Ranking Possible 2026 Midterm Scenarios From Least To Most Illegal
Sources
Barajas. “What to Know about How the SAVE America Act Could Change Voting.” Politics. PBS News, February 10, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-the-save-america-act-would-make-major-changes-to-voting.
Corasaniti, Nick. “Why Trump’s Calls to ‘Nationalize’ Voting Have Raised Midterm Fears.” U.S. The New York Times, February 10, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/article/trumps-nationalize-voting-elections-midterms-explainer.html.
LII / Legal Information Institute. “18 U.S. Code § 592 - Troops at Polls.” Accessed February 11, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/592.
Marley, Patrick, and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. “Trump Is Trying to Change How the Midterm Elections Are Conducted.” The Washington Post, January 12, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/12/trump-midterms-elections-voting-redistricting/.
Morales-Doyle, Sean. “Federal and State Election Laws Ban Federal Forces from Polling Places | Brennan Center for Justice.” March 11, 2024. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/federal-and-state-election-laws-ban-federal-forces-polling-places.
Phillips, Amber. “Republicans Are Pushing to Drastically Change the Way You Cast Ballots.” The Washington Post, February 10, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/10/republicans-are-pushing-drastically-change-way-you-cast-ballots/.
Rakich. “Can Trump Send National Guard Troops to the Polls in the 2026 Election?” Votebeat, January 19, 2026. https://www.votebeat.org/2026/01/19/trump-national-guard-troops-polling-places-2026-election-insurrection-act/.
Weiser, Wendy. “Trump Administration Escalates Election Meddling by Seizing 2020 Voting Records in Georgia | Brennan Center for Justice.” February 4, 2026. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-administration-escalates-election-meddling-seizing-2020-voting.
Transcript
Hi it’s Wednesday, February 11th, 2026, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend Leeja Miller in Minneapolis. Midterms are still 9 months away but boy howdy it seems like every day Trump is vowing to royally fuck them up this year. Today we’re going over all the ways he’s promised to make voting as hard as possible for all of us, in order to “protect the integrity of our elections” allegedly. And then I’m going to provide a ranking of the possible 2026 midterms scenarios–what’s gonna happen, what stunts might he pull, what can he get away with to try to prevent Democrats from taking back Congress–ranked from least to most illegal. The law doesn’t really stop him so that doesn’t mean least to most likely, just least to most illegal. Like eh he can probably do that versus holy fuck that is cuckoo bananas and completely detached from reality. Yes this is the stupidest way to present this information but we are in the stupidest timeline so it feels appropriate. Let’s go.
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First, let me just lay out some context for you, because each individual headline about Trump and elections is a doozy but the things he’s said or done over the last year or more, taken together, paint a really fucking harrowing picture about the lengths he and his goons are going to try to completely change the voting system to ensure he and his loyalists stay in power forever. To say this is unprecedented in US history is an understatement. It’s devastating to democracy and the stability of the republic.
He has pushed for a new census to be taken that excludes undocumented immigrants. Censuses are conducted every decade, one happened back in 2020 and he unsuccessfully lobbied for this change then, but he and his loyalists are still pushing to completely exclude undocumented immigrants from the census. This is important firstly because it’s important to collect information about who is in this country and where they live, no matter their status. When you stop collecting that information, those people disappear. It makes it far easier to then cook the books and lie when there is no data to show how many undocumented immigrants are here. If they were never recorded as being here, then when they disappear there’s nothing to prove it. Additionally, representation in Congress is determined in part by the population of each state, as are electoral college votes for president and the district lines within the states. Census numbers also determine the amount of federal aid that is distributed to states. Not just the voting population, the total population. We count all humans as full humans. The whole three-fifths compromise thing was a bad idea. The goal would be that the areas with some of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants–New York, California, you know, blue states–would take a hit from decreased population numbers. Obviously places like Florida and Texas would also be hurt, but a common theme you’ll see in these tactics is that they often overlook how Republican states and voters would also be hurt in the process. And not just in the broad “ruinous for democracy” sense. Trump has pushed to move the next census up instead of waiting until 2030, but that would absolutely be met with lawsuits because the Constitution literally says that the census will be conducted every 10 years and include the quote “whole number of persons in each state.” I’m certain Trump has managed to find some crackpot lawyer willing to argue in court that yes the constitution says those WORDS but that’s not what they MEAN. At this point he hasn’t taken any definitive steps to do an early census, and it’s too late to do one before the midterms, but he could absolutely keep pushing for it before the 2028 election.
In the same vein, Trump has pushed state-level Republicans to redistrict, to draw new district lines to try to gerrymander any Democratic lawmakers out of existence, this again despite the fact that redistricting happens after a census and there hasn’t been a new census. According to the Washington Post, so far 9 districts across the country have been made more favorable for Republicans through this redistricting push, including in Texas where the Supreme Court upheld its gerrymandered map. There are a number of ongoing lawsuits in other states. Indiana rejected Trump's demands to redistrict there, and leaders in Kansas and New Hampshire have also pushed back against his demands. And in the blue state of California, the people voted in favor of a new redistricting plan that could give Democrats as many as five more seats. Other states like Virginia are also looking into redrawing their state lines in favor of Democrats. At this point, this likely will have a limited impact on the 2026 midterms but could deeply impact the 2028 election, especially if the Supreme Court votes to gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act, a decision expected to come down this summer that would allow states to be openly racist in their redistricting. That’s another theme here: they’re doing their work as fast as possible to fuck up the midterms, but the real end goal is 2028. This is like a practice run.
Trump has also spoken out against mail-in voting, something he himself has done, something many Republican and rural voters do, but despite this he is adamant that mail-in voting leads to voter fraud–something that is not backed up by the stats or by elections experts. That is another theme you will see in all of this: Trump just says whatever he wants and literally none of his claims about how these various tactics will make elections more secure are true. None of his claims of existing election fraud are true. He told NBC News last week quote “We need elections where people aren’t able to cheat” end quote but the wild and crazy thing is that we literally already have elections where people aren’t able to cheat. Lawsuit after lawsuit in the wake of the 2020 elections, study after study, found zero evidence of any election fraud great enough to impact the outcome of our elections. Election fraud is exceedingly rare and often due to genuine confusion or error on the part of the individual committing the fraud. We have an incredibly good elections apparatus in this country, with deep expertise in our elections officials. That expertise is quickly eroding because there is so much hostility against elections workers that many are leaving their jobs which I can’t blame them for like these are typically boring bureaucratic administrative jobs that did not include “enduring regular death threats” in their job description up until the 2020 election. And in their place, Trump and his goons are doing everything they can to put Trump loyalists on state-level election boards. This often happens quietly and without much fanfare and it means that there are more and more districts with sympathetic election officials willing to roll over if Trump says “find me 11,000 votes” or “we need all your voter information.” Of course, many states are fighting back, including here in Minnesota which is pushing back against Pam Bondi’s ransom note sent in the wake of the execution of Alex Pretti in which she said, basically, that we’ll remove the active federal occupation of your state if you agree to hand over your voter rolls–something that is deeply unconstitutional and against state laws. In fact, as of right now the Trump regime has sued nearly half of all states in the union in order to obtain their voter rolls. States are also being pressured by DHS to run their voter rolls through a federal immigration verification tool to try to identify non-citizens who are registered to vote or have voted. The problem with that system is that it makes a LOT of errors, which means tons of people could be removed from voter rolls or even accused of casting fraudulent votes when they haven’t. Again, instances of undocumented people voting are incredibly exceedingly rare.
Back in March, Trump issued an executive order that would ban the counting of mail-in ballots if they are received after election day. The typical rule is that mail-in ballots are counted if they are POSTMARKED by election day–this means that often it takes a bit for close elections to be called because they have to wait until all ballots are in before they can make those close calls. But of course if you’re a fucking idiot that means it’s incredibly easy for lawmakers to convince you that that makes mail in ballots incredibly suspicious. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, for example, has made comments about how well one person is winning and then those mail in ballots start getting counted and well then someone else starts winning instead and isn’t that just suspicious. And Mike knows he’s being disingenuous, he knows why it happens, he knows that certain demographics of people tend towards mail-in voting and so it makes sense they would vote along similar lines. But he also knows it’s pretty easy to sow distrust in our elections these days, thanks to the groundwork Trump has laid down, so he can just be like hmm seems suspicious and then a not insignificant number of people with very few critical thinking skills fall in and line and say yeah hey wait we hate mail-in voting. Even though, again, election experts say there is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail-in ballots and those ballots play a very important role in our voting system. A court blocked the implementation of Trump’s executive order, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case out of Mississippi about the issue. That ruling won’t come until June or July but could still impact mail-in voting procedures across the country ahead of midterms. Trump hasn’t made any moves to eliminate ALL mail in voting but if he tried to it would be incredibly unconstitutional.
Which gives us a good moment to pause and remind ourselves what the constitution says about voting. Because it is very very clear on the matter. There are many things the constitution is vague about, that the writers were like eh let them figure it out amongst themselves as time goes on, but that’s not the case when it comes to figuring out who has the authority to administer voting in the United States. After fighting a whole ass war over being ruled by a king, the founders were very intent on protecting democratic elections in this country so they could never be controlled by one wannabe dictator. Article 1, section 4, clause 1, also known as the Elections Clause, says quote “The Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations.” According to the Supreme Court, which has interpreted that clause, this right of the states to set the time, place, and manner of holding these elections extends to “notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns.” Congress does have the right to step in in extraordinary circumstances, but nowhere is the President or the executive branch granted any right to interfere with the elections. Which is why any executive order relating to how states manage their elections is unconstitutional and why Pam Bondi attempting to extort voter rolls from the states is also unconstitutional. Any change to the way the states manage their elections would have to come from Congress, and typically Congress, especially states rights Republicans, are not quick to intervene.
Which brings us to the SAVE Act, something a lot of you have been asking me to cover, I see you, here we are. There’s an iteration of the bill in the House that is getting a vote this week, and iterations in the Senate that have stalled out there. The full title is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, and Trump has backed the bill. The bill would require everyone to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and then to vote in person you must present a government-issued photo ID or a copy of that ID when submitting an absentee ballot. This means that in order to register to vote you must provide documentation showing you are a US citizen. A driver’s license won’t do. It needs to be a passport or a birth certificate. Fully half of Americans do not have a passport. At least 21 million Americans do not have access to their birth certificates. Do YOU know where your birth certificate is, right now, off the top of your head? Many many people don’t. On top of that, it further complicates voting for people who have gotten married and changed their last name, which mostly impacts married women, specifically Republican married women who are more likely than democrats to take their husband’s name when they get married. And it’s easy to argue what it’s one extra document, you should just have your birth certificate, it’s not that hard to get, whatever. But voter turnout is already pretty abysmal as it is–adding ANY further barriers will disenfranchise whole swaths of the public. Also, if you’re watching my content you are probably more politically plugged in than the average person. Most people are not aware of changing laws, they don’t think about an election until like the day before when they’re like oh there’s an election tomorrow maybe I should look into that. The day before is not enough time to obtain a passport or a copy of your birth certificate. Yes I would loooove to live in a world where every voter had the time and mental space to pay attention to the news, understand election laws, and have a neat and tidy copy of their birth certificate on hand, so this would be a non-issue. That is not the world we live in, however. And the SAVE Act is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist–election fraud is exceedingly rare. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote. We don’t need a new law for that. Our main problem in America is not ENOUGH people voting. This act would do literally nothing other than disenfranchise millions of voters by creating new barriers for them to vote. On top of that, another concerning provision of the SAVE Act allows for CRIMINAL prosecution of election officials who register someone to vote without requiring them to provide documentary proof of citizenship. Even if that voter is an actual citizen. The practical outcome of this is that now every election official in the country is terrified of getting a permanent criminal record if they aren’t overly compliant if this law goes into effect. They are going to err on the side of denying registration to vote if there is even a tiny question as to whether someone has provided the correct documentation. If you’ve ever stood in line for very long at the DMV, you know that when people have to bring in any sort of documentation, that creates a LOT of room for human error and a lot of special cases and exceptions etc. Our election workers are already under increased threat to their literal lives, and Congress is looking to create criminal penalties for them if they make even the slightest mistake, even when registering citizens. Again, a vote on the SAVE Act is scheduled for the House today but it’s unclear whether it would pass there and the Senate and make it into law. Separately a bill has been introduced in the house called the Make Elections Great Again Act which would ban universal voting by mail. So even though the constitution bans Trump from tampering with elections–something he’s trying to do anyway–Congress is hard at work doing whatever they can to disenfranchise as many people as possible, too.
Trump has also attempted to tamper with the use of voting machines, issuing a clearly unconstitutional executive order that establishes new standards for voting equipment that literally no commercially available voting machine can meet, which is on purpose of course. Every single state uses voting machines to count the votes. They have proven to be faster and MORE accurate than counting votes by hand. Counting by hand would require literally hundreds of thousands more poll workers, would take weeks if not months for each election, and would likely lead to MORE lawsuits because handcounted votes are less reliable. Again, all the data and election experts agree that voting machines are the best option for ensuring free, fair, and accurate elections. But one overarching theme in these tactics for Trump and his goons is that they know a lot of them won’t work–they know an executive order about voting machines wouldn’t actually do anything because it’s so clearly against the Constitution–but they know that questioning the voting machines over and over and over again for years will certainly sow doubt and chaos, so that at the next election when they suggest “hey you know maybe that Republican lost because it was a voting machine error and it’s all rigged” it won’t seem as outlandish–the public will be primed to believe there’s something fishy about voting machines, even though there isn’t.
And then finally last week Trump suggested on Dan Bongino’s podcast yes that Dan Bongino he left the administration so he could be podcast bro again, Trump said that the federal government should “nationalize” the voting. This set off alarm bells around the country because, again, it is clearly and explicitly unconstitutional for the executive branch to step in and take over managing the votes for the states. And to me the statement was also particularly concerning because Trump is not like a very good political strategist, that’s what his goons are for, and so I would bet money he didn’t just come up with the phrase “nationalize the vote” on his own. It’s something he picked up from the goons planning shit around him and parroted it out during this interview, like a toddler picking up swear words from mommy. There are absolutely discussions happening behind the scenes to figure out how to “nationalize the vote” how to get the levers and mechanisms for voting into the hands of the federal government somehow. Which leads us to our possible scenarios, ranked from least to most egregiously illegal.
Least egregious example obviously is the elections just happen as normal. Your state administers the midterms like they always administer them, which is different for each state, you show up on election day or mail in your ballot or drop off your ballot, those ballots are counted, the official counts are released by each state, Democrats likely win some seats because polling and the latest special elections are predicting Republicans won’t do well, this happened in 2018 during Trump’s first term as well, all signs are pointing to Democrats doing well in the midterms. The Republicans say aw shucks and leave their seats for Democrats to take them over come January. Obviously as I’m saying this out loud if you’ve been paying attention over the last year or even over the first half of this video I hope as these words are exiting my mouth you’re realizing how unlikely this first, most legal scenario is. With all this bloviating for literally half a decade at this point, do we think Trump is willing to allow Republicans to ride off silently into the night, accept defeat, hand over power? Right of course not.
Next up in the “mostly not illegal” category is basically what happened in 2020–lots of bloviating but come election day, states administer elections as normal, maybe there’s a few instances of voter intimidation when groups show up outside polling places to try to intimidate voters, but overall it's peaceful. In the districts with sweeping Democratic victories with large margins especially where they usually go Democrat anyway, the transfer of power is uncontested, the victory is clear, it’s not worth fighting. In the purple districts, in the target areas like in Georgia for example, or the “15 or so” places Trump told Dan Bongino need to be controlled, unclear which those are, but the areas where it could go either way or the areas where the votes are close, lawsuits will pop up challenging those elections, ballots and election officials may be targeted–that’s where this becomes vaguely illegal, that and the lies that Trump and his goons will likely tell to judges and the public about voter fraud, but it will all mostly play out in court, the lawsuits will fail, power will transfer but one wild card that would pop this up into the mostly illegal category would be something come January that would impede the transfer of power. That could be a January 6th style situation, though I think that’s less likely because people are just less passionate about Congressional elections than they are about presidential elections and about Donald Trump, so in this scenario where there are isolated challenges to local elections, I’m not thinking a full ass insurrection is particularly likely. What could happen, however, is an Adelita Grijalva-style withholding of the swearing in ceremony by Mike Johnson, effectively stalling the transfer of power. Mike Johnson is willing to willfully lie to the American people, so it’s absolutely not above him to point to ongoing lawsuits or contested elections to say that at least a handful of Democrats shouldn’t be sworn in, even if those lawsuits or contests are based on clearly fabricated lies. That could lead Congress to grind to a halt and stall any progress Democrats could be making if they overtake the House or Senate, but honestly what’s new amiright. It’s not like they do much on a normal year anyway. This is frankly the best case scenario at this point. As I said the idea that midterms this year are going to go off without a hitch as normal feels completely fucking pie in the sky. So widespread lawsuits and challenging the election a la 2020 sounds really great. What a relief. But, if we’ve learned anything over this first year of Trump’s second term, he and his goons learned a lot during his first term, and they are doing things differently this time around. So they already tried all this in 2020, it didn’t work. The odds of them employing the same playbook are frankly pretty slim. That would be BEST CASE scenario, frankly. Only mostly not illegal, just a little illegal. As a treat.
Next category is: brazenly illegal. Contrary to the clear plain letter of the law. But something Trump has said he wants to do and that election officials across the country are prepping for: federal interference on the day of the election by either federal troops, the national guard, or ICE and other DHS officers. These are all in the same category because they are all equally illegal. 18 USC 592, that’s the criminal code, states very clearly it is illegal to send quote “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held.” And anyone who sends in those troops or armed men can be fined, imprisoned for up to five years, and disqualified from holding any office in the United States. There is no way, under the current and correct interpretation of the law and the status quo, that Trump could ever justify declaring elections a “national emergency” and then sending in troops or ICE to monitor poll places. Even if he invoked the insurrection act, he still would be barred from sending armed men to the polls. But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s goons before, and I feel like I’ve been watching carefully enough and I know just enough about the laws here that I’ve identified two weak spots that I just KNOW Stephen Miller or some other goon is dying to take advantage of. First of all, that law, 18 USC 592 bans armed men from any election place but there is one little exception. There is a scenario when armed men CAN be sent in to a polling place. That exception is for when quote “such force [is] necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” It is absolutely within the realm of possibilities that Trumps goons would argue that there are dangerous roving bands of armed illegal aliens and their antifa sympathizers roaming the streets, and the troops or the national guard or ICE NEEDS to step in, it’s a national emergency, in order to ensure our elections are free and fair. Separately, even IF that argument doesn’t hold up in court, if Trump’s the one who orders in the troops or ICE, the fact that he broke the criminal law while doing so doesn’t matter, because the Supreme Court granted him absolute immunity for anything he does while in office, and it would not be hard for him to argue that ordering in the troops to man the polling places was well within his defined duties as president. On top of that, in states with sympathetic Republican governors, if Trump were to order in the national guard, the governors could just do nothing–so they’re not implicated in breaking any law, and Trump is immune from any prosecution from breaking any laws. Easy.
Here’s how I think this plays out before, during, and after the election. I’m not saying this is going to necessarily happen, and it’s going to be different in each state–the benefit here is we’re a giant fucking country and even with their giant bonuses and hiring blitzes there aren’t enough ICE officers or national guard members to intimidate voters at every polling place in the country. November is 9 months away and a LOT can happen between now and then. But in the weeks and months leading up to the election, Trump is certainly going to push to get a version of the SAVE Act passed and to get mail in voting completely eliminated. He will also continue deploying ICE especially to sanctuary cities across the country. Minneapolis is not the end of it–and just so we’re clear the situation on the ground here in Minneapolis is not getting better just because we haven’t had headline grabbing earth shattering public executions for a couple weeks now. Earlier this week I was walking my dog and came upon an abandoned mini van just down the street from my house with a giant “stop the hate” bumper sticker that had both front windows blown out, whoever was inside was clearly taken by ICE. There are tow companies offering free tow services for vehicles abandoned because the driver got abducted by ICE, it’s such a problem at this point. That is continuing. But it doesn’t stop here in Minneapolis, and they are continuing their raids and their intimidation tactics in other places, and there will likely be other sanctuary jurisdictions that will be targeted by ICE, more people will die either executed in the streets or while being held in ICE custody. That will frankly provide a lot of the prep work leading up to the midterms to demoralize and scare those cities and those voters into staying home. I’m not saying it will work, I think if anything the people in Minneapolis are more defiant than ever because of this federal occupation. But when you know your city is federally occupied, and you’re a person who maybe looks like someone who could be racially profiled by ICE, you’re absolutely going to think twice about voting. Again, it’s hard enough to get people to vote on a good year. Add the obstacle of ICE potentially being at your polling place and a lot of people are going to opt out. So the pre-intimidation will be there so come polling day people will be intimidated enough not to leave their homes. Leading up to the election Trump could declare a state of emergency, point to a few unfounded bogus claims of voter fraud, and say we need to send in ICE or send in the troops or maybe a little of both. Again, this would be challenged in court and I think a lot of election integrity orgs are planning ahead for those style of lawsuits and I know that election officials are gaming out potential scenarios where armed troops or ICE officers arrive at polling locations on the day of voting. But Trump could point to his sweeping immunity and claim there are armed enemies of the US roaming the streets and attempting to rig the election so this is necessary–he’s not above blatant lies about election fraud, we know that–and even if there are lawsuits that won’t necessarily do much on the day of the vote, it would come in the form of fallout after the vote, after the damage has already been done.
And as far as after the vote, there’s additional scenarios that could happen there. Even if Trump follows the law and doesn’t send in armed troops to intimidate voters on the day of the election, which is seeming likelier by the day, he could certainly send in troops or the feds afterwards. We got a taste of that last month when the FBI, with Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard, of all people, in tow, raided the Fulton County election offices of all ballots from the 2020 election. Trump has vowed that there will be prosecutions related to that raid, though in unsealed court records it appears they obtained the search warrants for that raid despite not showing probable cause that an actual crime occurred. Because one didn’t occur. Because we’ve already litigated this over and over and over again. There was a recount in Fulton County 3 times. But Trump won’t let it go. So there’s a very real scenario where there are districts like Fulton County that are close calls–I mean he lost by 12,000 votes in 2020 there so not THAT close, but close enough that making up some disinformation or conspiracy theories about it isn’t very hard, especially since he’s laid the ground work for the last six years, where he could order the troops to go in AFTER voting day and confiscate the ballots or the voting machines. This would create a cascade of issues not least of which being that if that were to happen it would break the chain of custody of the ballots, thereby invalidating them, which is the very thing that helps our elections remain so secure, that chain of custody which would be undermined by federal interference. And then if the raid on Fulton County shows us anything it’s that they’ll do it and there will be zero transparency, no hint of what crime they’re even investigating, no record of where the ballots went after they were confiscated, opening the door for a whole host of tampering. This will be made easier in the districts where Trump’s goons have managed to place sympathetic election officials and governors who won’t put up a fight if the feds attempt to intervene. It’s less clear what would happen in other districts where there would be pushback by state and elections officials. But get a sympathetic judge and apparently you don’t even need to fully allege probable cause in order to get a warrant, so between the sympathetic judges and the sympathetic elections officials across the country, that opens a lot of doors for post-election interference, interference with the vote count, and potential prosecutorial retribution against any election official that attempts to get in the way. And that could mean a lot of lawsuits that Trump eventually loses like in 2020, but lawsuits take so long and create such a level of chaos and confusion that it could be enough to undermine the trust in the election, it could be enough to give Mike Johnson the fodder to refuse to swear in new Democratic representatives pending a fraudulent, fake federal investigation into their election, and it could grind our entire system to a halt.
Okay and now for the final category, the batshit cuckoo bananas so illegal are you out of your mind category. Now this is not a scenario I came up with myself, but there are people postulating that this could happen and it would be so far flung so out of left field so detached from reality as to be nearly impossible. Nearly. But that’s kinda the MO of this administration, so while I’m not saying this will happen or is even likely to happen, I do want to add it to the list so it’s on your radar as a possibility. And this could happen in tandem with any of the other scenarios on this list. Some are speculating that there’s a scenario in which the Justice Department uses Nicolas Maduro, yes the president of Venezuela they captured last month, and gets him to take a plea deal in which he acknowledges Venezuelan interference in the 2020 election in exchange for more lenient treatment, further bolstering Trump’s claims of election fraud, after spending the last year laying the ground work that tren de aragua and cartel de los soles and venezuelan gang members were infiltrating the country, leading to an invasion at the southern border, it all fits into the same master narrative here. The Venezuelan voting machine manipulation is a soundly debunked conspiracy theory about the 2020 election that Trump has brought up in the last year on Truth Social and elsewhere, indicating it’s still very much on his radar. And the fact that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the Fulton County Georgia election raid indicates that the administration is attempting to attach election integrity to national security, which is their favorite way to expand presidential powers. Claim it’s a national emergency because it implicates national security, do whatever you want. They’re doing it with immigration and they might do it with elections as well. You can almost set your watch by this regime’s use of “national emergency” as a label on anything they want to have complete control over with no oversight from the other branches of government. So, get Nicolas Maduro to admit to election interference, use that information to say there’s a national emergency related to voting and this is a national security issue at this point, so we have to send in the troops. Again, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that kinda feels like you’re attaching red strings to various things that don’t actually have anything to do with each other, but it is the scenario that gave me pause when I first heard it because it’s so fucking cuckoo bananas they just might do it.
So there’s your ranking, though I anticipate the reality may include a little of all of these scenarios, and I hope desperately the ones that are the least illegal are the scenarios that actually come to pass. I don’t think it’s fearmongering at this point though to at least be aware of what potential scenarios are on the horizon. Now, what can you DO with this information? Get a fucking passport and find your birth certificate. I know it’s stupid, we shouldn’t comply in advance, this should be illegal, but truly you should have those documents anyway with how fucking uncertain these trying times are, okay. Make sure you are registered to vote. If you are going to mail in your ballot, did you know if you wait in line and hand it to the actual mail person at the post office you can request a physical post date stamp from them right then and there, so you can be sure when your mail in ballot is post dated. If you are going to vote by mail, make sure you send that sucker in as early as you can. If you normally vote on the day of the election, do that, don’t be intimidated into not going, if you have the right to vote in this country then you have the right to do so freely and without intimidation. I can’t guarantee that will be the reality this year but don’t let them scare you into staying home. If you want to get involved, secretaries of state across the country are already prepping for the vote in November. You can volunteer to be a poll worker. Or you can work with a local organization to help inform people of their voting rights and get people registered to vote. It is absolutely appalling that we have reached a point where we need to have landslide victories in order to avoid election conspiracies (and even that doesn’t always work) but the reality in our failing democracy is that any close election is vulnerable to being challenged, so the more people who vote, the more definitive the victories, the less fodder for conspiracy theorists. I am very much of the opinion that voting is the least you can do, it is a single act that does not constitute your full civic duty or the full extent of your ability to influence the government that is supposed to represent you, therefore I think it’s something I do that takes me twenty minutes every few years but the real change happens when you use your voice to speak up for the changes you want to see. So people who sit out from voting because they don’t feel represented by the system or they don’t want to participate in a system that they feel doesn’t support them or doesn’t represent them, fine, but I hope to god that’s not all you’re doing to push for the change you want to see. If you’re sitting on your ass complaining and then calling your lack of voting a “protest” but then you do nothing throughout the rest of the year to push for the change you want to see–and I don’t even necessarily mean in government, it could be in your community, in advocacy, and mutual aid, whatever, but don’t sit out the vote and call yourself an activist for it. That’s just being lazy unless you pair it with some other form of action. But if voting is something you care about, there are so many ways to get involved, I encourage you to do a google to find the local organizations in your area doing the work to protect our elections.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from Monday about the shady ghost network of detention camps the Trump regime is building.
