The Trump Plan to End American Democracy

2026 is a momentous year in American history. On July 4, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Donald Trump’s plan to honor that momentous anniversary is the complete opposite. He wants to make himself King and, unbelievable as it may seem, effectively abolish future elections.

The King vs. democracy

There are many reasons why Trump is pulling out all the stops to prevent fair elections in November. The latest is that he is running scared, because he is badly underwater in the polls on his two signature issues, the economy and immigration.

No wonder his long-time supporters are freaked out. Long believing, like Trump, in their invincibility, they all of a sudden have to contend with such unwelcome scenarios as a lame-duck Trump presidency come November.

While Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the House, the Democrats have a very good chance of taking over the majority there after the midterm elections. If they win, Trump won’t be able to rule as an absolute monarch.

No wonder that, instead of showing any sign of moderation, Trumo — forever the maximalist — is hell-bound to up the ante. True to his impulsive nature, Trump is moving fast. But his brutal tactics have triggered a backlash, which may help the Democrats, and there are ways to fight back.

Trump’s tools to end democracy

The President is resorting to extraordinary measures to block a Democratic victory:

1. Gerrymandering election districts outside the usual cycle

2. Deploying ICE to terrorize voters, especially Latinos, in Democratic cities

3. Raiding state election offices to intimidate election officials

4. Get confidential voter information for pinpointing ICE sweeps

5. Lay the foundation for seizing voting machines

6. Arresting journalists to intimidate the free press

This is a comprehensive blueprint for establishing a one-party regime which, if it were to come to pass, would carry all the hallmarks of a fascist regime.

Dumping ICE on Democrats

One of Trump’s primary missions is to round up and deport undocumented immigrants, on the specious grounds that many are criminals. However, Trump is also using the massive crackdown on immigrants as a pretext to suppress voter turnout.

Trump wants to intimidate Democratic voters, especially Latinos, in advance of the midterm elections. It is not accidental that ICE and BCP agents often accost people who are American citizens but have brown skin or speak with a Spanish accent.

Trump: Republicans should “nationalize” elections

On Monday, February 2, Trump explicitly linked his two goals, in a dangerous escalation of his rhetoric about elections.

Trump has called on Republican officials to “take over” voting procedures in 15 states, stating: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many-15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Otherwise, Trump claimed that “Republicans will never win another election.’

To that end, he uses the deployment of ICE (and the National Guard, perhaps) troops in Democratic-led cities during the elections as an excuse.

Undocumented immigrants cannot vote, of course. Meanwhile, Democrats do not try to subvert the election laws by registering Latino citizens to vote in elections.

Latinos turning against Trump

Trump won the 2024 election partly because his support increased dramatically among Latino men (note: not women). But now, the pendulum has swung back sharply.

Almost 70% of Hispanics say that their lives have become worse since Trump returned to power, according to Pew Research. That is very bad news for Trump and Republicans, but it is not surprising.

Like other Americans, many Latino men voted for Trump because they thought he would stop inflation and secure the border. Many Latinos are lower income and are suffering because of the higher prices caused by Trump’s tariffs.

The labor market has weakened, too, hurting their job prospects. And, again like most Americans, Hispanics did not vote for the massive, violent raids on immigrant neighborhoods that have ripped families apart.

Their attitude might have been naïve, given Trump’s promise to launch the biggest deportation campaign in U.S. history, but Hispanics have been shocked by the administration’s brutal tactics.

Trump’s response to the drop in Hispanics’ support is to intimidate Latinos and other minorities and discourage them from voting.

Trump has also been losing support from black men who voted for him in 2024, for the same reasons, so he’s also prepared to harass black voters…such as Somali Americans.

The FBI raid in Georgia

In late January, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who used to focus on fighting actual crimes, raided the offices of election officials in Fulton County, Georgia.

The area, which includes Atlanta and some other towns, is heavily Democratic and has a large black population. It voted for Joseph Biden in 2020, which helped him to carry the state of Georgia.

In the raid, FBI agents seized “truckloads” of ballots from the 2020 election, according to the New York Times.

The U.S Department of Justice justified the search by saying it is investigating possible criminal fraud by Fulton County officials in the 2020 election.

Of course, it was Donald Trump, not Georgia officials, who committed election fraud in 2020. Trump called Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State, and demanded that he “find 11,700 votes” so that Trump would win the state. In a better world, Trump would be cooling his heels in prison because of his brazen attempt to subvert the election.

Trump directly involved

There are other deeply troubling aspects to the raid.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence (DNI), participated in the search. However, Gabbard’s mandate is to help protect the United States against foreign interference in our elections, not domestic fraud.

Will the Trump administration claim, somehow, that foreigners interfered in the 2020 election? (Not the Russians, of course.)

Furthermore, the DNI’s role is to gather intelligence and advise the President, not to take part in FBI operations. It turns out that Trump ordered Gabbard to take part in the search.

While in Georgia, Gabbard arranged a call in which Trump spoke to FBI agents conducting the search.

In other words, the President is participating in a criminal investigation in which he has a personal stake.

Intimidating election officials

The raid in Georgia is a major escalation of Trump’s efforts to bring state and local election officials under his thumb.

He wants to scare them, so that they will not resist his inevitable challenges to Congressional midterm races that Republican candidates lose.

The search is also part of Trump’s drive to get confidential information on voters. His Administration has sued half of the states (Democratic-led ones) to obtain access to their voting records.

The DOJ’s rationale is that they want to ensure the integrity of elections, but that is a bogus pretext. Voting fraud is extremely rare in the United States.

States guard the confidentiality of this information very carefully, as their records include voters’ names, addresses and, in many jurisdictions, their party affiliation. Historically states have not shared this information with Federal officials, because of the obvious potential for abuse.

The administration wants to build a massive database on voters as it pursues its dream of creating a police state. However, states have sued to protect their records, and the issue is bogged down in the courts.

The raid on Fulton County represents an end run to obtain voting records. The seizure of Fulton County’s five-year-old ballots and voting records could be a useful precedent for Trump, enabling his minions to grab voters’ information in other states.

Intimidating voters

If Trump officials obtained detailed information on voters, they could use the data to pinpoint neighborhoods and homes for ICE sweeps: registered Democrats, voters with Latino surnames, and so on.

The government could deploy ICE and BCP units in targeted areas, in the weeks leading up to the midterms. Some voters, especially minority voters, might decide to stay home, rather than risk confrontations with ICE.

Seizing voting machines

Trump wanted to deploy the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020, but his senior advisers dissuaded him. The President recently told the New York Times that he regretted that he had not followed his inclinations in 2020.

We can assume that he will try to take this step if the midterms seem to be going badly for his party. And if his administration can get access to voting records ahead of the election, his officials can seize voting machines in election districts that are likely to produce “fraudulent” (i.e., unfavorable) results.

Harassing journalists

The Department of Justice has made strenuous efforts to arrest Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor, and Georgia Fort, a prominent Minnesota reporter, who covered a protest that took place inside a church in Minneapolis.

Anti-ICE activists disrupted the religious service because the pastor is also an ICE official. Lemon, now an independent journalist, conducted interviews in the church during the protest, while Fort filmed the proceedings.

The DOJ brought a criminal indictment against the journalists, claiming that they had participated in the protest and had violated the civil rights of the congregants, interfering with their right to worship.

However, a judge ruled that neither Lemon nor Fort had engaged in any criminal activity and refused to issue the arrest warrants.

The DOJ took the unprecedented step of asking an appellate court to overrule the judge’s decision, but the higher court refused.

Covering a public protest is a classic role for journalists. By seeking criminal penalties, the DOJ is trampling on the First Amendment and threatening journalists. The Administration is taking extreme measures to intimidate what remains of a free press in the United States.