What the GOP is planning for 2026 and 2028 makes 2020 look quaint.
The midterms are coming.
And I fully expect the Republicans to cheat.
This is not hyperbole; it's a logical expectation based on precedent, strategy, and stated intent. We are dealing with a para-political movement that has made it plain that they do not intend to cede office ever again. Not gracefully, not legally, and not democratically. If you're still hoping for fair play, you're not paying attention to the playbook.
Since 2020, Trump and his loyalists have rewritten the rules of engagement. Losing an election is no longer seen as the verdict of the people—it's treated as a glitch in the system, a temporary lapse in control that needs correcting. Correcting, in this case, has already meant suppressing votes, criminalizing dissent, and replacing neutral administrators with ideological loyalists.
In key Republican-led states, voting laws have been redesigned not to prevent fraud—of which there is virtually no evidence—but to prevent voting, period. ID laws, purges of voter rolls, restrictions on mail-in ballots, and targeted closures of polling places in Black and brown communities aren't security measures. They're calculated moves in a long game to rig democracy without needing to storm any Capitol again. The coup doesn't need horns and furs this time. Just paperwork, lawyers, and a few Supreme Court justices nodding along.
What Trump and his allies couldn't achieve with brute force in his first go around, they are now institutionalizing with cold precision. Project 2025, a manifesto from the Heritage Foundation and Trump's inner circle, outlines the next phase. It calls for gutting entire agencies, purging the civil service, dismantling environmental protections, and centralizing presidential authority in ways that make Watergate look quaint. It's not even hidden. It's on their website.
The firing of 18 inspectors general, the reclassification of 50,000 federal employees under Schedule F, and the installation of partisan operatives across departments isn't politics. It's a power grab. And that's the point. Make the authoritarianism so procedural, wrapped in layers of ham-fisted language and executive orders, that the locks are already changed by the time anyone sounds the alarm.
They’re not even pretending anymore. Trump is openly campaigning on the promise of vengeance, mass deportations, and retribution against the "vermin" who oppose him.
The rhetoric is fascist. The policies are fascist. The intentions are fascist.
If Republicans are governing as if they never have to give up power again, it's because they don't plan to. And unless there is resistance—organized, strategic, unrelenting—they won't have to. This is why the midterms matter. Not because they're some last chance to course-correct but because they’re the next test of how far the rot has spread.
We're in a different phase now. The slow erosion of democratic norms has become active demolition. Voter suppression is being codified. Checks and balances are being bypassed. Courts are being stacked with ideologues who see Trump as more than a man—they see him as a movement, a mandate, a license to burn it all down.
Anyone paying attention expects the GOP to cheat. Not because they're evil cartoon villains (although they frequently behave as such) but because they've all but told us they will. They've done it before. And they're laying the groundwork to do it again. That's the real hack. Not to break the rules—but to rewrite them.
The old rules don’t apply. Good faith doesn't apply. Norms don't apply. What applies is power, unaccountable and unchecked. And responding with think pieces, gentle criticisms, and hopeful abstractions about the arc of history bending toward justice simply will not cut it.
The midterms are coming. And this time, democracy is on the ballot.
Act accordingly.
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