Constitutional lawyer and writer David French issued a bleak warning Sunday over what he argued were clear signs of President Donald Trump’s plan to “unlawfully influence” the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.
“A president who doesn’t care about the law, who commands an obedient Congress and is supported by a radicalized base of tens of millions of people who believe his lies, represents a threat to the next election,” French wrote in an op-ed published Sunday in The New York Times. “I fear that millions of citizens are still too complacent. They aren’t aware of the peril we face.”
French cited historical precedent for his concern, pointing to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that was fueled in part by Trump’s repeated false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.” More troubling still, French argued, were more recent developments that he described as clear indications Trump is attempting to “engineer the outcomes he seeks” in the upcoming election.
For instance, the FBI’s recent raid on a Georgia election center has raised alarms given the involvement of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence.
Trump’s mass deportation operations across the country – which have been documented for racially profiling suspects – could also suppress voter turnout by instilling fear among nonwhite Americans and discouraging them from leaving their homes or workplaces, French argued.
Trump has also continued to perpetuate his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” including with a recent social media post that suggested Italian satellites had hacked into American voting machines to change votes for Trump to former President Joe Biden.
Taken together, French warned that not enough Americans had confronted the possibility that Trump may very well shape the upcoming election results to his own liking.
“You may realize that Trump can unlawfully influence an election without explicitly rigging the count. By deterring his enemies from coming to the polls, he can engineer the outcomes he seeks,” French wrote.
“So consider this to be something like a fire drill. It’s an alarm, one of thousands that should be ringing across the country. MAGA’s acts of aggression are already intimidating. Trump isn’t just trying to ‘stop the steal’ again; another kind of theft might already be underway.”