By José R. Cabañas Rodríguez on February 6, 2026 from Havana
The approach of the midterm elections in the United States (the entire House of Representatives, one-third of the Senate, and a similar number of governorships), scheduled for November 3 of this year, invites researchers, journalists, and the general public to make predictions about the likely results. Historically, these elections have been considered a kind of barometer for the party in power, which in most cases in recent periods has lost more seats than it has gained.
In 2026, a majority of the US population and many other countries are hoping that this event will mean that the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, will lose control of both houses and, as a result, some kind of restriction will be placed on the anti-system agenda of the 47th president.
This could be the case if there were no explicit plan from the Oval Office to challenge every result that goes against its interests, if there were no list of targeted candidates to damage their image and fundraising, if the electoral districts to be attacked were not all linked, and, finally, if the possibility of such elections not taking place were not even considered in the plan.
Since the current administration began its campaign of induced violence against immigrants (most of whom vote Democrat) or against U.S. citizens residing in states that do not traditionally have a Republican majority, the purpose has been largely to discredit and intimidate current or potential political rivals. It was no coincidence that one of the first massive ICE deployments began in Los Angeles, the financial and population center of California, a state governed by a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, Gavin Newsome. More recently, the violence moved to Minneapolis, in the state of Minnesota, governed by Mike Walz, Kamala Harris’s former running mate on the 2024 election ticket.
Perhaps it is in the latter state that the real purpose of the potential violence in the streets has been most clearly manifested, when, after the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, the U.S. Secretary of U.S. Secretary of (In) Homeland Security Kristi Noem offered to negotiate the withdrawal of federal agents from ICE and other agencies in exchange for the state’s voter registry, a document that by law is the sole responsibility of local authorities.
It should be remembered that this action comes at a time when claims by Trump himself, or his supporters, questioning the unfavorable election results of both 2020 and 2024 are still pending in the courts of several states, and after several Republican-majority state legislatures have successfully achieved, or attempted, change in the electoral district maps so that, by virtue of geography, they have more voters from their party than from the opposing side.
Since 2025, the current Republican executive has given priority to the employment of “denialist” officials who still do not recognize the 2020 results in agencies that control the conduct of electoral processes. It has filed legal challenges against state-level electoral policies and has even called for new censuses to be conducted that exclude certain categories of citizens.
But the initiatives mentioned in the preceding paragraphs can be said to correspond to “times of peace.” The tycoon-president and his entourage are taking the game to a higher level, devising alternative algorithms, aiming at their rivals’ chests, and if they calculate that even if they win, they will pick up their chest protector, mask, gloves, and ball, and there will be no game.
Incidentally, when we talk about algorithms, we are not speaking figuratively. When in 2008 the young African American Barack Obama swept the white war veteran John McCain in the presidential elections in the midst of a severe economic crisis, it was considered at the time that a large part of the victory was due to the thousands of volunteers who carried the candidate’s message door to door in those districts where they had a slight disadvantage. At that time, social media and digital platforms were just a project. Even in 2012, the human factor and some technology continued to favor Obama in terms of political tools.
However, by 2016, the Republicans made their first “innovative” attempt. At that time, 44% of the electorate “informed” themselves about the race through Twitter, Facebook, and other similar media, while 24% of potential voters consumed direct references from Donald Trump’s or Hillary Clinton’s profiles. Only after the elections were over did it become known how the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had illegally used the private information of 87 million potential voters with Facebook profiles, which is why Meta had to pay a multimillion-dollar fine, but nothing more.
This can certainly be considered a marginal or secondary factor in explaining Trump’s victory at the time, compared to his ability to raise funds and donations for his campaign, or the massive mistakes made by the Democrats both in their choice of candidate and in the stilted messages she delivered.
The fact is that the uncovering of the 2016 digital fraud and the subsequent knowledge of similar actions by companies such as Cambridge in the elections of 68 other countries weakened this crutch for Trump in the 2020 elections. Learning from his mistakes, the tycoon-politician discarded the middlemen and established an alliance of equals with the owners of Amazon, Meta, X, Apple, and other digital megacorporations, who once again gave him their data, without the Federal Election Commission or Congress bothering to investigate this time. No fines, no warnings, and they were all present in the photos of the inauguration on January 20, 2025.
At the moment, there are some signs that the scales will tip one way or the other, more because of Donald Trump’s current mistakes and blunders than because of the building of a Democratic opposition with good leadership, program, and financing. Already, 29 Republican lawmakers have announced that they will not seek reelection. A special election was just held in the Texas state senate, won by a Democrat in a district where Trump won by 17 points in 2024.
These and other signs have prompted the president to take his confrontation with reality to a higher level, which includes: holding regular meetings to analyze developments in each of the districts that Republicans consider vulnerable in the November election; personally attacking his main Democratic rivals and questioning the source of their finances; speculating about the possibility that the elections will not be supervised by local authorities, but rather that this function will be assumed at the federal level; organizing a so-called “midterm convention,” a spectacle normally reserved for presidential cycles every four years; even publicly assessing the possibility that the elections will not take place at all.
Trump remembers perfectly well the most immediate consequence for him of losing the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections: the start of the impeachment process (removal from office by legislative means). He is unlikely to sit passively and wait for the results if they challenge his leadership.
In that scenario, if all the resources (political and otherwise) at his disposal fail, we can expect him to resort to his main tool: creating chaos through violence. This could be domestic or foreign.
Recent events in both Minneapolis and Caracas on January 3 should remind us that, under almost any pretext, the US president can create a situation that is considered “exceptional” and restrict a group of “citizens’ rights and guarantees” in order to overcome the obstacle of the elections. What opposition is there to prevent this from happening?
José R. Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba and former Cuban Ambassador to the US.
Source: CIPI, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English