WASHINGTON—The 2026 midterm is arguably an election unlike any other in U.S. history.
At first glance, it shares characteristics with other off-year votes: An economy that doesn’t work for workers, a president whose popularity is in the tank, and voters’ voices drowned by billionaires’ dollars and lies.
But in other critical respects, this election is different, thanks to the unprecedented efforts being undertaken by the White House and its MAGA allies to stack the deck. That means, in addition to the usual question of who will turn out, we also have to ask: Who will be prevented from voting, and who, out of fear, won’t vote at all?
The latest attacks
Start with the obvious point that Trump is taking extraordinary measures to skew the election’s outcome in his favor. His schemes are both “legal”—gerrymandering blessed by the Supreme Court’s GOP-named majority—and illegal and unconstitutional. In that latter category, he is laying the groundwork for sending troops into polling places to grab people on a variety of trumped-up charges or to literally seize ballot boxes and voting machines.
The people in his first administration who might have stopped him from doing that are no longer around. This time, he is surrounded by sycophants who will greenlight whatever he wants.
Only this week, for instance, he sent his Department of Justice to raid the home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been an outspoken opponent of his policies for the ten years she has been in Congress. The raid is not only a punishing revenge attack on her but a warning to other lawmakers that they might be better off if they cease pushing for maximum participation by their constituents in the coming election.
The Department of Homeland Security even says it is pursuing the goal of deporting Omar, an incredible escalation of the fascist policies of this White House.
Then there is the unprecedented attempt by the president to bribe the U.S voting public by promising that if the GOP wins the election, each person will receive a $5,000 check from him. The money will come, he says, from the tariffs he’s imposed on the American people.
In hopes of improving his party’s chances in the election, he started an unconstitutional and illegal war on Iran, which has resulted in further crushing prices on almost everything.
Constitution in danger
The future of democracy and the U.S. Constitution hangs in the balance. The constitutionally stipulated role of Congress as the primary law-making body, above the executive branch, not just “equal” to it, is being sidelined. Guarantees of free speech are dismissed, and rulings by courts that override Trump’s limitations on the First Amendment are ignored.
The right to privacy—including reproductive rights—and even the right to a fair and free trial before a verdict are all under threat. So are workers’ rights on the job and the right to form unions.
In a TV interview before he returned to the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump said he’d be a dictator “on day one.” Many people laughed, thinking it was just usual Trump braggadocio, said tongue in cheek.
It wasn’t. He was serious. Congressional Republicans bow to and carry out his dictatorial edicts. So, for the most part, have five of the six GOP-named Supreme Court justices. Day 1 of the dictatorship has now stretched to Day 633 and counting.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called Trump “an authoritarian who says he can make things great again,” when in reality, things have just gotten worse. “We wanted cheaper groceries, and we got tanks in our streets,” she declared.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher who also holds a law degree, was even blunter when her union joined civil rights and other organizations in September to sue to stop Trump’s plans to send troops into the streets and polling places.
“Deploying federal agents to strike the fear of God into voters at polling places is a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” Weingarten said. “It’s intimidation pure and simple and has no place in a true democracy. No matter your politics, citizens need to be able to exercise their basic democratic right without running the gauntlet of an armed, masked militia.”
Trump has stretched executive authority to a breaking point and beyond. If Congress passes a law he doesn’t like, he doesn’t faithfully carry it out, as the Constitution commands. He ignores or evades it instead. So do MAGA governors, notably Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida.
Trump threatens or exacts retribution on so-called “enemies” in unions, academia, the media, law firms, among individuals, and even GOP politicians who dare to challenge his will. Just ask GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
If lower-court judges rule against Trump’s unilateral edicts on elections or firing federal workers or anything else, he snubs them or contests them in “emergency appeals” to the Supreme Court. There, Republican justices—three of whom Trump nominated himself—often dutifully obey.
It is a Trump dictate that sent ICE into the streets of the nation to kidnap and deport people with no violent criminal history. It is that same Trump who ordered federal agents to conduct massive roundups, agents who killed observer Renee Good and Government Employees (AFGE) member Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis.
It is a Trump dictate that has defaced much of D.C., not to mention wrecking the East Wing of the White House in favor of an unauthorized monster ballroom. Not to mention 3,000 National Guards patrolling the capital’s streets, intimidating residents and dragging Latinos out of their cars, stores, and elsewhere, to be deported to virtual prisons here or abroad.
It is a Trump dictate, carried out by Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought, which illegally stripped union contracts from one million federal workers. When a federal judge in San Francisco ruled against that, Trump and Vought ignored it.
It is Trump who pledged not to get us into more eternal wars, but has done so against Iran, without even consulting Congress, much less seeking a declaration of war.
All of this, though unstated, is on the ballot, too. The war certainly is, as Republicans are finding on the campaign trail. So are the tariffs, which hurt U.S. consumers and poison U.S. relations worldwide. And so is the baleful presence of the troops, not just in big cities in blue states but in rural areas everywhere, seeking out, roughing up—or shooting—people.
Resisting repression
And yet, Trump pushes for even more repression.
That is what makes the 2026 off-year election so unique and so vital. It may well be our last chance to prevent, through a massive pro-Constitution landslide from coast to coast, a permanent descent into fascist dictatorship.
We still can and must end the power of the fascists over our government; it’s the main job for all of us between now and the election.
John Wojcik contributed to this story.
As with all op-ed and news analysis articles published by People’s World, the views represented here are those of the authors.
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