The Man Who Would Cancel November
Trump’s Plan to Steal the Midterms Is Already Underway
He told you what he was going to do. He always does.
On February 3rd, Donald Trump went on Dan Bongino’s podcast—the same Bongino who just quit as FBI deputy director to return to right-wing media—and said the quiet part at full volume. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.” He repeated it the next day from the Oval Office. And the day after that. The Constitution gives states the authority to run their own elections. Trump doesn’t care. He never has.
This isn’t speculation. This isn’t a warning about what might happen if we’re not careful. This is a man with the full weight of the federal government behind him, describing in plain language his intention to override the constitutional machinery of self-governance because his party is about to get hammered at the polls. A Quinnipiac poll this month puts his approval at 37%. Democrats just flipped a Louisiana state house seat by 23 points in a district Trump carried by 13. The political winds are turning, and PrumpTutin smells it.
So the operation is already in motion.
On January 28th, the FBI raided a Fulton County, Georgia election warehouse and seized roughly 700 boxes of ballots and election materials from the 2020 presidential election. Six years old. Already audited. Already litigated. Already settled in every court that looked at them. Didn’t matter. Trump personally ordered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to fly to Atlanta and oversee the operation. She showed up at the warehouse, pulled out her cell phone, and connected Trump directly to the FBI agents on the ground so he could thank them for their service. The president of the United States was on speakerphone, personally inserted himself into a raid on a county election office.
Let that settle.
An NPR analysis of the FBI affidavit used to justify the seizure found that investigators omitted key findings from prior state investigations that had already debunked the fraud claims. The affidavit included no evidence of foreign election interference, which makes Gabbard’s presence—the nation’s top intelligence official, who has no domestic law enforcement authority—all the more suspicious. Fulton County filed suit in federal court demanding the ballots back. Their commission chair, Robb Pitts, put it simply: “We don’t know where they are. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know what they’re doing with them.”
The Brennan Center called it what it is: a practice run. If the FBI can seize 2020 ballots under the guise of a fraud investigation built on debunked claims, there is nothing stopping them from doing the same thing while 2026 votes are being counted. Trump tried to order this exact move after the 2020 election. His attorney general refused. This attorney general won’t.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon—the bloated architect of MAGA’s id—went on his War Room podcast and laid out the next phase: “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.” Not enough, he said. He wants the 82nd and 101st Airborne deployed to polling places under the Insurrection Act. Paratroopers at your voting precinct. Armed federal agents checking your papers. I’ve been voting since Eisenhower. Thirteen presidents. Not once did I walk into a polling place and see a uniform. If Bannon gets his way, your kids will.
The White House’s response was carefully calibrated to be useless. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she hadn’t heard the president discuss formal plans to put ICE at polling locations. Then she added, “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November.” That’s not a denial. That’s a door left open.
The infrastructure for this has been building since the first week of Trump’s second term. In March 2025, he signed an executive order demanding states hand over their voter rolls to federal officials. Three federal courts blocked key provisions—because the Constitution gives Congress and the states authority over elections, not the president. The administration gutted CISA, the cybersecurity agency that safeguarded election security, after its former director had the nerve to confirm the 2020 election was legitimate. They installed Heather Honey, an election conspiracy theorist, as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at DHS. One election official compared it to putting a flat-earther in charge of NASA.
And it goes beyond bureaucratic sabotage. Trump’s Justice Department has been suing states to obtain unredacted voter rolls. His allies in Project 2025 sketched out precisely this kind of federal election takeover years ago. The Heritage Foundation drew the blueprint. Trump is building the house.
Even some Republicans are uncomfortable. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina—no one’s idea of a liberal—said nationalizing elections and “picking 15 states seems a little off strategy.” Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia who watched Trump try to steal his state in 2020, left the party entirely. He’s running for governor as a Democrat now. “Donald Trump is showing us the playbook,” Duncan said. “If enough Americans don’t get what he’s saying seriously, then we’re going to have a huge issue on our hands.”
Here is where we are. The president of the United States is openly calling for the federal government to seize control of state elections. His FBI has already raided a county election office and confiscated ballots. His allies are calling for armed federal agents at polling places. His administration has dismantled the federal infrastructure designed to protect election security. And his approval rating is in the basement, which means the midterms are the one thing standing between him and unchecked power for the next two years.
He will not go quietly. He never does. He told you that, too.
The question is whether the rest of us are listening. Because the Constitution is just a piece of paper if nobody enforces it. And right now, the people who swore to defend it are the ones setting it on fire.
If this landed, send it to one person who needs to read it.
