to institute mail ballot restrictions, but these were struck down by the Supreme Court, which recognized that they would cause electoral chaos. It also seems likely that Republicans on the court were not sure that the chaos would benefit their partisans.
What’s left?
The 2026 midterms are currently underway; there have already been some 15 million ballots cast. Trump’s efforts to fix the elections beforehand have failed. So what’s left?
Trump officials have refused to rule out stationing ICE agents at polls—a tactic which would intimidate Hispanic voters and other constituencies who are likely Democratic leaning. However, while this would be extremely bad for a whole range of reasons, the chances of it affecting the election substantially are low. As The Democracy Project explains:
“…while the fear is not without foundation, ICE-at-the-polls is something that American elections are well-equipped to handle. The highly decentralized nature of our elections, plus the massive growth of early voting, combined with a strong legal framework, would make widespread ICE interference a heavy lift for the federal government. Ironically, the real threat of ICE-at-the-polls could be in its potential voter-deterrent effect.”
Democrats and voting rights groups are also already organizing to protect polling places, and to rush lawsuits and restraining orders if needed. If ICE stakes out polling places, there could be injuries and deaths and false arrests. But it is unlikely to do much to help the GOP win elections.
After the midterms, Trump could bring lawsuits if there are contested races. He could also try a coup, as he did in 2020. This wouldbe terrifying and horrible. But again, given how big the blue wave is shaping up to be, and how personally unpopular Trump is, these tactics don’t seem likely to get him what he wants. If Democrats get a 35-seat margin in the House and win 53 seats in the Senate, there’s no one election Trump can try to overturn in the courts that will give Republicans control.
Similarly, the 2020 coup was unsuccessful when Trump was much more popular than he is currently. Now that he’s spent two years shrinking his own coalition and ruthlessly alienating the military, are people really going to want to put their lives on the line to overthrow the Constitution in the name of Trump the First?
Trump himself seems to dimly realize that he has no great options. And so he’s spiraling. He promised everyone $5000 checks if they’d only vote for him—but everyone knows he lies all the time and only 13% of voters believe they’ll ever see that money.
He’s also started running horror movie ads illegally paid for by US taxpayers in which Trump wanders through weird hallways as his voice over rants about the dangers of Communists and warmongers. But since Trump mired us in an incredibly unpopular war in Iran, and since Trump is himself an incredibly unpopular drain on the ticket, he’s essentially just reminding voters why they want to vote for Democrats.
It’s also worth recognizing that if Trump had real plans beyond lying and stealing taxpayer money, he’d probably say so. Remember that when he was trying to cheat by getting aid from Russia and China to smear Joe Biden, he said on national TV that he wanted to get aid from Russia and China. When Trump thinks he’s getting away with something, he is constitutionally incapable of shutting up about it. Is it even worth violating the Constitution if nobody knows how clever you are?
Bad things can still happen
None of this means that all is well. Obviously all. is not well; we are living through a fascist nightmare. Republicans could overperform the polls and hold onto control of the Senate. Trump could attempt a military coup—which probably would fail, but would badly damage democracy, and could lead to a Constitutional crisis and conceivably to large numbers of deaths. And of course even if the midterms go fairly smoothly and Democrats win both the House and the Senate, Trump will remain in office, as will the Christofascist Supreme Court majority, and both will continue their relentless assault on the Constitution and multi-racial democracy.
It’s important to recognize ongoing and real dangers. But it’s also important to recognize that the evil fascists are not all powerful, and that resistance is not, and has not been, futile. Legal, media, political, and grassroots pushback to Trump has been inadequate in a range of ways. But all of that pushback has also contributed to undermining Trump’s popularity and to preventing him from stealing the elections through gerrymandering, through the SAVE act, or through mail-in ballot fuckery.
“Trump has a secret unstoppable plan to undermine the election” is an argument for despair and for surrender. But the truth is that Trump keeps trying to steal the election, and he keeps being thwarted by people who have not despaired and have not surrendered. Our democracy looks fragile right now, but it looks significantly less fragile than it did in January 2025.
We can’t control everything. But—and it’s crucial to remember this—neither can Trump. The midterms at this point are one thing that looks very much out of his control. Now is not the time to convince ourselves we have no power. Now is the time to use the power we have to crush the fascist Republicans, and then to kick them when they are down.
I’m saving this article for those days when I need a political-participation pep talk. Thank you!
I always appreciate how clearly you lay out your thinking. It works really well for my brain, and is accessible and thought-provoking.
Thank you for doing this work.
He is not the kind of monster who is clever or plans beyond his obsession with himself.
And yes, thanks for the reminder.
Always good to read your thoughts.