Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• America is the ultimate tourist destination that no one wants to visit
• Brash America is facing its worst nightmare: loneliness
• Maga’s worst nightmare: a child-free, unmarried female president
At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, last month, President Donald Trump urged his supporters to raise their right hands and swear an election oath to their cult leader. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends… to try and cheat like hell, like they do,” he proclaimed.
Was he joking and just trolling the Democrats? Or will he try to manipulate the results of the midterm elections on 3 November? With Trump, it’s hard to tell. But almost nobody believed he would stand accused of inciting a riot at the Capitol after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020. He went on to turn the delusion that the election was stolen from him into an article of faith for Maga Republicans.
Some Trump-led initiatives to alter voting rights have been thwarted. The President attempted to restrict mail-in voting by executive order, but this was nixed by the Supreme Court and it is now under way in many states. However, the court did approve sharing federal data to identify voters who are non-citizens. Critics have questioned the data’s reliability warning it could result in US citizens being wrongly removed from electoral rolls.
Congress also refused to pass the Save America bill, requiring voters to produce ID such as passports or birth certificates, infuriating Trump, who is obsessed with the notion of illegal immigrants voting.
However, drastic plans for voting day and its aftermath are still being touted.
Trump hinted this month that the man behind the troubling Project 2025 plan for his second term, Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, might have a few plans up his sleeve. “We have some big surprises coming up in a few weeks, right Russ?” Trump ribbed. “He’s going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion. He’s got some great things happening.”
While it was unclear what he was suggesting, Democrats and other Trump critics speculated that it involved election interference. Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic Party political strategist and Fox News host, said on X: “Between this and his ‘midterm surprise,’ the time to prepare for him to try to steal an election is now.” Lawyer and former US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Joyce Vance, said: “Election interference in the offing.”
In July Steve Bannon, the far-right influencer and former White House adviser, said the President should issue a “national emergency proclamation” over the midterms and called for an “up-armoured” presence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at polling stations.
If implemented, this could lead to voter suppression of rightful US citizens who fear being caught in ICE’s dragnet on the basis of their ethnic origin.
Worryingly, Trump hasn’t ruled out this suggestion. Asked by Real America’s Voice, a Maga streaming network, if he would “declare a national security emergency for elections”, Trump replied: “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that.”
Earlier this year, the President called on Republicans to “nationalise the voting” in at least 15 states, taking central control of voting mechanisms. By law, US elections are supervised by states, so “nationalising” would be likely to involve federal law enforcement or troops taking control of voting machines and ballots. Trump told The New York Times in January that he wished he had ordered the national guard to seize the voting machines in 2020 in key swing states, over the objections of his top White House lawyers. “Well, I should have,” he said peevishly.
One of Trump’s oldest friends, lawyer Peter Ticktin, told The Atlantic in September that if the administration doesn’t take control of midterm voting, Trump should impose “martial law”. Asked if this would lead to rioting, he replied: “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are.” Trump heard siren voices like Ticktin’s after his 2020 defeat and ultimately disregarded them, but this time he has a cabinet stocked with election deniers, including FBI chief Kash Patel and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, who could encourage him.
Hegseth last month ordered US Cyber Command and other Pentagon agencies to defend the elections from unspecified malign “foreign actors”. At its worst, this could lay the ground for manufacturing a national emergency on the grounds of international interference. Patel, for his part, has declined to rule out sending FBI agents to polling stations, though ICE have said they have “no plans” to be there. For the first time since 2002, international election monitors, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, will not observing the US elections after the Trump administration declined to invite them.
Adding to these threats, Trump’s “loyalty” oath in Dallas could embolden Maga’s shock troops to do their worst if the elections don’t go their way. Having pardoned all the January 6 rioters on the first day of his second term in office, the risk to those who break the law on his behalf is slim.
All the inflammatory rhetoric worries Harold Love, a retired police captain in the swing state of Michigan, where a Fox News poll suggests Abdul el-Sayed, a left-wing Democrat, has a narrow one-point advantage over Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent for Senate. Love said civic-minded election officials and volunteers in his state have been bombarded with threats since 2020. “It’s not supposed to be a dangerous job,” he told me. “People who count the ballots, run the election centres, serve as county clerks – everyone has been subject to fall-out.”
Love is a member of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, a cross-party group that works with law enforcement and election officials to uphold voting rights. He is braced for trouble. “We’ve been meeting regularly to build relationships so that the first time we have a conversation isn’t when something goes wrong,” he said.
Carly Koppes, a county election clerk in Colorado, has also been prepping election scenarios. A mother of two, she says she was “doxxed” (had private information released online) after the 2020 election. “I had to hide my pregnancies because of the level of intensity of threats against me.”
Her team has access to police, law officials and other agencies they can call on for help in an emergency. “There’s going to be a lot of continuing noise and obscene rhetoric. It’s a question of whether we’re going to recycle and repeat what happened,” she said.
Kimiya Factory, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, believes the Republicans are scaremongering. She claims Trump supporters are deliberately exaggerating the alleged threat to voters’ safety from ICE and other government agencies. “That rhetoric is misinformation that we are actively combating. They want voters to feel discouraged from casting their ballot,” she said.
There is still a long way to go until every ballot is counted and new members of Congress take their seats on 3 January, 2027.
For now, Trump is basking in the idea that if voters “just pretend I’m running”, Republicans are going to “win big” in the midterms.
If they retain a majority in Congress, his narcissism will become even more unhinged. If they lose, the blow to his ego will be immense. If history is anything to go by, his efforts to change the result are unlikely to end there.