With the United States’ 2026 midterms less than one and one-half months away, MS NOW host and former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele is warning that President Donald Trump is quite capable of going to extremes if the elections aren’t going his way — including a declaration of “martial law.”
During a Friday night, September 25 broadcast of MS NOW’s show “The Weeknight,” Steele told co-host Simone Sanders and Voto Latino CEO Maria Teresa Kumar, “Well, look, this has been the end game. This has been the end game. We’ve talked about it for well over a year now. The end game has always been, when it comes to this election — and we’ll see the same thing play out in 2028 — this president wants to demand the outcome he wants, and he will do anything he can to get it. And if that means the Insurrection Act, if that means martial law — whatever it will take, he’s going to put into play.”
The Never Trump conservative continued, “He’s got a DOJ, he’s got an FBI. He’s got a national security apparatus set up to do exactly that.”
Steele pointed to recent comments by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who, during an MS NOW appearance, warned that Trump’s voter database proposal “creates a lot of opportunity for mischief” this close to the midterms. Raskin told MS NOW’s Alicia Menendez that he fears the possibility for “valid, eligible voters to be disenfranchised.”
Sanders noted that “Trump’s Justice Department is also enlisting hundreds of Department of Justice employees to hunt down examples of noncitizens casting a ballot.”
Sanders told Steele and Kumar, “But you know what? They are struggling to deliver, since noncitizen voting is extremely rare in this country … Trump-aligned election deniers — well, they are now urging him to declare martial law if the midterms don’t go his way.”
The 2026 midterms are set for Tuesday, November 3. Democratic strategists are feeling optimistic about their chances of flipping the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans have only a small majority under speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). And many Democratic insiders believe that the U.S. Senate, although an uphill climb, is also in play.
In order to regain control of the Senate, Democrats will have to flip at least four GOP-held seats while holding all of the seats they are defending.
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