Trump is swift boating the midterms [View all]

Trump is swift boating the midterms
POTUS is considering an executive order declaring a national voting emergency. Its co-author helped sink John Kerry

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published March 1, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) After the Supreme Court recently took a carving knife to Donald Trump’s claim of emergency powers to justify much of his tariff agenda, one could easily think that he and his associates might reconsider their view that he needn’t follow the plain language of the Constitution. No such luck. The president is making it clear that he plans to ignore the Court’s decision that found imposing tariffs required congressional approval, and that he will find other ways to check off the remainder of his dictatorial wish list.

Trump has only a few real priorities in his second term: tariffs, revenge, money and legacy. His continuing obsession with the 2020 presidential election falls under the revenge category, and instead of it waning as an active concern it actually seems to be gaining steam. The recent FBI raid of the election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize the stored ballots from that race looks to be just the opening salvo in a much larger strategy to interfere in the 2026 midterms. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump is contemplating an executive order declaring a national voting emergency, citing the same law the Supreme Court just declared he could not use when it came to imposing tariffs.

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If you’re wondering where Trump got such a ridiculous notion, look no further than the usual suspects, some of whom have been around for decades, pushing insane conspiracy theories and assassinating the characters of Democratic candidates around election time. It’s long been a GOP cottage industry, and a lucrative one.

According to the New York Times, Trump’s director of “election security and integrity” is a lawyer named Kurt Olsen, one of the most relentless 2020 election deniers who was considered to be a “fringe menace” in the first Trump administration. He was involved in the attempts to overturn the election and has continued to pursue the case ever since. Olsen has been given the power to criminally refer cases to the Justice Department, and he was revealed to have instigated the search warrant for the Fulton County raid. But he is one of many 2020 denialists working throughout the administration in jobs related to elections. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/01/trump-is-swift-boating-the-midterms/