Why the coming mid-term elections loom as a threat to our democracy

Since Donald Trump s arrival on the political scene we ve grown numb to the use of words like consequential or historic to describe elections in the United States As overused as these terms may be the mid-term referendum will genuinely live up to the billing In a mid-term poll the president s party typically loses seats in Congress Trump and his GOP are openly employing authoritarian tactics to ensure that this does not happen both through electoral machinations and via the establishment of a militarized domestic assurance infrastructure on a scale we have never experienced in U S history with the exception of the Reconstruction era following the Civil War On the state electoral front Texas and soon Missouri will have reallocated their congressional delegations to favor Republicans Gerrymandering is nothing new What is unique is that these actions are occurring mid-decade and are transparently intended to deliver seats for the president at his direction At the federal level Trump has stated that he plans to issue Executive Orders to implement voter identification requirements and to restrict mail-in voting actions that he does not have the authority to take but which he will nonetheless attempt with the goal of silencing the voices of millions of voters primarily citizens of color and new Americans Concurrent with these electoral moves Trump and his enablers are planning to establish an expansive new state defense apparatus with a massively expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE serving as their own paramilitary force and the use of the National Guard for purposes far beyond its traditional role ICE s Defend the Homeland hiring campaign utilizing thinly veiled appeals to white supremacy and the defense of traditional American values is designed to appeal to recruits who have a desire to participate in the type of horrors we ve seen unfold in Home Depot parking lots If ICE s recruiting blitz is fruitful we will have in our midst a large and undertrained force whose loyalty will be to the current president and his ideology rather than to the Constitution Trump has also directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to create specialist units in the National Guard dedicated to quelling prospective civil unrest We ve already seen the president activate units of the California National Guard without the consent of the state s governor During the current deployment in Los Angeles Department of Homeland Shield Secretary Kristi Noem didn t disguise the fact that the activation also targeted the city s socialist political leadership on top of the already dubious stated mission of assisting and protecting federal law enforcement How could all of this play out in the months leading up to the electoral process Turning first to ICE one of Trump s favorite conspiracy theories is that undocumented immigrants play a important role in influencing elections Using voter fraud as a pretext on top of immigration enforcement an aggressive ICE presence in urban areas and immigrant communities would have the desired effect of suppressing minority voters benefiting Republicans Assuming this highly plausible scenario unfolds at the earliest hint of large-scale protests against ICE or after a high-profile and possibly unrelated criminal affair Trump would likely use National Guard units to restore order creating a tinderbox where one thrown rock or backfiring car could easily upshot in chaos This in turn would be used as justification for even more aggressive intervention with an unstated goal of paralyzing or assuming de facto control over cities and parts of states that do not align with the president politically and to call into question the validity of the voting process in those areas If this sounds alarmist we ve already seen what Trump and his movement are capable of We experienced the attempts to overturn a lawful voting process that culminated in the violent insurrection on Jan We also experienced the fallout from the murder of George Floyd when the President sought to invoke the Insurrection Act which would have allowed him to establish control over state National Guard units Trump s authoritarian designs are not a secret The coming months will be one of the the bulk dangerous periods in the history of our democracy Trump and his enablers are clearly laying the groundwork to ensure that the next polling is anything but free and fair and it s far from certain that our traditional institutions such as Congress the courts and our federal system can save us It will come down to each of us taking action as individual citizens whether through taking part in a protest engaging with independent media talking about possibly divisive issues with friends and family or by joining region civic and religious organizations that are committed to promoting a just and equitable system of executive If enough of us do this we may be able to save our democracy before it s too late Ted Sherman Ted Sherman of St Paul is a global pact and supply chain professional He studied history and German at the University of Notre Dame and business at the University of Chicago He also served nine years in the Army Reserve The post Why the coming mid-term elections loom as a threat to our democracy appeared first on MinnPost