Donald Trump is organizing a legal version of January 6, 2020. If he succeeds, all other democratic rights will be sharply curtailed. Here is what he is doing:

Attack on Mail-in voting
Trump is aware that it is more difficult to limit voter participation if voters mail in their ballots. That is the reason for his lies about voter fraud through mail in voting. His campaign of lies is being backed up by action.

That is the purpose of his campaign to create a national list of registered voters. Once such a list is created and doctored, the USPS can simply refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to those not on their list. So far, Trump’s order has been blocked by an appeals court in Massachusetts, but the judge in a similar suit in Washington DC refused to block it, saying the suit is premature. It is now up the the MAGA Supreme Court. A simple delay in the matter will enable Trump to accomplish his aim. Even if Trump loses in the Supreme Court, the  Associated Press reports that Johnathan Smith, president of the postal workers union “told the AP on Tuesday that USPS information technology staffers who are union members are working on a planned portal for the list of eligible voters ‘behind the scenes.’” In other words, Trump’s USPS will violate any adverse court ruling.

There is a second part of this attack: Simply delay delivery of ballots. Recent rulings have invalidated the rule that any late-arriving ballot will be counted if it is postmarked by election day. So, the USPS has ended twice daily dispatches of mail from its local post offices to the central processing center. This can delay the postmark date by several days, and delay delivery even further. The AP writes: “The Michigan secretary of state’s office is advising voters to hand-deliver ballots to their local clerk’s office or a drop box.

“In Kansas, concerns about late ballot deliveries in the state’s 2024 primary election prompted a quip on the social platform X from Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican: ‘The Pony Express is more efficient at this point.” Asked his view now, spokesperson Whitney Tempel said Schwab still believes “keeping your ballot out of the hands of the federal government is best.’”

Salleigh Grubbs, one of three members of the five member Georgia election board. Georgia law has given this board new powers to take over from local election boards.

Election deniers, chaos and confusion
Alongside of this is the Trump/MAGA campaign to create maximum chaos and confusion surrounding the entire election process. For this, Trump is not relying on his own voice. MAGA has succeeded in placing dozens of election deniers on the local voting boards that run the elections. Allvotingislocal reports on some of this. Three of the five members of the Georgia state election board are Republican election deniers. This state board was recently given increased powers to intervene in local elections. Other election deniers include Josh Parsons, Lancaster County Commissioner, PA, Bob Spindell, Wisconsin Elections Commissioner, Jim Hindle, Storey County Clerk (responsible for elections in that county), and Justin Heap, Maricopa County AZ Recorder (also responsible for elections in that county). To understand the significance, consider that Maricopa County is basically metropolitan Phoenix, where the actual majority of Arizona voters live. Fraud the vote there and the entire state is up for grabs.

The legal role of the local election board is to simply compile the results reported from the local polling places and pass those results on to the state. The election board has no legal right to certify or refuse to certify the results. They are supposed to simply be an adding machine. Yet in 2024 several local boards illegally refused to certify the votes. Those boards included the ones in Washoe County Nevada and Wayne County Virginia. We can expect additional such illegal refusals to perform their duties in the upcoming elections. This will result in multiple lawsuits throughout the country.

According to the Brennan Center  “at least 185,232 challenges were filed in 2024. The real number is likely higher [since many voting districts didn’t respond to the Center’s request for information]… There is no reason to believe mass challenges will subside. Instead, they may now have the backing of a powerful new ally: the federal government. Supporters of mass challenges occupy key posts in the administration; the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks to aggregate vast voter data, which it may give to challengers or use to pressure states to remove people from the rolls. All of this will add to the confusion and chaos.”

Trump has a plan for that.

ICE and CBP and in-person voting
This is where in-person voting at the polling places comes in. According to Wired.com  “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the US. Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. In many cases, these facilities, which are to be used by street-level agents and ICE attorneys, are located near elementary schools, medical offices, places of worship, and other sensitive locations….

“Since President Trump took office in 2025, ICE has more than doubled in size. DHS claims the agency now has 22,000 officers and agents stationed around the country and is still in the process of hiring more.”

According to another article of the Brennan Center the budget for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) will have $200 billion available to them at the start of next fiscal year, which is October, 2026 – just in time for November’s election. This is more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. The Brennan Center gives several examples of ICE and/or CBP agents showing up around schools, and keep in mind that schools often serve as polling places.

Overall Plan
So, the overall plan is to discourage and/or disrupt mail-in voting as much as possible, create as many claims of voter fraud and take as many illegal actions as possible by election deniers both on election boards and otherwise, and send ICE or CBP agents to select voting places.

The MAGA majority on the Supreme Court will go along with overturning the election if they think they can get away with it.

Of course, this will lead to multiple court challenges, but the hope is to overwhelm the legal system and also plan for the Supreme Court’s MAGA super majority to find one excuse after another to avoid ruling until it’s too late. With the possible exception of Katenji Brown-Jackson, the non-MAGAites will pretend that this is just a difference in legal interpretation rather than a naked political power grab.

It’s possible that Trump’s ratings will sink so low that he’ll lack a sufficient base to rest upon in order to steal the election, but it is foolhardy in the extreme to count on that. In any case, he will do inestimable damage along the way. The answer is to organize towards shut downs in every major city in the country as well as towards shutting down shipping, and rail and air transport. It would also include organizing towards shutting down municipal public transit systems.

Oakland “No Kings” protest. The unions were missing in action.

Unions
The unions would have to be central to that, but they have been entirely missing in action so far. Not only that, but the bureaucracy, which has gripped the unions by the throat for many years now, would resist such a strategy tooth and nail. “This would be a contract violation. We will get sued,” they would cry. The way to deal with that threat is to include a demand that nobody goes back to work until all threat of legal action is removed. Rank and file union members can start to organize now to demand their unions start down that road. The First step would be for the unions to organize public meetings of all union members and supporters in order to discuss the very real threat we face and to put forward this strategy to defeat it. Out of that, union and community groups could be organized. Drawing high school and college students into this would be vital.

In the likely event that the union leadership would successfully squelch such a move, then rank and file opposition groups can start to take such action on their own to the degree that they have the power to do so.

Right now there doesn’t seem to be the mood among the anti-Trump union membership to really act along those lines, but a start has to be made somewhere. Realistically, a great shock will probably required to jolt the membership into action with or without the union leadership, in fact against the union leadership. So, if nothing else, this is how we can start to prepare for such a shock and what will happen next (we hope).

In the past, socialists always played a huge role in helping the advanced battalions of the working class organize. Today, the only socialist group that matters is DSA. It could play an important role in organizing along these lines. However, in all but a few areas, DSA is controlled by caucuses that represent either the union bureaucracy or ultra left caucuses which claim that there is no big difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. So, serious working-oriented class socialists will need to organize among themselves to build for DSA to play a real role also.