{"id":8759,"date":"2025-12-30T16:20:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T16:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/30\/after-quiet-off-year-elections-democrats-renew-worries-about-trump-interfering-in-the-midterms-los-angeles-times\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T16:20:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T16:20:22","slug":"after-quiet-off-year-elections-democrats-renew-worries-about-trump-interfering-in-the-midterms-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/30\/after-quiet-off-year-elections-democrats-renew-worries-about-trump-interfering-in-the-midterms-los-angeles-times\/","title":{"rendered":"After quiet off-year elections, Democrats renew worries about Trump interfering in the midterms – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

If history is a guide, Republicans stand a good chance of losing control of the House of Representatives in 2026. They have just a slim majority in the chamber, and the incumbent party usually gives up seats in midterm elections.<\/p>\n

President Trump, whose loss of the House halfway through his first term led to two impeachments, is trying to keep history from repeating \u2014 and doing so in ways his opponents say are intended to manipulate next year\u2019s election landscape.<\/p>\n

He has rallied his party to remake congressional maps across the country to create more conservative-leaning House seats, an effort that could end up backfiring on him. He\u2019s directed his administration to target Democratic politicians, activists and donors. And, Democrats worry, he\u2019s flexing his muscles to intervene in the midterms like no administration ever has.<\/p>\n

Democrats and other critics point to how Trump has sent the military into Democratic cities over the objections of Democratic mayors and governors. They note that he\u2019s pushed the Department of Homeland Security to be so aggressive that at one point its agents handcuffed a Democratic U.S. senator. And some warn that a Republican-controlled Congress could fail to seat winning candidates if Democrats reclaim the House majority, recalling Trump\u2019s efforts to stay in power even after voters rejected him in 2020, leading to the violent attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n

Regarding potential military deployments, Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told The Associated Press: \u201cWhat he is going to do is send those troops there, and keep them there all the way through the next election, because guess what? If people are afraid of leaving their house, they\u2019re probably not going to leave their house to go vote on Election Day. That\u2019s how he stays in power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Military to the polls, or fearmongering?<\/h2>\n

Democrats sounded similar alarms just before November\u2019s elections, and yet there were no significant incidents. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent Trump antagonist who also warns about a federal crackdown on voting in 2026, predicted that masked immigration agents would show up at the polls in his state, where voters were considering a ballot measure to counter Trump\u2019s redistricting push.<\/p>\n

There were no such incidents in November, and the measure to redraw California\u2019s congressional lines in response to Trump\u2019s efforts elsewhere won in a landslide.<\/p>\n

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the concerns about the midterms come from Democratic politicians who are \u201cfearmongering to score political points with the radical left flank of the Democrat party that they are courting ahead of their doomed-to-fail presidential campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n

She described their concerns as \u201cbaseless conspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susie Wiles, Trump\u2019s chief of staff, denied that Trump was planning to use the military to try to suppress votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say it is categorically false, will not happen. It\u2019s just wrongheaded,\u201d she told Vanity Fair for an interview that was published earlier in December.<\/p>\n

DNC litigation director Dan Freeman said he hasn\u2019t seen an indication that Trump will send immigration enforcement agents to polling places during the midterms, but is wary.<\/p>\n

He said the DNC filed public records requests in an attempt to learn more about any such plans and is drafting legal pleadings it could file if Trump sends armed federal agents to the polls or otherwise intervenes in the elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not taking their word for it,\u201d Freeman said in an interview.<\/p>\n

States, not presidents, run elections<\/h2>\n

November\u2019s off-year elections may not be the best indicator of what could lie ahead. They were scattered in a handful of states, and Trump showed only modest interest until late in the fall when his Department of Justice announced it was sending federal monitors to California and New Jersey to observe voting in a handful of counties. It was a bureaucratic step that had no impact on voting, even as it triggered alarm from Democrats.<\/p>\n

Alexandra Chandler, the legal director of Defend Democracy, a group that has clashed with Trump over his role in elections, said she was heartened by the lack of drama during the 2025 voting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have so many positive signs we can look to,\u201d Chandler said, citing not only a quiet election but GOP senators\u2019 resistance to Trump\u2019s demands to eliminate the filibuster and the widespread resistance to Trump\u2019s demand that television host Jimmy Kimmel lose his job because of his criticism of the president. \u201cThere are limits\u201d on Trump\u2019s power, she noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have elections in 2026,\u201d Chandler said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t have to worry about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the Constitution, a president has limited tools to intervene in elections, which are run by the states. Congress can help set rules for federal elections, but states administer their own election operations and oversee the counting of ballots.<\/p>\n

When Trump tried to singlehandedly revise election rules with a sweeping executive order shortly after returning to office, the courts stepped in and stopped him, citing the lack of a constitutional role for the president. Trump later promised another order, possibly targeting mail ballots and voting machines, but it has yet to materialize.<\/p>\n

DOJ voter data request \u2018should frighten everybody\u2019<\/h2>\n

Still, there\u2019s plenty of ways a president can cause problems, said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.<\/p>\n

Trump unsuccessfully pushed Georgia\u2019s top election official to \u201cfind\u201d him enough votes to be declared the winner there in 2020 and could try similar tactics in Republican-dominated states in November. Likewise, Hasen said, Trump could spread misinformation to undermine confidence in vote tallies, as he has done routinely ahead of elections.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s harder to do that in more lopsided contests, as many in 2025 turned into, Hasen noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cConcerns about Trump interfering in 2026 are real; they\u2019re not frivolous,\u201d Hasen said. \u201cThey\u2019re also not likely, but these are things people need to be on guard for.\u201d<\/p>\n

One administration move that has alarmed election officials is a federal demand from his Department of Justice for detailed voter data from the states. The administration has sued the District of Columbia and at least 21 states, most of them controlled by Democrats, after they refused to turn over all the information the DOJ sought.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the DOJ is trying to do is something that should frighten everybody across the political spectrum,\u201d said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to use the power of the executive to bully states into turning over highly sensitive data \u2014 date of birth, Social Security numbers, driver\u2019s license, the Holy Trinity of identity theft \u2014 hand it over to the DOJ for who knows what use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Voter protection\u2019 vs \u2018election integrity\u2019<\/h2>\n

Voting rights lawyers and election officials have been preparing for months for the midterms, trying to ensure there are ways to counter misinformation and ensure state election systems are easy to explain. Both major parties are expected to stand up significant campaigns around the mechanics of voting: Democrats mounting what they call a \u201cvoter protection\u201d effort to monitor for problems while Republicans focus on what they call \u201celection integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman, the DNC litigation director who previously worked in the DOJ\u2019s voting section, said his hiring this year was part of a larger effort by the DNC to beef up its in-house legal efforts ahead of the midterms. He said the committee has been filling gaps in voting rights law enforcement that the DOJ has typically covered, including informing states that they can\u2019t illegally purge citizens from their voter rolls.<\/p>\n

Tina Barton, co-chair of the Committee on Safe and Secure Elections, a coalition of law enforcement and election officials who advise jurisdictions on de-escalation and how to respond to emergencies at polling places, says interest in the group\u2019s trainings has \u201cexploded\u201d in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot at stake, and that\u2019s going to cause a lot of emotions,\u201d Barton said.<\/p>\n

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Penn., Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\n

More to Read <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If history is a guide, Republicans stand a good chance of losing control of the House of Representatives in 2026. They have just a slim majority in the chamber, and the incumbent party usually gives up seats in midterm elections. President Trump, whose loss of the House halfway through his first term led to two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}