Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Since day one of the second Trump presidency, our nation has been rocked by one of the most outrageous power grabs in American history. On his first day in office, the president issued a raft of executive orders slashing federal funding, shutting down entire departments, approving DOGE invasions of government offices, and ordering ICE arrests—muggings—of immigrants, many of them U.S. citizens. These moves have not only stunned Americans with their audaciousness but have shamed and angered us with their illegality and cruelty.
The recent arrogant and outrageous Republican power grab has occurred—unsurprisingly—in Texas. Everything’s bigger in Texas–even the bullshit—and apparently the greed. At the behest of President Donald J. Trump, the Republican majority in the Texas State Legislature—with the support of Governor Greg Abbott—decided to break with traditional protocol and redraw their electoral maps. This is something that is typically done every ten years, after the national census has been completed, which makes sense. Since censuses detail population growths, declines, or shifts, it’s logical that voting districts be redrawn so that constituents might be more fairly represented.
But the Trump administration is not here to make sense—or to do the right thing. The administration collaborated with Texas Republicans to redraw (or gerrymander) the maps immediately in such a way that five more Republican districts would be created.
It’s not just that this is outright cheating; what’s truly shocking is that no one in charge of it seems to care that it’s illegal, unethical, and uncalled for. The governor is in on it. The Texas State Legislature is in on it. It’s as if Texas is saying, “Yep, we’re stealing the election. Try and stop us. Go ahead. Make my day.”
Texas democrats did try to stop the Republican majority, or at least to slow them down. They took off to parts unknown before the vote, denying Republicans the quorum they needed to pass the nakedly partisan bill; however, after Governor Abbott called a second special session to vote on the bill, the Democrats returned. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the bill would pass, and that the proud state of Texas would join the Hall of Shame for American All-Stars in election-rigging.
This is just the beginning. Other states like Ohio and Florida are considering redrawing their district maps. The president and the misguided Republican Party have realized that the draconian policies of this administration are deeply unpopular with the American people and might result in an ouster of the GOP in Congress. According to a Pew Research Poll from early August, a strong majority of respondents disagree with the president on foreign policy, the economy, his handling of the Epstein files, and his treatment of our European allies. Sixty percent disapprove of his performance as president. A bare thirty percent—or less—approve of him as president.
Looking at those numbers and their prospects for the 2026 midterms, Republicans realized they had to do something before the 2026 midterm elections. So, they’ve decided to cheat. And they’ve only just begun with the Texas redistricting debacle.
The president is reportedly preparing to issue an executive order prohibiting mail-in voting, which would require seniors, rural residents, and the homebound to physically make their way to the polls to vote. Whether or not this is legal (elections are by law administered by the states) seems to be of little concern to Mr. Trump, which is hardly surprising. When has he ever shown any sort of regard or respect for the law?
A third tack to ensure Republican victories in the midterms is restricting voter rolls. This is an old trick—popular in the days of the KKK in the days of Reconstruction—that our present-day racists Republicans attempted to do in a number of swing states last November. Poll testing, poll taxes, and intimidation kept African American populations away from the voting booth for decades. The Republican Party has been modernizing these techniques. The recent use of these tactics in the 2020 and 2022 elections is outlined in the article Smash and Grab. Heather Cox Richardson details how this shameful thread in American history has evolved in her latest column.
The Republicans will use any pretext to exclude opposition voters. It seems as if governmental departments like the IRS will be sharing personal citizen information with some state elections boards; they will be seeking to dispute citizenship and thereby drop certain demographic groups from the voting rolls.
All of this is, of course, usurping the voice of the people, which Trump and the GOP, in their quest for unilateral control of our democracy, don’t give a damn about. They know full well that claims of election fraud are false.
Republicans whined and complained about election fraud, faulty voting machines, and cheating during the 2020 presidential election. Even though there was no evidence of wrongdoing of any kind, the Trump machine never stopped trying to coerce state election boards. On January 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and attempted to coerce him into “finding” the 11,000 votes he need to overturn Biden’s victory. To his credit, Mr. Raffensperger refused.
The Trump administration also tried to submit fraudulent certificates of election from seven states (TrumpFakeElectorsPlot), with the intention that Vice-President Mike Pence would reject the genuine certification in favor of Trump’s false documentation. To his credit, the vice-president refused to endorse the fake documents.
Of course, as has been comprehensively documented, unable to accept his loss to Joe Biden, Donald Trump instigated a riot at the Capitol Building with the intention of stealing the election—of executing a coup d’etat which was in the end foiled by Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with the plot. A number of rioters and Capitol Police officers lost their lives as a result of Trump’s power grab.
Somehow, astoundingly, President Trump evaded criminal prosecution. He somehow got himself reelected.
And now, with abysmally low polling numbers, Trump and his pet Republicans are worried about losing the 2026 midterms. And with good reason. Dozens of Republican representatives and senators have returned home to face jeering crowds of their constituents, worried about rising prices, Medicaid cuts, Trump’s absurd tariff policies, DOGE, and many, many other issues. Some of these Republicans, like Wisconsin’s Derick Van Orden, refuse to face their electorates at all. Will these politicians change their message or policies in order to appease their constituencies? No. They will cheat. They’ve done it before. They’ve done it since January 6th, 2021, and they’ll do it again.
They’re doing it in Texas, and unlike the 2021 fake electors plot or the Trump coup, they’re not even bothering to hide their complicity in Trump’s criminality. They don’t care if everyone knows they’re stealing the election.
The only votes being stolen will be those of the American people. Those who will be unfairly represented, prevented from voting, or coerced into staying home, those whose votes will never count will be the victims of election theft—and identity theft. Judging from their recent victory, it seems obvious that the Trump administration will stop at nothing, not lies, not violence, not coercion, not false imprisonment, not fraud, and not human life—to attain their twisted ambitions. We may not be as lucky as we were on January 6th, 2021.
Notes
- https://geoffreymalcolmcarter.com/2021/12/09/smash-and-grab/
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-criminal-probe-trumps-efforts-overturn-georgia-election/story?id=98504895
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
- https://www.syracuse.com/politics/2025/08/trump-approval-rating-tumbles-in-new-poll-see-how-much-it-fell.html
- https://substack.com/home/post/p-171535981