Trump is terrified. And his reaction will threaten US democracy ...Middle East

A deeply unpopular US President with a dangerous disregard for the rules of democracy and a determination to prevent his opponents from taking power on Capitol Hill. Welcome to the 2026 US midterms.

For Donald Trump, the stakes are high and the margins small. For the US, the November election could easily become a flashpoint, settled not just at the polls but, afterwards, in the courts and streets.

Some fear a breakdown of democracy, with violent potentialities. The talk, not unreasonably, is of “nightmare” and even “doomsday scenarios”.

To win back control of the House of Representatives, the Democrats need a net gain of three seats. History suggests this should be something of a formality. In the 20 midterm congressional elections since the Second World War, the party of the sitting president has suffered setbacks in eighteen.

The two exceptions came in 2002, when former president George W Bush’s Republican Party experienced a patriotic bounce after the attacks of 9/11, and in 1998, when former president Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party rebounded after revelations of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky threatened to bring down his presidency.

Commonly, though, the opposition party wins more than three additional seats. In the 2018 elections, midway through Trump’s first term, the Democrats made a net gain of forty.

In the Senate, where only a third of seats are contested, the Democrats need a gain of four to win back the majority. That, however, is more of an uphill task. Target seats up for grabs are in red states won in 2024 by Trump. Maine is the only state that voted for former vice president Kamala Harris, where the Republicans are defending.

The Democrats need to retain seats in Georgia, presently held by Senator Jon Ossoff, a rising star spoken of as a future presidential nominee, and Michigan, where the Democratic incumbent is stepping down. Both battleground states voted for Trump in 2024.

As for the stakes, if the Democrats control the House, they can block the President’s legislative agenda and exercise more oversight over the Trump administration. We could expect Trump loyalists to be grilled more frequently and aggressively in congressional hearings.

Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, among others, could expect their feet to be held closer to the fire.

Doubtless, the Democrats would also investigate how the Trump family has allegedly profited from Trump 2.0, what the New Yorker estimates to be a $4bn (£3bn) windfall.

With a majority, House Democrats could move to impeach Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanours”, which would be the third time he has faced those charges. To convict and remove a president from office, however, requires a two-thirds majority at the conclusion of a Senate trial, a threshold never once reached in US history.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the democratic process. The attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021, when his supporters sought to overthrow the result of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Trump, became one of the darkest days in US history.

Even when Trump won in 2016, he mounted an investigation into the outcome because he did not believe his opponent, Hillary Clinton, had amassed almost three million more overall votes. Both in 2016 and 2020, no evidence was found of significant electoral fraud.

Trump’s assault on democracy ahead of these midterms is already in motion, with a series of pre-emptive strikes.

At his urging, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature has gerrymandered congressional boundaries with the aim of winning five additional seats – prompting Democratic-controlled California to respond in kind.

Trump has also spoken of nationalising the elections, to exert more control from Washington, even though the US Constitution says states should administer elections.

Trump’s Department of Justice, since midway last year, has been pressuring Democratic-controlled states to share sensitive voter information, including copies of voter registration lists and ballots from previous elections, and to grant access to voting equipment. Understandably, this kind of federal meddling has raised alarm.

Some also fear that Trump will deploy immigration agents close to polling stations in heavily Latino areas, to deter them from voting. Last week, Noem, whose department oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), spoke of safeguarding elections “to make sure we have the right people voting in the right leaders”. Her comments were immediately seized upon by Democrats as proof of sinister intent.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act this month, which would require “documentary proof of United States citizenship” to register to vote.

Opponents view SAVE as an attempt to engineer voter suppression on an industrial scale. The Campaign Legal Center, a democracy advocacy group, estimates more than 21 million Americans do not have access to the additional documentation that the act would demand.

The bill is expected to be rejected in the Senate, where Democrats have enough votes to block it.

A recent FBI raid on a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, where ballots from the 2020 election were being stored, could be a portent of things to come.

At first blush, the Georgia raid seemed part of the President’s fixation on his 2020 defeat to Biden. It was after losing this key battleground state that Trump placed his notorious call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the result.

Perhaps, though, we were watching a dress rehearsal for what might happen after the 2026 midterms: Trump could deploy federal agents, or even the military, to seize ballots on the pretext of election fraud, the “Big Lie” 2.0.

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Republicans tend to vote on election day, while Democrats generally make more use of postal voting, which takes longer to count. Trump might try to shut down counting in close seats after Republican candidates have taken an early lead.

That would take us into the nightmare and doomsday scenarios. Protesters are converging on counting centres to protect the sanctity of the ballot. Clashes with federal agents or troops executing the President’s orders. In these kinds of showdowns, blood could easily be shed.

Arguably, US democracy faces its most dangerous stress test since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Back then, he was a defeated candidate with waning power. In November, he will be the President with almost three years left in office, likely determined to exert maximum executive authority to prevent the House and the Senate from falling into his opponents’ hands.

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