Why the coming mid-term elections loom as a threat to our democracy

Since Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene, we’ve grown numb to the use of words like “consequential” or “historic” to describe elections in the United States. As overused as these terms may be, the 2026 mid-term election will actually live up to the billing.

In a mid-term election, the president’s party typically loses seats in Congress. Trump and his GOP are openly employing authoritarian tactics to ensure that this does not happen, both through electoral machinations and via the establishment of a militarized domestic security infrastructure on a scale we have never experienced in U.S. history, with the exception of the Reconstruction era following the Civil War.

On the state electoral front, Texas and soon Missouri will have reallocated their congressional delegations to fav