Trump could order Mike Johnson to plunge Congress 'into chaos' if GOP loss likely: analyst
President Donald Trump is reportedly petrified of losing his Republican majority in the House next year, which could set the stage for Democrats to once again investigate his scandals and possibly line up another impeachment — but there might be one particular, last-ditch tool he could use to try to upend any loss, warned Ari Berman for Mother Jones.
For the most part, Trump has already tipped his hand about much of his strategy to try to head off GOP losses, including rigging congressional districts in Republican-controlled states and attempting to prohibit mail-in voting.
But there's another strategy he could use if it looks like he could actually lose the election, Berman wrote — the same gambit to block election certification he tried when he lost in 2020. Only there's a simpler legal path for him to do so.
"Imagine this scenario: control of the House isn’t called on election night 2026," wrote Berman. "The balance of power depends on one or more close races in California, which can take weeks to count votes. Trump alleges widespread fraud, making spurious claims about post-election 'vote dumps' and noncitizens voting. The president pressures Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — who voted against certifying the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2020 and supported a lawsuit to overturn that presidential election in four battleground states — not to seat any Democrats in disputed elections."
In this case, he continued, Johnson, unlike former Vice President Mike Pence who didn't go along with the scheme, "persuades the House, while it is still under GOP control before the next speaker is chosen, to block members of California’s delegation, plunging the body into chaos."
This isn't too far-fetched, he said, because the Federal Contested Elections Act of 1969 allows congressional candidates to make challenges, and a number of congressional races have been contested throughout history — often for malicious reasons: "In the volatile period after the Civil War, when Reconstruction was violently overthrown and Jim Crow established in the South, white members of Congress repeatedly overturned the elections of Black members."
In other words, the analysis concluded, "Johnson and his allies could attempt to prevent or override state-level certification of a member and declare their own winner." But he won't be doing so unchallenged: "there is also a broad coalition of lawyers, pro-democracy groups, election officials, and state leaders preparing to fight back, whether in the courtroom, at the ballot box, or on the streets."