NEW: Trump’s Election Takeover Machine Is Targeting 2026

Heather Honey spent six months in 2021 searching Arizona ballots for bamboo fibers and hidden watermarks. The Cyber Ninjas audit she helped run became a national punchline—faulty analysis, inaccurate claims, misleading conclusions. Maricopa County officials eviscerated their work. The conspiracy collapsed under scrutiny.In August, Trump made her Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity at the Department of Homeland Security.A month later, Honey convened a conference call with election officials from nearly all 50 states. Instead of briefing them on protecting the 2026 midterms, she questioned whether DHS cybersecurity experts had overstepped by combating election misinformation. She accused the Federal Election Security Center of censorship. Officials left the call alarmed. One told reporters: “I don’t know if she’s stupid or lying.”Honey’s mentor is Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer who sat beside Trump on that infamous call pressuring Georgia officials to find votes. Mitchell now runs the Election Integrity Network, training what investigators describe as an organized cavalry of activists to embed as poll watchers and election monitors across battleground states. Recently, Mitchell floated something more audacious: Trump might invoke emergency powers to override state election authority, claiming threats to national sovereignty justify federal intervention.The Constitution forbids this. Even during declared emergencies, presidents have no authority over how states conduct elections. But constitutional limits only matter when people enforce them.Trump personally called Texas Governor Greg Abbott in August, ordering mid-decade congressional redistricting. The legislature complied, creating five new Republican-friendly districts. North Carolina passed their gerrymandered map last week, targeting Congressman Don Davis—one of only three Black representatives from a state where a third of residents are Black. Indiana Governor Mike Braun called a special session for November 3rd, making Indiana the fourth Republican state pursuing Trump’s redistricting scheme. Indiana Republicans already hold seven of nine congressional seats. They want all nine.Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears Louisiana v. Calais, designed to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. If the conservative majority rules as expected, Republicans could eliminate minority-majority districts across the South and gain 19 additional House seats, wiping out 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus in a single legal strike.Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department is sending election monitors to California and New Jersey—not to protect voting rights, but to surveil Democratic states holding crucial off-year elections on November 4th. The surveillance runs in reverse now.Then there’s Dominion. Trump spent years attacking the voting machine company, forcing them to sue Fox News for defamation. Fox paid $787 million to settle. In October, Dominion was sold to Scott Leyendecker, former Republican elections director in St. Louis. He immediately rebranded the company as Liberty Vote and promised compliance with Trump’s executive orders. The machines Republicans claimed were rigged against them now belong to Republicans.Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair Fight Action, frames the threat plainly: “We are under an autocratic onslaught at all levels.” The New York Times investigation she references shows Election Integrity Network operatives discussing how to manufacture pretenses for declaring national emergencies as far back as March. Max Flugrath, also of Fair Fight, emphasizes what too many miss: “Even in the event of some sort of national emergency being called, there is a very detailed list of powers that a president has. Any authority over how states run their elections is not one of them.”But authority and action diverge when institutions fail to hold the line. Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organization—Antifa isn’t an organization. He does and says anything that advances his agenda, normalizes the previously unthinkable, and depends on state-level sycophants to implement it.The machine operates across multiple fronts simultaneously: federal appointments of conspiracy theorists, mid-decade gerrymandering, Supreme Court cases targeting voting rights, partisan control of voting infrastructure, and systematic preparation to reject results that don’t favor Republican control. Each component reinforces the others. Together, they form something more dangerous than scattered tactics—a comprehensive system designed to ensure Trump controls Congress regardless of how Americans vote.Groh-Wargo stresses that partisan resistance alone cannot counter an autocratic threat of this scale. “To beat back this threat, we cannot just be in a partisan fight. We have to build a very, very broad coalition across ideology, across race, gender, across citizenship.” The coalition required spans beyond party politics into civil society, corporate America, higher education—anywhere capitulation currently replaces confrontation.The 2026 midterms represent the critical test. If Democrats can retake the House or Senate, constitutional checks on executive overreach might hold. If they cannot—if the election machinery Trump is installing delivers the predetermined results it’s designed to produce—the path forward darkens considerably.Fair Fight Action is organizing volunteer networks, legal challenges, and public awareness campaigns. They track developments, coordinate resistance, and build the broad coalitions necessary for sustained democratic defense. The work requires participation beyond clicking and sharing. It demands showing up, speaking out, refusing compliance with autocratic directives wherever they emerge.The coup didn’t end on January 6th. It paused, regrouped, and professionalized. Now it holds institutional power and knows exactly how to wield it. There is no time to spare. Every American should realize what’s at stake and do whatever you can legally do to stop it.Learn more and join the fight at fairfight.comThank you Ellie Leonard, Diane L. Green, Kendeth Sissy Young, Mary B, Natasha K., and many others for tuning into my live video with Max Flugrath and Rights & Insights! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe