THE PLOT AGAINST THE MIDTERMS

With the Democratic establishment in disarray, Trump and his deputies plan to meddle with the election to keep Congress split

By  Seymour Hersch, Substack

President Donald Trump’s bewildering speech last week about the alleged vulnerabilities in US federal elections—much of what he said was false—had its beginnings in polls that have consistently showed that the Republican Party he controls will lose the House of Representatives by a wide number and is in peril in the Senate, where the Democrats may both hold and capture enough seats to eke out a slim majority. If the Democrats take both chambers, the new Congress will most likely immediately pursue his impeachment.

Of course such intentions are left unsaid at this point, but the blood is up. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, known for his relentless questioning of administration officials and for his speeches on Trump’s corruption, gave a polite dodge to a question about impeachment during a town hall in Georgia in April 2025. He acknowledged that Trump has undoubtedly met the standards for impeachment, but said that “the only way to achieve what you want to achieve is to have a majority in the House of Representatives.”

As for who is in charge of the Republicans’ campaign, as usual all roads lead to the president himself, and the White House is relying, as in past campaigns, on a heavy schedule of Trump-led rallies in toss-up states where he retains popularity.

Some press reports have speculated that the party leaders want to focus the fall campaign on the differences in the party’s platforms, rather than as a referendum on the success, or lack thereof, of Trump’s presidency. Axios reported this week that the Republican Party and Trump’s Super PAC have more than $530 million to spend this fall.

There will be a dark side, of course. The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that advocates for finance reform, voting rights, and fair redistricting, has accused the administration of eroding “the safeguards that keep our elections free, fair and secure.” The White House, it recently noted, has reversed the federal government’s effort to ensure such safeguards by illegally attempting to seize ballots, voting machines and election materials, rigging voting maps, and targeting pro-voter organizations.

In a report issued last week, the CLC warned that “we must be clear-eyed about what the midterm election will look like. Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork for future election subversion by steadily eroding public trust in the electoral process and positioning loyalists in government who could override legitimate outcomes.”

I have been told that the key insider within the White House, beyond the president, is Stephen Miller, the fanatical architect of the administration’s draconian immigration policies. Miller’s current mission is to prevent the Democrats from winning Senate seats in a few contested states, including Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.

Trump can go on and on, as he did last week, about Chinese influence and failures of the election infrastructure, but Miller understands the way the system works, and their solution is not to seek out instances of cheating, but to find ways to discourage enough citizens—primarily minorities, who tend to be Democratic voters—from voting. In simpler terms, they intend to scare them away from the polls.

I have heard this from sources close to Trump’s staff, but there is plenty of public evidence of the White House’s planning and intent. Last September 30, at an extraordinary gathering of 800 US generals and admirals at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, spoke of eliminating what he called the ‘woke’ culture at the Pentagon. He was followed by Trump, clearly aware of negative polls, who proposed using American cities as training grounds for federal troops to combat what he called “an invasion from within.”

Another hint of what might come was dropped last April at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former senior Defense Department official who served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst, asked Hegseth whether he would deploy uniformed military troops to polls to seize ballots and voting machines on election day if ordered to do so by the president. Hegseth refused to answer the question, calling it a “gotcha hypothetical.”

I have recently been told that the White House election operatives are aware that seizing ballots is not politically viable and are now planning to order troops to guard polling places in highly contested states in hopes of dissuading some voters from showing up. The current plan calls for Marine Corps units to be assigned to areas where there are large numbers of minorities, especially in states like Texas or Georgia. The notion is that some Hispanics and other citizens of color turn around at the sight of US soldiers and not vote.

In addition, Hegseth has been—perhaps in response to a presidential wish or directive—trying to eliminate minorities and women from military leadership. It seems there is a political motive—that has nothing to do with leadership capability— for the current campaign against minority leadership at the Pentagon.

“Trump believes,” I was told by someone with firsthand political information, “if he can get his hands on it”—using elite Marines to do so—“the discouragement of even a very few could, if done at the right polling places, enable a Republican candidate to hold a seat or capture one held by a Democrat.”

The irony of the present political moment is that, as these racist strategies have been hatched inside the Trump administration, the Democratic establishment has been stunned by the recent election in New York City and elsewhere, of progressive Democrats, many of them political novices. I have been told that many longtime wealthy donors to Democrats in New York City and elsewhere are alarmed by the party’s political shift to the left and the prospect of higher taxes if Democrats gain control of the Congress this fall. Renewed calls among the younger generation for guaranteed universal healthcare are viewed with horror by many wealthy Americans.

These are all profound and legitimate issues that should be at the core of the next congressional and presidential elections. Instead we have an increasingly unbalanced president initiating unneeded wars, spending America into present and future financial crises, and seeking to turn the US Army and Marine Corps into political agents.

All the while he has been embraced and flattered by the elected officials of his party.