An elections expert is warning that President Donald Trump is not about to learn any lessons from his party’s latest defeats at the polls. Instead, he is likely to crank up the pressure on America’s democratic system, and he may do it fast.
In a new analysis for Salon, writer Chauncey Devega looks at how Trump responded to a strong election night for Democrats, which Trump himself chalked up to Republicans being blamed for the shutdown, and asks a simple question, “which Trump credited to the GOP being blamed for the shutdown, the question is how he and MAGA Republicans will fight back.” His answer, drawing on one of the country’s leading voting rights attorneys, is grim. There are, he suggests, “dark times ahead.”
On the Democracy Watch podcast, Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias walked through what the day after those losses looked like inside Trump’s White House. “The morning after the election,” Elias said, “you have Donald Trump talking about the filibuster, and what does he say? They need to get rid of the filibuster in his view so they can enact voter ID and other anti voting measures.”
For Elias, that comment was not a throwaway line, it was a roadmap. “This is a White House that understands that it lost big, that the American people are not with them,” he said. “And so it’s going to have to double down and triple down on voter suppression and election subversion if it’s to have a chance in 2026.”
In other words, rather than adjusting course, Trump is expected to push harder on the very strategies that helped get him into trouble in the first place, restricting access to the ballot and questioning elections that do not go his way.
Devega argues that this is entirely in character. Trump and his MAGA allies, he writes, are simply not interested in what most Americans want. “Trump and MAGA Republicans are largely unresponsive to public opinion. They are anti majoritarian, embracing policies, such as tariffs and allowing health care premiums to skyrocket, that most Americans reject. If anything, after last week’s defeats at the polls, they are likely to escalate their attacks on American democracy because they have reasonably concluded that, with the 2026 midterms approaching, the window of maximum opportunity and leverage may be closing,” Devega writes.
That escalated attack, in his view, will not be subtle. He notes that “Trump is amplifying his threats to use the Insurrection Act to invoke de facto martial law and order the military to invade Democratic led cities. In such a scenario, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that elections could be suspended,” Devega writes.
At the same time, he warns, the president is reportedly looking at ways to hard wire his advantage into the rules of voting itself. “Trump is preparing an executive order to restrict mail in voting and require voters IDs as part of a larger plan to further limit the franchise and ensure that Democratic voters are not able to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights,” Devega explains.
Those legal and procedural moves are unfolding against a broader judicial backdrop. “On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to a Mississippi law that allowed counting of mail in ballots received after Election Day, which has the potential to overturn similar measures in dozens of other states ahead of the midterms.” A ruling against those laws would tighten deadlines and throw out ballots that are currently being counted, changes that tend to hit Democratic leaning voters hardest.
Put together, the warnings from Elias and Devega sketch a picture of a White House that sees shrinking room for error and is prepared to “escalate attacks” on the system itself rather than risk another rebuke at the ballot box. The voters may be sending a message, but the president, they argue, is not listening. He is planning his next move.
