All current indications are that Donald Trump and the Republicans are set to take a beating in the 2026 midterms. The economy, tariff woes, ICE murders, Trump’s mental competency, his Epstein connections, and, well, basically everything, have voters feeling mutinous.
We’re still a long way away from voting day, and a lot can change in a year, but Trump is currently staring down the barrel of spending the last two years of his presidency as a lame-duck, struggling to get legislation through a rebellious Democrat-controlled House and Senate.
For Trump and his allies, a pesky little thing like the democratic will of the American people cannot be allowed to ruin their plans. Suspicions have already been raised that the Trump administration will deploy every dirty trick in its arsenal to rig the vote. Now, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon has indicated the administration won’t even be subtle about it:
Steve Bannon: “We‘re gonna have ICE surround the polls…We’ll never again allow an election to be stolen.” pic.twitter.com/9R9tZdolHx
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 4, 2026
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and let you steal the country again. You can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is textbook fascist state stuff. Sure, you hold elections, but impress upon the people that there is a right and a wrong way to vote, and the presence of armed and jumpy regime meatheads at the polling stations indicates you’d better vote right. Or else.
They want to scare you away from voting
You may also wonder why ICE, who are supposed to be focused on hunting down immigrants, is set to be posted at polling stations. Doubtless, the administration will cook up some nonsense about them needing to ensure that illegal immigrants don’t vote, but it should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that ICE is there to intimidate voters.
More specifically, they’d be there to scare away Hispanic and Latino Americans, who would be right to be worried that they’ll be interrogated, detained, and assaulted by ICE regardless of their citizenship or right to vote. That would, in turn, suppress the Democratic vote, which would boost Republicans’ chances.
It is, of course, deeply ironic that Trump and his cronies are insisting that this is all under the pretence of preserving the integrity of the election. Even now, they still spout the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, despite the only person ever to be convicted of tampering with vote machines being a MAGA fanatic!
We can’t say for certain whether ICE will actually be surrounding polling stations in November, but count on Trump to pull every dirty trick in the book to swing things his way. And that’s if he allows elections at all!
