The Trump fascist regime is actively working to steal the next election. They think only their rule is legitimate, and they need to maintain their grip on the levers of power to consolidate their whole fascist program. This means rule through open terror and violence and fully shredding the rule of law, with an agenda of blatant white supremacy, patriarchal oppression of women and LGBT people, mass deportations, and Christian fascist, America-first global domination.

It is crystal clear that Trump will not respect elections he loses. On day one of his regime, he pardoned hundreds of insurrectionists who tried to overturn the 2020 election. And he is working on a multi-faceted plan to steal the midterms. Here is just some of the elements of this: 

ICE Agents in Polling Stations

On March 23, Trump sent ICE agents to major airports, supposedly to help the stretched-thin TSA agents (who haven’t been paid for a month) in a crisis that has caused massive delays in air travel. ICE agents—basically paramilitary thugs trained to terrorize and brutalize—would be of little or no use supporting TSA agents. So why send them?

That same day, the fascist strategist Steve Bannon said on his podcast: 

“We can use what’s happening with ICE helping out at the airports, we can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” He went on: “You know what they’ll do, they’ll just walk on down [and say], ‘Hey, we’re going to speed things through, can we check your IDs?’ … So, ICE is going to be there in the fall of ‘26, just like they’re in the airports today.” [Italics added.]

Bannon has been pushing to “have ICE surround the polls” since February, supposedly in order prevent the election from being “stolen” from Trump by non-citizens voting.¹ The regime has not officially admitted that this is their plan, but they are strongly hinting at it. Border czar Tom Homan says “part of DHS’s job is secure elections.” (ICE is part of DHS—Department of Homeland Security). Markwayne Mullin, the new head of DHS (replacing Kristi Noem), told the Senate that “[If we’re there] there will be a reason for us to be there [at the polling stations], and it’ll be known why we’re there.” And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (second in command of Department of Justice) asked with fake innocence: “Why is there an objection to sending ICE to polling stations?”

Why? Because ICE is a violent band of armed thugs known for harassing, brutalizing, abducting and detaining thousands of people based on the color of their skin and/or their accent. Because ICE agents cold-bloodedly murdered two citizens right out on the streets of Minneapolis for defending their neighbors. And because ICE’s presence would be an unmistakable message to millions of Black, brown and naturalized (immigrant) citizens that voting could be dangerous—“maybe you better stay home.”

If the regime goes through with putting these armed agents of white supremacy in polling stations, this would not only be a major step towards rigging the election, but would also amount to disenfranchising Black and Brown people in a way not seen since the end of Jim Crow in the mid-1960s. On both counts it is an outrage that has to be fiercely condemned and opposed.

The SAVE Act

Revcom.us wrote about this last week (see The Juggernaut of Fascist Repression Will Not Stop Because Trump Is Unpopular), and we won’t repeat everything from that article. But here are the basics. 

First, the so-called SAVE America Act that Trump is heavily pushing for passage by Congress would require people to present either a passport or a birth certificate when they register to vote. And once you register, under this law you would have to present photo ID when you vote, which would have to exactly match your registration ID. But as we wrote last week:

Roughly146 million Americans don’t have a passport. About 21 million do not have ready access to their birth certificates. And 69 million women who changed their names upon marriage (as well as thousands of trans people who have changed their gender) now have photo ID with a name that does not match their birth certificates. So in reality, SAVE is a massive effort to disenfranchise (deprive of voting rights) as well as to demonize millions of people.

Add armed ICE agents checking IDs to this mix, and it is easy to imagine not only voter suppression but humiliation, brutality and violence becoming a “feature” of voting for “certain people.”

Two: The SAVE Act does not have to be passed by Congress to be damaging. If the fascists lose the election, they will almost certainly claim that the election was “stolen” or “rigged,” and that the failure of the SAVE Act to pass made this possible. So it could well serve as “justification” for rejecting the election results entirely.

Straight-up Federal Takeover

The U.S. Constitution spells out that elections are to be run by states. But Trump has floated the idea of a federal takeover of elections, including seizing the ballots and counting them. Trump and others have also laid the groundwork for this by repeatedly claiming that past elections have been fraudulent, including in the counting of the ballots. (Trump’s people have searched high and low for the last six years for some evidence for this claim and have come up with exactly nothing.) 

On February 3, Trump told reporters that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places.” And he specifically mentioned Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia—all three are majority non-white, heavily Democratic-voting cities in swing states. This came less than a week after FBI agents led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard raided the Fulton County (Atlanta) Election Hub and seized hundreds of boxes of documents related to the 2020 Presidential election. And on March 23, a Trump-loyalist county sheriff in California seized 650,000 ballots from a recent ballot initiative (in which the electorate had approved a redistricting plan that favored the Democrats).

On top of all this, Trump has stated that he regrets not calling out the National Guard when he lost the 2020 election.

Relying on the elections as a means to stop fascism means ignoring what's right in front of your eyes!