Donald Trump has a simple plan for 2026: if democracy won’t hand him a win, he’ll rewrite the rules until it does. From redistricting to mail ballot bans, to weaponizing the Justice Department, Trump is testing just how far a president can go in bending elections toward his party — and daring the courts to catch up.

Gerrymandering as Presidential Policy

Presidents have always campaigned for their party in midterms. What Trump is doing now is something else. According to the Associated Press, he is openly directing Republican lawmakers in Texas, Indiana, and Missouri to redraw maps mid-decade — not after a census, not by court order, but because he “deserves” more seats. In Texas, the push could net as many as five extra GOP-held House districts.

As Stanford’s Larry Diamond warned in the AP story, redistricting is no longer just legislative gamesmanship — it’s part of a “12-step” slide into autocracy, with the last step being to rig elections themselves.

Democrats in California have countered with their own map designed to claw back seats. But what’s happening is a national arms race in gerrymandering, sanctioned at the very top.

Weaponizing the Justice Department

Trump has turned the Department of Justice into an extension of his campaign. He ordered investigations into ActBlue, the Democrats’ small-donor fundraising juggernaut, while conveniently sparing WinRed, the Republican equivalent. His DOJ has also demanded voter files from at least 19 states, threatening legal action in Democratic strongholds like California and Minnesota if they refuse.

Protect Democracy’s Ian Bassin told AP: “Those are actions you don’t see in healthy democracies. Those are actions you see in authoritarian states.”

Mail Voting and Machines in the Crosshairs

The obsession with mail ballots and voting machines is the other prong of Trump’s offensive. As NPR reported, he’s promising an executive order to outlaw both, despite the Constitution giving that authority to Congress and the states. Election law experts across the spectrum agree he can’t do it.

But that’s almost beside the point. As Barbara Smith Warner of the National Vote at Home Institute explained to NPR, Trump’s goal isn’t implementation — it’s destabilization. By constantly hammering the idea that mail ballots are corrupt, he primes voters to mistrust results unless they tilt his way.

Redefining the Presidency

The Guardian captured Trump’s most revealing quote yet: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.” That’s not campaign rhetoric — it’s a governing philosophy. He’s already tested it by deploying the National Guard to U.S. cities and framing “crime” as the wedge issue of 2026.

Meanwhile, Trump insists on framing his interventions as democratic preservation. He told Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House that “you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.” This is the trick: redefine democracy to mean only the system that delivers him victory.

The Bigger Picture

Taken together, the reporting paints a coherent, chilling strategy:

• Reshape the maps (Democracy Docket, AP).
• Control the ballots (NPR).
• Investigate the opposition (Guardian, AP).
• Frame it all as “protecting democracy.”

It’s the same playbook that drove January 6 — only this time, as Bassin warned, Trump has stacked his administration and party with loyalists unlikely to resist.

History tells us midterms are usually punishing for the president’s party. Polls already show Trump’s approval languishing below 40%. As Brown University’s Wendy Schiller told the Guardian, Republicans wouldn’t be trying to stack the deck this aggressively if they thought they could win fairly.

Which is precisely why this matters. Trump doesn’t need tanks or mobs to rig the 2026 midterms. He’s showing us how it can be done legally, procedurally, and in broad daylight — unless the rest of the system has the will to stop him.

Sources

• Democracy Docket: Trump’s plot to control elections
• NPR: Trump wants to stop states from voting by mail and using voting machines
• The Guardian: Trump intervenes to protect his allies in Congress
• Associated Press: Trump moves to use presidential power to help GOP in midterms