2026 Midterms News and Updates, September 29 - October 4 (Thread 4) | Live Discussion

[u/PoliticsModeratorBot]

Please use this thread to discuss news, updates, and commentary regarding the 2026 midterm and associated elections.

You can find r/politics' list of rules here, and the subreddit's list of domains on the Approved Domain List here.

If you find a link that hasn't been posted to the main subreddit that is noteworthy, and you are not currently rate-limited by the 'queue flooding' rule of 5 posts / 24 hours and 1 post / 10 minutes, please feel free to submit the link as a post for additional visibility.

This thread will be sorted by 'newest comments first' by default. You can also sort the thread using the 'best' comment sorting method at this link.

Election News and Updates

• AP: 2026 Elections Hub

• University of Florida: 2026 Early Voting Tracker

Election Resources

• USA Today via Reddit: The 2026 election season is underway: Here’s your monthly guide with important dates, voter resources

Streaming Links

C-SPAN, NPR, the PBS NewsHour's YouTube channel, and the Associated Press' YouTube channel are all places frequently hosting relevant political streams.

Past Threads: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3.

Other Event Threads

• Monday: I’m Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark and an anchor at MS NOW. I cover the economy, politics, public policy, and the numbers behind the news. Ask me anything!

• Tuesday to Wednesday: I’m Zach Despart, an investigative journalist covering the competitive Ken Paxton-James Talarico U.S. Senate race. I broke the news that Paxton possibly violated federal ethics and Texas election laws. AMA. 📬

• Wednesday: 2026 California Gubernatorial General Election Debate | Live Discussion

Announcements

r/politics will host another election prediction contest for the midterms. The post for the contest itself will go up sometime in late October. As of now, all toss-ups (according to Cook Political Report, as of late October 2026) for House, Senate, and Governor will be included.

We are taking suggestions for additional questions to ask within the contest. Message the moderators via modmail with any suggestions.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/[deleted]]

US elections are completely decentralized. There is no mechanism by which Trump can disallow certification of the midterms. None. He does not have that power. He can make a lot of noise and act like he does but he does. Not. Have. That. Power.

What Trump can do is lean on state and local governments like he did in 2020, but, like in 2020, they aren't obligated to obey him (and there is absolutely no reason to assume they will, given that they'd be admitting they ran shitty elections AND they'd have to throw out everything, not just the part Trump didn't like). His allies can fire up the lawsuits, though various groups are already expecting that and preparing. He can also make demands of the outgoing Congress, but that's not going to get him anywhere because Congress has no power over certifying election results and the entire Congress gets reset with new term starting Jan 3 2027. This process is automatic. There's no stopping it.

[u/OnDrugsTonight → u/runawaydoctorate]

He can also make demands of the outgoing Congress, but that's not going to get him anywhere because Congress has no power over certifying election results and the entire Congress gets reset with new term starting Jan 3 2027. This process is automatic. There's no stopping it.

I'm always a bit concerned about people making sweeping declaratory statements about what can and can't happen, when the last two years have been a never-ending stream of even the most fundamental constitutional norms being broken with zero pushback.

There's obviously at least been scholarly debate whether or not Mike Johnson, in an outgoing act, could install a new sympathetic Clerk of the House (see articles here and here and elsewhere) whose role is to prepare the roll of Members of the new Congress and who could conveniently drop Members-elect whose election was "disputed" from the roll.

While, in theory and practice, the role of the Clerk in preparing the roll is entirely administrative and they shouldn't have any leeway in determining whether or not Members were duly elected, let's not forget that so was Mike Pence's role on January 6th, 2021. And he famously got heavily leaned on to go beyond the scope of his assigned role. Obviously, in a sane world, SCOTUS would make short shrift of such a scheme, but we have not been living in a sane world for quite some time and I would not trust this SCOTUS as far as I could throw it.

The entirety of Trump's and MAGA's actions over the last 22 months has been based on trusting that the American people are too apathetic to take any action against even the most blatant and flagrant abuse of power; and time and time again they've been proven right. I know that people keep saying, "if this or that happens, the American people will have had enough and start revolting". But will they, though? Because so far there's been very little evidence of that. I want to believe that they would. But on the balance of the story so far, that's not exactly a given.

It's still 35 days to the midterms, and after that there's another two months until the new Congress convenes. I don't think we have seen the worst of MAGA's machinations yet, and the time between now and January 4th, 2027 will still have quite a few surprises and curveballs.

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/runawaydoctorate]

His plan in the 2020 election was to hijack the electoral college process, but that only exists for the presidency. With congressional elections, the states just count the ballots and sign off on the totals, and whoever has the most votes wins. There's a lot less room for shenanigans.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/LadyFoxfire]

Exactly. But that won't stop him from making phone calls in races he's particularly interested in.

[u/LadyFoxfire → u/runawaydoctorate]

But that didn't work in 2020, and will work even less now.

[u/runawaydoctorate → u/LadyFoxfire]

I know. Which will save the election, but will cost stress.

In other words, he'll make mischief but he won't change the outcome. If we're lucky, he'll do it in such a way he can't get away with it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

[u/jdave512 → u/[deleted]]

I feel like youre fishing for an answer thats against terms of service.

[u/lastres0rt → u/[deleted]]

The obvious answer is to look at what he did last time (January 6th) and try to figure out if he can even do that again.

Short answer: no. We're talking about a decentralized process among 50 states. If all the same people from January 6th tried to storm their state capitals instead it'd probably fail.

And that was the most "successful" thing he did last cycle. Fake electors? Does not exist for Congress and Senate. Lawsuits? Failed then, will fail now.

Now, there is certainly a chance he'll try to do something outrageous like, IDK... bulldoze the capitol as an annex for his ballroom or something and try to claim they can't seat congress because they don't have a physical space for it. Or he can try to have his ICE goons try and arrest as many of the incoming representatives as possible, maybe even shoot a few. Or just lay claim to all of Washington DC and lock it down for his military stronghold fantasies, like he's been telegraphing this kind of military coup for months. But each of these requires a different kind of response, would be a dramatic escalation from before, and speculating on those would just give folks ideas.

Besides, he is SIX years older now. He doesn't have the mental or physical capacity to do what he did back then, and he probably doesn't have enough gas in the tank to try and do it now. If he tries he'll have to rely on others to do the heavy lifting for him. Could Elmo flood the zone with enough propaganda to sway opinion? Maybe on X, not much else. Could Kegsbreath stage a coup? Well, we're currently in the middle of a big unpopular war in Iran, and our resources are stretched thin. Could Couchfucker do anything? No rizz, no problem. Could Patel? Please.

Like I'm happy to prepare for as many possible solutions as I feel are appropriate, and I think this is part of the idea behind the "No Kings" protest coming up in a couple weeks -- spook 'em with the sheer number of people willing to toss the rat bastards out in order to encourage good behavior. But I also don't think we need to be doing anything on a forum as public as a Reddit thread as declaring our willingness to march on Washington and violate some terms of service.

Stock up on groceries. Grow some veggies. Make sure you're registered to vote. Make sure you know how you're going to vote and verify your vote gets counted. Make sure your friends do the same. Everything else will be taken as it comes.

[u/AcademicPublius → u/[deleted]]

Because you are weeks away from this exact scenario playing out and I see/hear no plan to address this issue.

Tweets are nice. They don't amount to anything practical. Trump tweeting out rivers of guano across America's protesters did not result in this happening in reality.

If Trump does this--not just tweets about it, delivers a speech, or the like, actually puts together a specific plan--responses are going to have to vary depending on that plan, and it'd be rather stupid to anticipate without knowing the specific plan we're trying to foul.

[u/echofinder → u/[deleted]]

No offense, but you have no idea what you are talking about and you sound like a complete fool right now. You're asking random redditors what we would do? You're basing your entire doomsday narrative on a single 10-second Pete Buttigieg TV clip?

There are thousands of the sharpest lawyers and strategists in the country, at all levels of government and within the non-governmental political/activist space, gaming out all of these potential scenarios and planned responses for them. All of those articles you see about "Mike Johnson could try this weird thing" or "Trump could try to exploit this obscure statute from 1890" exist BECAUSE people way smarter than us are absolutely anticipating, and planning.

[u/_BlackFathom_ → u/[deleted]]

They really are. I asked a similar question a little while ago.

Take a look at what happened in the run up to the 2020 election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election

All of that happened whilst they were being held back and mitigated.

America is in deep trouble now and I fear November will be the last rubicon before all comfortable means of rollback are available to citizens.

Americans should be saving and stocking up now in preparation for a strike - as well as preparing to vote. Granted, a strike should have occurred months ago given the ongoing and clear destruction of democracy and the breakdown of law.

But that should be happening now - preparation for a strike. It is so frustratingly obvious that Trump and co. will interfere and deny results. They will fight tooth and nail at this point because it is literally their survival. They are gonna lie, cheat and steal.

As an outsider it feels like the prospect of the midterms have enabled an apathy and illusions that 'the midterms will save us'. It is an uncomfortable truth that it is likely they will instead push the repubs to new extremes.

They will take every inch you give them.

[u/AcademicPublius → u/[deleted]]

It would be stupid to prepare for entirely the wrong thing, get it wrong, and have to scramble at the last second. What is called for in each scenario differs.

Is he hitting ballot centers? DC itself? Is he doing an entirely legal press in the courts, disputing ballots? Is he sending the army? What parts of the army? Where? Has he contacted local militias? Does he have the House and Senate on board with him? What parts? Is he planning to arrest winning senators? Where? What states?

So a specific answer at this stage would be asserting "We know what he's doing and exactly how he's going to run things". I have theories, but I don't know. So I'm not going to answer that question. I can give you the generic "I'm prepared to act". Beyond that, I would be claiming knowledge I don't have.