- Republican-led states voluntarily ending their elections.
- In the case where local election authorities refuse, allowing state governments to take action by arresting said local authorities.
- Ending all Federal assistance for states to run and secure elections.
- Posting ICE to all states who insist on having elections, to arbitrarily arrest people going to vote. By the time they can get in front of a judge the election is over. Even if they're released within a few hours they'd likely miss the vote.
- Having ICE seize all "illegally cast" ballots, and the voting machines, preventing counts from completing or being accurate.
- Declaring states who hold an election to be in rebellion, deploying the National Guard or standing military forces.
- Refusing to seat anyone elected from those states who refuse to go along with it. We could see something like Republican states are allowed to "elect" new representatives as long as they allow an ICE presence everywhere, along with the arbitrary arrest. Speaker Johnson then refuses to seat any newly elected officials from any other states.
- Arrest of newly elected officials as illegitimate, and the seating of Republican candidates instead, similar to the fake elector scheme from 2020.
We can insist that all of these things are illegal, or that people won't go along with it. We would likely see the start real, violent resistance, but that doesn't mean they won't try.
Edit: Looks like he's starting already, by trying control all mail in ballots. He's going to issue an executive order ordering the USPS to filter ballot mail according to a master list compiled by the administration. Obviously this why they wanted voter rolls and have been seizing ballots. Even if the court immediately rules it illegal, why would anyone trust mail in voting? He's essentially cancelled the election for those who vote by mail.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/trump-mail-in-voting-executi...
I think a lot of people struggle to imagine the kinds of dirty-deeds ("ratf***ing") that are both possible and effective, especially when the perpetrators don't (feel) constrained by an implicit baseline of plausible consistency or morality. Being unable to brainstorm them up is, perhaps, a kind of backhanded compliment.
Imagine trying to warn someone in 2010 that in a few years an outgoing President, stung at an election loss, could foment a violent mob that would break into the Capitol to hunt and chase legislators that were formalizing that loss, issue blanket pardons for everyone involved, and his party would still protect him from being impeached over it.
For that matter, some people are still surprised to learn about the "Brooks Brothers Riot" [0] of 2000, where a crowd of Republican campaign staffers threatened workers into stopping a recount of certain ballots.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections...
This shouldn't be hard to understand: there are any number of things an unfettered executive can do to turn the election that isn't simply cancelling them.
The law?
He doesn’t care about that…
It's not like ICE can just roll into a state capitol and stop elections.
How many folks would be required for that at each polling place? Ten? Fifty? There are 3500+ counties in the US, usually with multiple polling places. You'd need tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of troops for that.
And that's a lot of armed thugs. Likely the National Guard would need to be federalized, but I find it hard to believe that commanders would follow such illegal orders.