According to Fox News senior political analyst Juan Williams, “doomsday speculation” is rampant on Capitol Hill as lawmakers from across the political spectrum watch President Donald Trump ramp up his election meddling. With Trump’s schemes pushing the country toward a full-on “constitutional crisis,” Williams says the effort “has to stop” before it destroys the American experiment.
Writing in the Hill, Williams asserts, “Trump is pushing every button with the November midterms getting closer.” With surveys showing not only that Trump is wildly unpopular, but that his party is at a major disadvantage heading into the November elections, Williams raises the words of Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who recently warned that Trump is willing to “deny the results of midterms if they do not go his way.”
Evidence of this, says Williams, is in the president’s policy priorities. Instead of passing vital security bills and affordable housing legislation, he’s proven his willingness to tank both in favor of pushing his voter ID act, which he believes will suppress Democratic voters. As a result, “Trump’s fixation with stopping a blue wave in the midterms now defines all politics.”
Williams notes that Trump has scored a number of victories to his voter suppressive ends, like “pressing Republican state legislators to draw new congressional districts to increase the number of seats likely to be won by Republicans. The Supreme Court made history by weakening the Voting Rights Act to allow some of that mid-decade redistricting. That ruling ignited racial tensions nationally by allowing white Republican state legislators to dismantle majority Black districts that vote for Democrats. Trump has also pushed the Justice Department to force states to give him access to voter registration rolls so that he can look for voters he thinks should not be allowed to vote.”
His mindset, warns Williams, has been betrayed by Trump’s own words, saying recently, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” And it’s musings like these that have lawmakers worried about a “doomsday scenario” in which “Trump will press Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to refuse to seat Democrats who would form a new House majority. That fear grows because the scenario has precedent.”
As Williams explains, “Last year, Johnson delayed the swearing-in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ.) for nearly two months after she won a special election, in order to shield the president from the release of embarrassing files about his decades-long friendship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein … Election rigging is small ball by comparison.”
In this scenario, Democrats win enough seats to take the majority, but the Speaker delays or refuses to seat members from narrowly won districts, “citing bogus allegations of voter fraud.” This fight would end up before the conservative Supreme Court, “who has already shown itself to be corrupt and serving partisan interests that protect Trump from accountability.”
To make matters worse, writes Williams, the nation “has grown accustomed to the threatening presence of Trump-controlled military and law enforcement agents in Washington, where Congress ultimately decides the disputed House elections. It is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen — the ‘sum of all fears’ that could bring the American experiment, now celebrating its 250th anniversary, to its greatest test.”
“This would all be a bad political satire if it was not so scary,” Williams concludes. “Comedian Bill Maher summed up Trump’s approach to elections during a recent interview with Vice President JD Vance: ‘Under Trump, you guys have two outcomes an election can be: Either we win, or they cheated. That s— has to stop.’ Maher is right. It has to stop.”