With the midterms upon us, the nation is on edge. Political analysts, writers, and resistanceorganizers are jittery and leery, aware that our efforts may not be enough.
People who read beyond the headlines understand that we’re at the fork, a pivotal moment that will take the nation in one direction…. or another. They also know that an adjudicated insurrectionist who assembled an armed mob to cling to power the last time he lost is at it again, only this time he’s more dangerous.
The J6 tinderbox has grown larger and more flammable, thanks to Congressional inaction, because the insurrectionist has now formed his own Praetorian Guard and commands the U.S. military. A looming unknown is: what percentage of U.S. service members will take their oath to the Constitution seriously enough to refuse to follow any illegal commands? How many would shoot protesting Americans if a roided-out, dry drunk SecDef gave the order?
A cornered rat is vicious
A master of reality TV and little else, Trump manufactured an early fraud narrative with no supporting evidence to blunt his midterm losses. Claiming that immigrants and Democrats are fraudulently voting, Trump then instructed his own supporters to cheat, and to vote whether they’ve registered or not.
Democratic control of one or both congressional houses, as is now projected, will check Trump’s corruption from all sides. A Democratic Party majority will quickly investigate the billions the Trumps have pocketed, curtail Hegseth’s unhinged remake of the military, and rein in oligarchic self-dealing. It’s no mystery why Trump has dialed illegal election interference to 11.
Trump’s unprecedented attacks on the midterms have exhausted voters already too tired to keep track. His multi-pronged assault ran the gamut of un-American tricks including bribery, seizing ballots, threats to deploy armed agents, attempts to change mail-in voting laws, gerrymandering, threats to imprison election officials, nonstop lawsuits, and, looming large, election disinformation. Even though the Constitution grants control over elections to the states, Trump can’t stop grabbing at that power with his own sticky fingers, and his instincts will get worse before they get better.
Defiling the law
Trump has converted the DOJ into an election interference pitbull. After the Supreme Court slapped down his efforts to control mail-in voting, Trump got busy attacking the justices and suing individual states. Last week the DOJ sued to try to pre-emptively block the certification of Alaska’s Senate race but only if Trump’s candidate loses in a close race to Democrat candidate Mary Peltola.
Peltola’s emergency motion to dismiss points out that the DOJ is interfering on Trump’s behalf, “raising issues governed exclusively by state law that were (already) resolved by the Alaska Supreme Court months ago.” As of this writing, Peltola’s motion remains pending and is expected to be granted.
Trump similarly tried to force California and Washington State to disrupt their vote counts by seeking to “set aside vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the Federal Government likely to be noncitizens.” An appeals court dismissed the California suit on October 26, and Washington officials refused Trump’s request on October 28, in part because Trump’s “lists of ineligible voters” are inaccurate by the DOJ’s own admission.
What the law says about it
Courts have blocked most of Trump’s efforts to insert himself into the midterms. The primary source of constitutional authority to regulate congressional elections is the Elections Clause found at Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution. That clause empowers states — not the federal government, not the president — to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections.
In addition, the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to vote, barring states from imposing substantial burdens on the right unless those burdens advance free elections. Laws requiring people to register prior to voting, or requiring them to vote at assigned places, are deemed reasonable under the Elections Clause. A president seizing state voter lists would not be reasonable, because there is no foundational authority under which the executive branch can control state-run elections to begin with.
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Trump’s DOJ began demanding states’ voter registration lists and confidential voter data nonetheless in May 2025. States controlled by both parties refused to turn them over, and the DOJ sued. As of Sept. 30, the initial cases against Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin have all been dismissed.
Slapping down the states
Across the U.S., tens of thousands of volunteers, poll workers, and concerned citizens have stepped forward to help protect the midterms. For the first time in our nation’s history, election officials are teaching them what to do if armed federal agents or soldiers show up, even though their presence at the polls is prohibited under federal law. On top of threatening to send armed ICE agents and the military, Trump’s DOJ is sending an unprecedented number of agents, (over 1,000) to “observe and monitor” voting in high-population areas in every state, and election workers are preparing for when agents try to intimidate voters, as recently happened in Wyoming.
As Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows recently observed, “This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections. It seems like the federal government is now adversarial to the states.”
It doesn’t just seem like it. Trump doesn’t recognize state authority over elections or anything else, just as he doesn’t recognize congressional authority, Supreme Court authority, or the law of the land. Ignorant of U.S. history and all things un-filigreed, Trump’s zookeepers have allowed him to think he is the law.
Back when Republicans protected something other than pedophiles and graft, states’ rights were the holy grail of limited federal power. Now conservatives have sacrificed their principles to the pursuit of unchecked power, and states’ rights are a quaint memory.
The only solution, for now, is to vote and make sure everyone you know does the same. Next steps will be determined by the outcome, and how the cornered rat reacts to it.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
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