January 29, 2026

Donald Trump recently told a group of New York Times reporters that he “should have” used the military in 2020 “to seize election boxes.” Yesterday, he made up for that earlier regret.

Around midday, the Department of Justice raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office and seized ballots and other materials related to that election. The raid followed a failed attempt to have a federal judge order the materials turned over as part of a civil case. 

None of this is a coincidence. It is a strategic effort to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 election. Never mind that Georgia conducted two full recounts — one by machine and another by hand. 

Forget the fact that Trump and his allies filed, and lost, eight cases aimed at throwing out the results. In Trump’s mind, the facts are irrelevant. He is only concerned with his false narrative that he was the victim in 2020.

It would be easy to dismiss this as just another example of Trump’s deranged obsession with 2020. But I fear it is far more serious than that.

At a minimum, it represents a further weaponization of the DOJ against his political enemies. The government obtained a search warrant listing specific federal crimes that a partisan U.S. attorney in Missouri is apparently investigating. 

We don’t yet know who the target of the investigation is, but we can expect it will be aimed at inflicting maximum damage.

Nor is there any doubt about Trump’s involvement in this effort to bolster his election denialism. Last week in Davos, he pointed directly to what he was doing:

“The 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”

He was right: Trump’s false and dangerous remarks should have been breaking news, but the legacy media failed to treat them as such. Nor were they particularly alarmed by yesterday’s search warrant.

I expected banner headlines. I assumed this would top the evening news. I watched for a flood of statements of condemnation from across the political and civil landscape.

None of those things happened. Yes, there was some press coverage. It was mentioned on cable TV. And a handful of politicians — all Democrats — denounced it. But outside of Georgia and a narrow band of democracy advocates, it was largely treated as just another current in Donald Trump’s strategy to flood the zone.

This has me deeply worried. I am left asking whether we have simply stopped caring enough about the truth to bother pushing back against Trump’s constant election lies. Has Trump worn so many people down that there just isn’t the energy to muster the necessary level of outrage and concern?

Most importantly, I am concerned about what this means for free and fair elections in 2026. 

In addition to his comments about seizing ballot boxes and predicting criminal prosecutions, Trump recently made another ominous statement that gives away his game plan for 2026: “When you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms. We shouldn’t even have an election.”

Usually, I am a strong believer in taking Trump seriously and literally. This is a rare instance where that is not the case. He is not in a position to cancel the midterms. Our elections are run by states, not the federal government, so the president is powerless to cancel them.

However, as we have seen, Trump can prosecute his political opponents, including Democratic candidates and their most important allies. And, as we learned in Georgia, he can use the power of the federal government to seize ballots. 

While this may not cancel an election, sidelining opposition campaigns and taking control of vote counting is a distinction without any practical difference.

That is why the events in Georgia are so dangerous. If Trump can use the DOJ to seize ballots from a 2020 election office, he will believe he can do the same everywhere in the country in 2026.

With Supreme Court-conferred immunity and a GOP-controlled Congress, the question we must confront is this: Who is going to stop him? There are only two roadblocks standing between Trump and outright election theft: the states and the courts.

States need to forcefully stake out their ground as the bodies constitutionally entitled to count ballots and certify elections. They must resist any effort by the federal executive branch to hinder them in performing this constitutional function.

Courts must do their part as well. In addition to supporting the rights of states to run elections — including counting ballots — without federal interference, they must treat executive branch intrusion into elections with great skepticism.

While we don’t yet know what was presented to the magistrate judge who approved the Fulton County search warrant, recent experience shows the possibility that it contained misstatements. Judges cannot act as rubber stamps when approving government interference in our elections.

This is not to say that voters do not also have a critical role to play. Strong voter turnout makes stealing elections more difficult. An attentive public makes it harder still.

But we cannot wait until the final weeks of a campaign to build the infrastructure needed to withstand what may be coming. The time to prioritize free and fair elections is now.