People gather near the Lincoln Memorial during a "No Kings" protest as part of a nationwide day of action aimed at encouraging early voting ahead of the midterm elections, in Washington, DC, US, October 17, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Heuer TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Mary Trump revealed Friday that she feared federal agents would turn up at the polls on Election Day, and was elated to find that instead, voters buried her uncle’s party.
The president’s niece, a clinical psychologist and one of his harshest critics, described the whiplash in a conversation with journalist Steven Beschloss published on her Substack.
“I was very worried about ICE showing up at the polls. I was worried about potential voter intimidation leading to violence,” she said.
Those fears had been building for weeks, with a federal judge blasting ICE for keeping its records on a possible polling place surge under wraps until after the election. The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, told state election officials it was not planning immigration operations targeting polling locations.
Mary Trump said she had been confident Democrats would take the House and likely the Senate, but the win still didn’t feel real until the results came in.
Democrats won more than 250 House seats and at least 54 in the Senate, ousting at least 30 Republican incumbents on the way to their largest House majority since 2008, CNN projected.
She said that when she stepped outside after the scale of the wave became clear, it felt like walking into a new world.
Beschloss likened years of opposing Trump to Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill, and said the moment finally offered a chance to breathe.
Mary Trump cautioned against treating the night as pure celebration.
“This was a positive pro democracy victory, but it was also a repudiation, and we need to keep that in mind going forward,” she said.
She said Democrats now hold an unprecedented mandate and can tackle high costs and pursue accountability at the same time. Rep. Robert Garcia, in line to chair the House Oversight Committee, has already warned Trump’s orbit to hire lawyers. Mary Trump urged Democrats to go further and cast a wide net across Trump’s Cabinet, family and inner circle.