{"id":514,"date":"2026-07-28T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2026-07-28T14:38:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:38:00","slug":"yes-trump-will-attempt-a-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Free and fair elections this November should produce a Democratic wave, mass repudiation of Trump, and the possibility of a new impeachment. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that Trump has only one strategy for averting that fate: stealing the 2026 midterm election. He can\u2019t seem to deliver a speech without returning to his obsession that he actually won the 2020 election, most recently in a prime-time address filled with false evidence of supposed foreign interference.<\/p>\n

Read more ICE Finds New Ways to Expand Detention<\/a><\/p>\n

On January 6, 2021, Trump attempted to stage a coup and he will surely try again. Last time, only the integrity of a handful of Republican officials spared the Republic that fate. Georgia\u2019s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebuffed Trump\u2019s demand to find exactly 11,780 votes, and Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with Trump\u2019s scheme, laid out in detail by John Eastman, to refuse to certify the results.<\/p>\n

This time, Trump is relying on four possible strategies to steal the election. The survival of our democracy depends on whether each of them can be foiled, and how.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first is to use executive orders and directives to gain control of voter rolls, which will then be purged using commercial databases that are rife with errors.\u00a0 These demands were spelled out in detail in Trump\u2019s executive order of March 31. The order also required the U.S. Postal Service to deny mail balloting to states that did not comply with Trump directives.<\/p>\n

This ploy has been complemented by threats from other Trump officials. Earlier this month, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened local election officials with prison time if they did not comply with Trump demands. But as I wrote in this piece, so far the courts have consistently blocked every single Trump effort to take over elections. Just last Saturday, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit blocked the Trump administration\u2019s effort to move forward with mail-in voting restrictions in 23 states\u00a0that sued\u00a0ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s second strategy is to somehow get Congress to pass his SAVE America Act, which could require proof of citizenship and photo ID for people to register and vote, and otherwise turn control of elections over to the federal executive. Trump has been willing to hold hostage one important legislative objective after another to try to compel Congress to pass this legislation. He has tied its passage to\u00a0the renewal\u00a0of a foreign surveillance law that expired last month, and\u00a0refused to sign\u00a0a bipartisan housing policy bill. The housing measure\u00a0went into law without his signature.<\/p>\n

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Read: The SAVE Act comes for everything<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The SAVE America Act has passed the House but is dead in the Senate. As Senate Majority Leader John Thune keeps telling Trump, the votes are simply not there. The House stuck a mini-SAVE in a budget bill that can be passed without Democratic votes, but Senate rules may disqualify it and Thune doesn\u2019t want to pass that bill at all, because it would force his vulnerable members to take a series of unpopular votes, as my colleague David Dayen explained.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to the November elections, the focus will shift to strategy number three: voter suppression, intimidation, and election disruption, both before and on Election Day. Democratic state attorneys general have been having regular \u201ctabletop\u201d exercises to anticipate Trump tactics and counter them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if the FBI showed up to a polling place, demanding election materials or equipment? Suppose federal troops or ICE agents were deployed to intimidate voters or disrupt the election? What if Trump declared a national emergency? Attorneys general have been working with secretaries of state to anticipate and block these and other tactics.<\/p>\n

One valuable memo has just been circulated by Doran Schrantz, the former executive director of the Minnesota ecumenical progressive group ISAIAH, and\u00a0one of the most savvy on-the-ground organizers in the progressive movement. Her memo, titled \u201cAct Free to Be Free: A State and Local Pro-Democracy Framework,\u201d summarizes all the possible Trump tactics, and strategies for anticipating and countering them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She calls for \u201cmapping the actual machinery of election administration,\u201d finding the vulnerabilities, and \u201cdeploying organized people into the specific vulnerable spaces (county board meetings, legislative hearings, certification processes) well before November. The job is to pre-position the case against their power grab by naming their strategy in public, making it transparent, and going on offense.\u201d The rapid response mechanisms, Schrantz writes, need to be political, legal, media, operational, and above all, organized, with massive grassroots deployment of large numbers of well-prepared citizens. The entire memo is worth a careful reading.<\/p>\n

Read more Frederick Douglass: Indefatigable American<\/a><\/p>\n

The most alarming Trump tactic would be an echo of January 6, 2021: an effort to stage a coup by overturning the results. The Constitution provides in Article I, Section 5 that each house of Congress is the sole judge of its membership. But actual election results are certified by the states. Courts have repeatedly held that such certification is mandatory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The process and legal requirements published by four legal defense-of-democracy groups, led by the Brennan Center. If a cabal of Republican secretaries of state or governors tried to stall or overturn actual results, the courts would quickly intervene. Only in the cases of extremely close elections, within a state\u2019s legitimate rules for a recount, could certification be legitimately delayed.<\/p>\n

Wendy Weiser, vice president of the Brennan Center, told me, \u201cAcross all states, certifying election results is a mandatory duty. If an official improperly delays or refuses to sign off on the results, state officials and courts can step in to compel certification. Every attempt to refuse certification since the modern election denier movement began has been unsuccessful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But a more sinister scenario was posed in a widely circulated article last week by New<\/em> York Times<\/em> columnist David French, an anti-Trump conservative who is also a lawyer. French points out that the process for contesting an election to the House is governed by the\u00a0Federal Contested Elections Act\u00a0of 1969. Under that act, a losing candidate has 30 days after certification by a state to challenge the certification, and the challenge is ultimately decided by a simple majority vote of the respective chamber.\u00a0<\/p>\n

French poses a coup scenario, in which \u201ceven\u00a0if Democrats win a House majority after all the votes are counted this fall, one or more defeated Republican candidates could try to persuade the lame-duck Republican majority not to permit their Democratic opponents to take office while the challenge is pending.\u201d The incoming House would subsequently be flipped from majority Democratic to majority Republican. Because the Constitution is clear that each house is the sole judge of its membership, the courts could not intervene.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written about this risk, and something about French\u2019s column struck me as off. I double checked, and confirmed that it is the new incoming Congress, not the lame-duck Congress (which expires on January 3) that certifies the new membership. I triple checked with Brennan\u2019s Wendy Weiser, and she confirmed my finding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Read: The 2026 Elections: Resisting the rigging<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I emailed French, he also confirmed my reading of the law, but said that he was posing this scenario because the challenge process begins in the old Congress and that Republicans might try to act under \u201cbad-faith readings of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if dozens of losing Republican candidates, in a coordinated effort, claimed that they had really won, the usual judicial deference to the political process might well not apply. Courts would likely step in to uphold state certifications, and the duly elected new Congress would be seated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If this Republic survives, it will take a combination of citizen mobilization and vigilant courts that have increasingly lost patience with Trump\u2019s efforts to govern as a dictator.<\/p>\n

Read more The Strongest El Ni\u00f1o in History Is Coming. Get Ready.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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If we are vigilant, he won\u2019t pull it off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-tagged-donald-trump-election-2026-elections-john-thune-save-america-act-state-ags-u-s-constitution"],"yoast_head":"\nYes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup - Frontier Housing Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=514\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup - Frontier Housing Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If we are vigilant, he won\u2019t pull it off.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=514\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Frontier Housing Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-28T14:38:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/13a8c63a4bd3b73600b541c1532fc247\"},\"headline\":\"Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-28T14:38:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514\"},\"wordCount\":1320,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/66af3b3d295bb56ea632daafd0e52404.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Tagged: Donald Trump,\u00a0Election 2026,\u00a0Elections,\u00a0John Thune,\u00a0SAVE America Act,\u00a0state AGs,\u00a0U.S. Constitution\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/frontierhousingreport.com\\\/?p=514\",\"name\":\"Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup - 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