After a largely quiet set of off-year elections, Democrats are again voicing concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration could try to shape the political environment around the 2026 midterms, including through federal pressure aimed at elections and the legal and administrative system that supports them.
The concerns come as Trump faces a political scenario Democrats say could mirror the history of earlier midterms, when the party in the White House lost House seats. Critics also point to steps they say Trump has taken to remake political maps, as well as federal actions that Democrats describe as inappropriate and escalatory, and they worry those approaches could reappear during the next cycle.
At the center of the alarm is the prospect of federal involvement in the voting process itself, a line Democrats say Trump’s critics have drawn based on prior actions and a broader approach to power. Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in remarks to The Associated Press that: “What 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’re probably not going to leave their house to go vote on Election Day. That’s how he stays in power.”
Trump’s team has disputed those warnings. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the AP that the concerns about the midterms come from Democratic politicians who are “fearmongering 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,” and she described their concerns as “baseless conspiracy theories.” Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, also denied that Trump was planning to use the military to suppress votes, telling Vanity Fair that, “I say it is categorically false, will not happen. It’s just wrongheaded,” according to the AP report.
Democrats acknowledge that the most recent off-year votes did not produce the kinds of incidents they feared. Alexandra Chandler, the legal director of Protect Democracy, said she was heartened by the lack of drama during the 2025 voting and noted “There are limits” on Trump’s power, citing, among other things, resistance in the Senate to Trump’s demands to eliminate the filibuster and resistance to Trump’s demand that Jimmy Kimmel lose his job. Chandler said, “We will have elections in 2026,” adding, “People don’t have to worry about that.”
Still, legal and election experts said the absence of dramatic incidents in 2025 does not remove all risk for 2026. Under the Constitution, presidential tools to intervene in federal voting are limited because states run elections and oversee ballot counting, even as Congress can set rules for certain federal elections. The AP report described how Trump previously tried to revise election rules through a sweeping executive order shortly after returning to office, and courts stepped in to stop him, citing the president’s lack of constitutional role.
Election-law specialists said that even when direct disruption is blocked, presidents can pursue other strategies that may pressure election administration or undermine public confidence. Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor, said concerns about Trump interfering in 2026 are “real; they’re not frivolous,” while also adding they are “also not likely,” according to the AP report. Hasen pointed to Trump’s 2020 push with Georgia’s election leadership to “find” votes and said misinformation could be another tactic to damage confidence in vote tallies.
One move drawing especially sharp criticism from voting-rights figures is the Justice Department’s push for detailed voter data. David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said in the AP report: “What the DOJ is trying to do is something that should frighten everybody across the political spectrum.” Becker said the DOJ is seeking what he described as highly sensitive personal information from states, and he argued it amounts to “bully[ing] states into turning over highly sensitive data — date of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license, the Holy Trinity of identity theft.”
The AP report also described how the administration has sued the District of Columbia and at least 21 states after they refused to turn over all information the DOJ sought. Dan Freeman, the DNC litigation director, said he had not seen an indication that Trump will send immigration enforcement agents to polling places in the midterms, but he said he remains wary. Freeman told the AP that the DNC filed public records requests to learn more about any potential plans and was drafting legal pleadings it could file if armed federal agents are sent to polls or if other intervention occurs, saying, “We’re not taking their word for it.”
Democrats and election officials are also preparing for a different kind of challenge: how to respond to misinformation and procedural emergencies at polling sites. The AP said voting-rights lawyers and election officials have been planning for months, and that both parties are expected to mount major campaigns focused on election administration. Freeman said his hiring was part of the DNC’s effort to strengthen in-house legal work ahead of the midterms, including informing states about limits on purging voters from voter rolls.
In parallel, Tina Barton, co-chair of the Committee on Safe and Secure Elections, said interest in the coalition’s trainings “exploded” in recent weeks as de-escalation planning becomes more central. “There’s a lot at stake, and that’s going to cause a lot of emotions,” Barton said, as lawmakers and election-system officials head toward 2026 with competing concerns about how federal power and election processes may intersect.