Looking Forward To Wednesday

🚨 JAMIE RASKIN SENDS A MESSAGE ahead of the midterms: “There's no power to shut down the election.” “There is no power just to come in and seize ballots. There's no statute that permits that.” Raskin explains why state election officials are preparing to defend the vote against potential federal interference.

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 31, 2026

JAMIE RASKIN SENDS A MESSAGE ahead of the midterms:

“There's no power to shut down the election.”

“There is no power just to come in and seize ballots. There's no statute that permits that.”

Raskin explains why state election officials are preparing to defend the vote against potential federal interference.

🚨 Rep. Jim Himes reveals lawmakers have WAR-GAMED a scenario in which Trump claims Russia or Iran hacked the midterms, then orders federal agents to seize voting machines. Himes says they've prepared for exactly this kind of potential Election Day interference. https://t.co/5zfM3VglUD

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 31, 2026

There is no road to the seizure of election rolls, ballots, machines, what have you, that doesn’t run through the courts. 

Declaring “national security” is not a declaration of martial law, mainly because you can’t do that under the constitution (and thereby suspend both Congress and the courts). So it’s not a “King’s ‘X’ that lets the POTUS do as he pleases. Trump may tell federal agents to seize machines, but the actual act will violate state laws in every state, and those crimes can’t be pardoned by the POTUS. And his claimed authority will be challenged in almost 50 states at once. So, again, a non-starter.

All roads after Tuesday lead to the courts. That’s how we resolve these issues. Period. Lawyers and law makers should run table top simulations to prepare strategies, but Trump sending in ICE agents on his own authority will just provoke conflict with state police authorities. The President has no role in Congressional elections. He can’t challenge them en masse; he certainly can’t seize voting records en masse. The very demand of the DOJ of states to preserve those records (already required by law), cuts against any claim of emergency. The records aren’t going anywhere. And without evidence of actual falsification of results in specific races (not just a hand waving “We know Iran did something!”), Trump won’t get any further than he did in 2020.

And all of that had to go through the courts, too.

Besides, Trump already did this in Fulton, Georgia. (And no, he won’t be able to get hundreds of search warrants nationwide. Those would be challenged, too.) If they found anything, they never revealed it. And the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona went looking for more votes for Trump, and just ended up finding more votes for Biden.

Trump can’t do shit to prevent the election of a new Congress.