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Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Trump’s Polls Make Stealing Elections Harder
Trump is trying to steal, rig, or vitiate the 2026 midterms in November. He’s suggested canceling elections; he’s said he wants to put elections under federal control (so he can make sure they are not free and fair); his allies have called for sending armed troops to polling places (to target people who don’t support Trump.)
We know Trump has tried to overthrow elections in the past; we know he wants to do the same in the future. Many thoughtful commenters are telling us we should be alarmed, and they are correct; democracy is under assault.
It’s also true, though, that Trump’s schemes and authoritarian fantasies have in many cases already been undermined or vastly complicated by the fact that he is extremely unpopular. His approval just went under 39% in the fiftyplusone tracker, the lowest level of his second term; over the last week the Republicans lost a Louisiana special in a deep red district with a 37 point swing to Democrats, and a deep red Texas special with a 32 point swing.
People sometimes talk as if authoritarians can simply ignore public opinion. But even dictators need to worry when they lose legitimacy…and Trump isn’t a dictator yet. His path to absolute power is greatly complicated by the fact that the large portions of the electorate loathe him—a recent poll showed 47% of the electorate strongly disapproves of him—and are willing to crawl over broken glass to vote against him and his party.
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Gerrymandering is going badly for Trump
Gerrymandering was Trump’s first and best effort to steal the 2026 elections—and that effort has largely foundered on the big ugly rock of mass Trump hatred.
Trump’s initial plan was to push through an unprecedented mid-century partisan gerrymander, capitalizing on the fact that the Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and signaled that disenfranchising non white voters is fine and dandy with the robed racist christofascists in charge. Initially, the plan seemed to go well; the Texas GOP passed a massive partisan gerrymander in summer 2025 that is expected the net Republicans 5 House seats. Other red states were set to follow suit.
Trump and the GOP were counting on the fact that most blue states have passed anti-gerrymandering legislation making it difficult for blue states to retaliate. But they underestimated just how unpopular the gerrymanders, and Trump, would be—and not solely with Democrats. Blue California quickly passed a ballot initiative allowing the state to create its own gerrymander, picking up 5 blue seats and cancelling out Texas’ effort. Then Indiana Republicans balked at drawing their own gerrymander in part because it was unpopular with their (mostly GOP) constituents. Then Virginia—a formerly purple state which saw a sweeping Democratic victory in 2025 in reaction to Trump—drew up an extremely partisan Democratic gerrymander.
Other red states, like Missouri, have gerrymandered Trump a seat or two, but according to pollster G. Elliott Morris, “[T[rump creating the incentive and permission structure for democrats to do insane 2010-era gerrymandering of their own may turn out to be one of the biggest self-owns of all time. [D]ems are now pretty likely to emerge with an advantage from the 2025-26 redistricting wars.”
Again, the reason Democrats have been able to fight back so effectively is because Trump support has cratered, and intense anti Trump sentiment has been overwhelming. Blue state voters are eager to crush Republican power and have voted away anti-gerrymandering barriers. Republicans, in contrast, have not been especially motivated to fight for gerrymanders in places like Indiana.
An additional factor may be a fear that gerrymanders may backfire. GOP gerrymanders are designed to reduce margins in very red districts in order to create more safe Republican districts. But in a situation where you are getting 30 point swings towards Democrats, no Republican district is all that safe. One concern in Indiana may have been that gerrymandering would allow Ds to pick up more rather than less seats given the approaching blue wave. Analysts believe Republicans may find they don’t get as many pickups as they expected, even in Texas, thanks to the collapse of GOP support.
More, with Ds currently at a +5 on the generic ballot, they have a clear path to control the chamber even with GOP tampering. One model suggests that with a 5 point lead Democrats can expect to pick up 26 seats—and currently Republicans only have a 4 seat majority.
Gerrymandering is noxious, but it’s legal and the rules around it are well-established and accepted. It was by far the easiest way for Trump to cheat his way to victory in the midterms. His failure here has been a major blow to him and a major win for democracy. All his other scheme are much riskier.
Voter suppression efforts can backfire
Having lost on gerrymandering, Trump and the GOP have now turned to voter suppression. The biggest measure here is the SAVE act, a monstrous attack on democracy which requires people to show proof of citizenship at the polls. It is likely to disenfranchise 21 million people. They also mandate reckless voter roll purges and allow the prosecution of election officials who make mistakes in good faith—encouraging poll workers to disenfranchise voters to protect themselves.
House Republicans passed SAVE last year (with 4 D votes) and are pushing through a slightly amended bill in hopes of getting a Senate vote. However, the prospects in the Senate look dim. The bill has little to no Democratic support and would not reach the 60 vote threshold to pass. House conservatives want the Senate to ditch the filibuster, but that looks less and less likely; Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski just spoke out against the bill.
Even were the bill to pass, though, there’s a non-zero chance that it would hurt Republicans rather than helping them. The GOP has grown used to building its voter suppression efforts on the assumption that Democratic voters are less engaged and less likely to vote.
This was more or less true before the Trump era, but there have been substantial changes as more educated voters have pivoted to Democrats. You can see this in special elections where voting turnout is lower and only the most impassioned and educated voters tend to turn out. This used to give the GOP an advantage. But these days Democrats are blowing the doors off even when they are vastly outspent. Putting up more barriers and shrinking the electorate by, say, restricting mail-in ballots could well create a smaller electorate which favors Democrats.
The GOP tries in these bills to tilt the playing field by targeting groups like Native Americans and students, groups which lean Democratic. But other provisions could well backfire. For instance, the current version of the SAVE act imposes major burdens on women who change their name in marriage. Women in general lean Democratic. But married women supported Trump by 5 points in 2024; unmarried women in contrast voted for Harris by 23 points. The Republican bill is in this case apparently designed to disenfranchise their own voters.
This does not mean that we shouldn’t worry about the effects of these bills. Disenfranchising anyone is bad and wrong; the effects of these bills are unpredictable and even at best they erode democracy in brutal and evil ways. Nonetheless, a huge blue wave is hard to overcome with voter suppression, in part because of sheer numbers, but also because it’s very difficult to disenfranchise your more impassioned opponents without disenfranchising your own less engaged constituents.
Lawfare and violence
With gerrymandering and voter suppression looking less and less likely to be effective, the Republicans are left with the 2020 insurrection remedies—ginned up lawsuits and naked violence, either at the polls or afterwards in a coup attempt.
There’s no doubt that Trump would like to try a replay of 2020. The FBI’s raid on a Georgia election center to seize records related to 2020 was a clear sign that Trump wants to push more fake voter fraud claims. And of course, as noted above, Trump’s been muttering about federalizing elections or canceling them altogether.
Part of the reason Trump was able to get as far as he did with the 2020 coup was that the vote was fairly close, so he could concentrate his intimidation efforts on a handful of states like Georgia and Arizona. This sort of narrow focus is going to be much harder in a Congressional election—and much, much harder in a Congressional election where Democrats win by 20 seats or more. Even if Trump did somehow, someway cancel elections, he wouldn’t have a GOP majority. So far 30 GOP members are retiring in anticipation of a blue wave. Only 21 Democrats are. In a House with no new members, there’d be a narrow D majority come 2026.
The Senate is likely to be much closer, and it’s quite easy to imagine Trump trying to steal a crucial narrowly won OH seat from Sherrod Brown with the help of a complicit state party in order to prevent Democratic control of the Senate. It’s also pretty easy to imagine Trump sending armed federal gunman to arrest local officials who refuse to comply, or to arrest senator elect Sherrod Brown himself. These are nightmare scenarios, and it’s very, very bad that they are plausible.
It’s important to remember that Trump’s position after a blue wave will have eroded even more; his intra-party support is likely to be at an all-time low and his room for maneuver to be much circumscribed. Can he count on state party support in those circumstances? Will he have many allies willing to back him?
Along the same line, ICE’s popularity is in free fall, and the idea of using ICE agents to patrol polling booths is very unpopular. That creates the possibility for backlash, and means that Republican pols at the state level are likely to be leery of deploying federal thugs in this way. That’s no guarantee—but it’s a better place to be than we were at in early 2025, when support for ICE was relatively high. Violence is a response to an inability to win popular support, but violence also depends in part on a certain level of legitimacy—as Trump discovered in his first coup.
Democracy is precarious
I am not in any way saying here that people shouldn’t worry. People should absolutely worry; Trump is a terrifying fascist authoritarian and our democracy right now looks very fragile.
There is, though, massive popular disgust with and opposition to Trumpism. The giant orange asshole is less powerful than he was in early 2025; it’s quite possible he’ll be less powerful than that after elections in November. There has already been a great deal of effective resistance to his attack on elections. There is every reason to believe that that effective resistance will continue, and that it can prevail.
Heather
As of yesterday, members of Congress who sit on the House or Senate Judiciary Committees can see unredacted versions of the Epstein files the Department of Justice (DOJ) has already released. As Herb Scribner of Axios explained, the documents are available from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on computers in the DOJ building in Washington, D.C. The lawmakers cannot bring electronic devices into the room with them, but they are allowed to take notes. They must give the DOJ 24 hours notice before they access the files.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the DOJ to release all the Epstein files by December 19. Only about half of them have been released to date, and many of them are so heavily redacted they convey little information. After members of Congress complained, on Friday, January 30, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said they could see the unredacted documents if they asked.
In a letter dated the next day, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) immediately asked for access on behalf of the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, saying they would be ready to view the files the following day, Sunday, February 1.
After viewing the files briefly yesterday, Raskin told Andrew Solender of Axios that when he searched the files for President Donald Trump’s name, it came up “more than a million times.” Raskin suggested that limiting members’ access to the files is part of a cover-up to hide Trump’s relationship with the convicted sex offender, a cover-up that includes the three million files the DOJ has yet to release despite the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. One of the files he did see referred to a child of 9. Raskin called it “gruesome and grim.”
Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) added: “There’s still a lot that’s redacted—even in what we’re seeing, we’re seeing redacted versions. I thought we were supposed to see the unredacted versions.”
Material that has come out has already shown members of the administration and their allies are lying about their connections to Epstein. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein for more than ten years, said in October that he had cut ties with Epstein in 2005 after visiting his home and being disgusted. The files show that in fact, Lutnick not only maintained ties with Epstein but also was in business with him until at least 2018, long after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Members of both parties have called for Lutnick to resign.
Testifying today before the Senate Appropriations Committee, where members took the opportunity to ask him about his ties to Epstein. Lutnick acknowledged that he had had more contact with Epstein than he had previously admitted, but maintained: “I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him.” But even Republicans expressed discomfort with Lutnick’s visit with his family to Epstein’s private island.
Khanna called for Lutnick to resign. “In this country, we have to make a decision,” he said. “Are we going to allow rich and powerful people who were friends and had no problem doing business and showing up with a pedophile who is raping underage girls, are we just going to allow them to skate? Or, like other countries, are we going to have…accountability for the people who did that?”
In the U.S. there has been little fallout so far for those in the files except the resignation of Wall Street lawyer Brad Karp, senior partner for Paul Weiss—the first law firm to cave to Trump’s demands last March. Material from the files shows that Karp plotted with Epstein to get a woman they disliked charged with a crime and deported.
In Europe the revelation that a leader had ties to Epstein has abruptly ended careers. The former British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, was fired and has created a crisis for Prime Minister Keir Starmer for appointing him. Two senior Norwegian diplomats are under investigation for gross corruption from their ties to Epstein; one of them, Mona Juul, resigned Sunday from her position as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq. Slovakia’s national security advisor Miroslav Lajčák resigned after messages between him and Epstein showed them talking about women while also discussing Lajčák’s meetings with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
Poland announced it was launching an investigation into whether Epstein was tied to Russian intelligence. “More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said. “I don’t need to tell you how serious the increasingly likely possibility that Russian intelligence services co-organised this operation is for the security of the Polish state. This can only mean that they also possess compromising materials against many leaders still active today.”
Yesterday, Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, testified by video before the House Oversight Committee. She refused to answer any questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her lawyer said she is “prepared to speak fully and honestly” if Trump grants her clemency.
Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection; and Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, all part of the Department of Homeland Security, testified today before the House Committee on Homeland Security. As Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico reported, Lyons defended the actions of ICE agents, saying they are properly enforcing immigration laws and that they are the real victims of the encounters that have left protesters dead or injured because the protests put agents in danger. Most Republicans backed them up, saying the Democrats are trying to stop the removal of criminals.
Democrats asked the men about federal arrests of U.S. citizens and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and demanded changes at ICE and Border Patrol. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security will run out on February 13, and the administration officials warned members of Congress that a shutdown would disrupt their operations and thus endanger national security. Representative James Walkinshaw (D-VA) later told a reporter: “Look, all of this comes from Stephen Miller’s sick and twisted, deranged Great Replacement theory. Whether these folks here…know it or not, they’re…just pawns in Stephen Miller’s sick and twisted scheme.”
Daniel Klaidman, Michael Kaplan, and Matt Gutman of CBS News reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit after a federal raid on a popular horse racing venue in Wilder, Idaho, led to the detention of 105 undocumented immigrants as well as the temporary detention of 375 U.S. citizens or lawful residents. Only five arrests ended in criminal charges, all for unlicensed gambling.
Answering allegations that agents had used zip ties on children, both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field office in Boise and Homeland Security spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin flatly denied the allegations. “ICE didn’t zip tie, restrain, or arrest any children,” she said. “ICE does not zip tie or handcuff children. This is the kind of garbage rhetoric contributing to our officers facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” But after photographic evidence of zip-tie bruises on a 14-year-old female U.S. citizen as well as personal testimony, the FBI changed their assertion to say no “young” children were zip-tied.
Court documents unsealed today show that the FBI raid on the warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, that led to the seizure of 700 boxes of ballots and other election related items was based on debunked claims of fraud from 2020 election deniers. As Ashley Cleaves and Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket explained, the affidavit that informed the search warrant came from Kurt Olsen, one of the lawyers who worked with Trump to overturn the 2020 election and whom Trump has recently appointed director of election security and integrity. In the affidavit, Olsen recycled a number of debunked theories.
Legal analyst Joyce White Vance notes that, aside from the merits of the case, it appears that the statute of limitations has run out on any potential election crimes stemming from 2020. She goes on to expose the weakness of the case itself and, finally, to point out that both the General Assembly and the Georgia State Election Board that said there was no intentional fraud or misconduct in the counting of the Fulton County ballots in 2020 were Republican led. White suggests the raid was “less about bringing a meritorious criminal prosecution against specific individuals and more about casting suspicion over Fulton County’s voting system and ability to conduct a fair election.”
Today the National Governors Association cancelled its annual bipartisan meeting with the president that usually involves a business meeting and a dinner. Trump had disinvited two Democratic governors, Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of Maryland, prompting the rest of the Democratic governors to refuse to attend. “Democratic governors have a long record of working across the aisle to deliver results and we remain committed to this effort. But it’s disappointing this administration doesn’t seem to share the same goal. At every turn, President Trump is creating chaos and division, and it is the American people who are hurting as a result,” the Democratic governors wrote. “If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year. Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states.”
Moore is the vice-chair of the NGA. Yesterday its chair, Oklahoma’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt, wrote: “Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “I just spoke with the president about this. It is a dinner at the White House. It’s the ‘People’s House.’ It’s also the president’s home, and he can invite whomever he wants to dinners and events here at the White House.”
In Washington today, a grand jury refused to indict six Democratic members of Congress for breaking a law that makes it a crime to “interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States.” Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain and astronaut; Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst; and Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger; Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, a former Navy officer; Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, a Navy veteran; and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, a former Air Force officer, recorded a video last November reminding service members that they must refuse illegal orders.
Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Although the bar for an indictment is so low that grand juries almost always return one, the Trump administration’s attempts to harass those he perceives as opponents have been so outrageous that grand juries have repeatedly refused to go along. The New York Times called today’s refusal “a remarkable rebuke.”
The Banality of MAGA Evil
The Banality of MAGA Evil
Instead of criminal masterminds we got amoral, stupid grifters like Howard Lutnick
Not Howard Lutnick. Also, a short post today.
There’s a longstanding tradition in American politics of what Richard Hofstadter famously called the paranoid style – a way of thinking that sees conspiracies lurking everywhere. MAGA-world is particularly riddled with conspiracy thinking – from George Soros and Jewish space lasers, QAnon and the Great Replacement Theory, to Italian satellites hacking into voting machines to deliver the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
But these are far-fetched fantasies. The truth is far more banal and shocking.
There are people in positions of great power in the U.S. government engaged in evil conspiracies against everything that is good and decent. Their conspiracies are far more extensive and damaging than almost anyone imagined. But there are no evil masterminds behind this. Only amoral, stupid grifters like Howard Lutnick.
During Trump 47’s first year, Lutnick, the Commerce secretary, was an omnipresent spokesman for Donald Trump’s policies, a constant presence on TV, especially the Sunday talk shows.
He was not impressive in that role. Unlike Scott Bessent, he lacked any hint of gravitas. He doesn’t have Pete Hegseth’s hair. Moreover, Lutnick’s Trump boosterism has been consistently and embarrassingly incompetent.
The only waves he has made are a result of his exceptional combination of stupidity and offensive tone-deafness.
Thus he promised to revive U.S. manufacturing by bringing back “the work of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws.” Lutnick, a billionaire, dismissed concerns about chaos at the Social Security Administration by saying that his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain about a missed check. He gave a Europe-bashing speech to a private dinner at Davos so offensive that Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, walked out.
And in Congressional testimony today, Lutnick admitted that he visited Epstein Island, but said that he did so with his wife, nannies and children, and asserted that “We left with all of my children.”
It would be tempting to dismiss Lutnick as a buffoon. Yet despite his intelligence deficit, he sits at the intersection of not one but at least two ugly conspiracies.
Before joining Trump’s cabinet, Lutnick ran the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald — presenting a huge potential conflict of interest that he claims to have ended by turning the business over to … his sons. Cantor Fitzgerald, in turn, is intimately linked to Tether, a cryptocurrency that is highly profitable because it has become a favorite channel for money-laundering by international criminals.
Nor was money-laundering through cryptocurrency the only criminal conspiracy to which Lutnick was, at the very least, adjacent. Lutnick has in the past vehemently denied having any association with Jeffrey Epstein, insisting that he severed all contact with the pedophile ringleader in 2005. But even the highly limited, extremely redacted release of the Epstein files — everything we’ve seen reeks of a major coverup — shows that he was flat-out lying. Not only did he stay in close contact with Epstein, the two men appear to have gone into business together.
But, at this point, who could possibly be surprised? The more we learn, the more pedophilia and criminal use of cryptocurrency look related, even like different aspects of a single conspiracy. Epstein, it turns out, was a major early investor in the crypto industry. In the backrooms of MAGA-land, passing around under-age girls is a lot like passing around insider crypto deals.
In any previous administration, Lutnick’s naked conflicts of interest and his Epstein lies would have led to his immediate departure. But Trump 47 is using his position to massively enrich himself, and whatever the Justice department is hiding, what we already know about Trump’s personal history is damning — “Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Lutnick may be under wraps for a while, but don’t expect him to resign. Pushing him out would be a tacit admission that huge conflicts of interest, family business that enables crime and association with sexual predators are bad. Oh, and let’s not forget jaw-dropping stupidity. Not going to happen.
While MAGA-world’s fantasy villains like George Soros are brilliant and subtle, MAGA’s real villains are uncouth and dim-witted. Yet they carry out their sinister schemes in broad daylight. For all they need to flourish is utter shamelessness, along with the backing of a corrupt administration and a corrupt political party.
So it’s worth remembering Hannah Arendt’s observations about the architects of Hitler’s genocide, which led her to coin the phrase “the banality of evil”. As Arendt noted, the horrors of Nazism were not inflicted by brilliant geniuses, but through the normalization of thoughtless, amoral behavior that eventually turned into evil. Thus while Lutnick appears on the surface like a dim-witted backroom grifter, he is a warning of something far more sinister and malign lurking below.
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