Doomsday speculation about the midterm elections takes hold

Opinion The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Doomsday speculation about the midterm elections takes hold Comments: by Juan Williams, opinion contributor - 07/06/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Juan Williams, opinion contributor - 07/06/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

President Donald Trump speaks during Salute to America, an Independence Day event honoring the nation’s 250th anniversary, Saturday, July 4, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

“They’re animals,” President Trump said about the success of leftists in this year’s Democratic primaries.  “We have to stop this…horrible threat of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism,” he told right-wing evangelicals in a desperate effort to stir fear about Democrats.

The Washington Post described his words as “dehumanizing,” and similar to 1950s “redbaiting,” attacks on Democrats that led the U.S. Senate to censure the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). 

Trump is pushing every button with the November midterms getting closer.

As his poll numbers sink to 61 percent disapproval in a Fox survey, Trump is frantic for any tactic to stop Democrats from taking control of the House and possibly winning a Senate majority.

He is even planning a national Republican convention before the midterms.

He wants to distract from RealClearPolitics polls that show Democrats with the advantage in generic congressional voting, holding about a 5-point edge on Republicans.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) warned last month that Trump is willing to “deny the results of midterms if they do not go his way…do not let this scare you: show up, vote, and fight like this country depends on you — because it does.”

Slotkin’s words presaged Trump’s refusal last week to sign a bipartisan bill to create more affordable housing.

That potential win for the Republican majority went to waste because Trump’s focus is on having Congress pass the SAVE Act, to require more identification from voters in an effort to depress turnout among Democrats.

Congressional Republicans don’t have the votes but Trump delights in the deadlock and talk about election fraud.

As a result, the Republican majority in the House left town for an early July 4 break without passing a defense policy bill. 

Trump’s fixation with stopping a blue wave in the midterms now defines all politics.

Around the country, the president has already succeeded in pressing Republican state legislators to draw new congressional districts to increase the number of seats likely to be won by Republicans.

The Supreme Court made history by weakening the Voting Rights Act to allow some of that mid-decade redistricting. That ruling ignited racial tensions nationally by allowing white Republican state legislators to dismantle majority Black districts that vote for Democrats.

Trump has also pushed the Justice Department to force states to give him access to voter registration rolls so that he can look for voters he thinks should not be allowed to vote.

He still refuses to admit he lost the 2020 presidential election. To this day, most Republican voters do not even support that fraudulent claim. And he has pardoned supporters who led a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop certification of the 2020 election.

It is hard to believe but earlier this year, when confronted with the historical pattern of midterm losses for the party in power, Trump told Reuters: “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Now doomsday speculation about the fall election is taking hold in conversations among insiders on Capitol Hill. Political players on both sides of the aisle casually speculate that Trump will press Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to refuse to seat Democrats who would form a new House majority.

That fear grows because the scenario has precedent.

Last year, Johnson delayed the swearing-in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) for nearly two months after she won a special election, in order to shield the president from the release of embarrassing files about his decades-long friendship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Johnson already did this to delay release of files on Epstein and child sexual abuse. Election rigging is small ball by comparison.

More recently, Johnson amplified Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California without any evidence of any irregularity.

Most telling in listening to the current rush of scary political fantasy is that it takes the lid off a pot of boiling anxiety with four months to go before the midterms.

The basics of the script is consistent: Democrats win enough competitive House races to claim a majority, but the Speaker delays or refuses to seat members from closely contested districts — citing bogus allegations of voter fraud or unresolved close election disputes.

The fight inevitably lands before the conservative Republican majority on the Supreme Court who has already shown itself to be corrupt and serving partisan interests that protect Trump from accountability.

With potential legal and personal accountability awaiting Trump and his aides if Democrats take control of House subpoena powers, the president prefers having Republicans now in Congress and, ultimately, the Supreme Court decide the election.

Add to that a nation that has grown accustomed to the threatening presence of Trump-controlled military and law enforcement agents in Washington, where Congress ultimately decides the disputed House elections.

It is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen — the “sum of all fears” that could bring the American experiment, now celebrating its 250th anniversary, to its greatest test. 

This would all be a bad political satire if it was not so scary. Comedian Bill Maher summed up Trump’s approach to elections during a recent interview with Vice President JD Vance: “Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes an election can be: Either we win, or they cheated. That s— has to stop.”

Maher is right. It has to stop.

Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”