THAT "MIDTERM COUP" SCENARIO MIGHT BE UNDERSTATING THE RISK

Andy Craig's latest post at The UnPopulist is getting attention, deservedly. Craig speculates that Republicans might use the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act ruling to try to defy the will of the voters and prevent a Democratic takeover of the House.

Craig writes:

If Republicans cannot stop a Democratic majority from emerging on election night in November, they might still try to prevent it from taking power in January, by blocking enough Democratic members-elect from being seated to leave Republicans in the majority.

This danger has been given a boost by the 6-3 party-line Callais decision. Several Republicans, in both Congress and the administration, are now claiming that deliberately drawn majority-minority districts are constitutionally banned. Several states will conduct elections this November using such districts which were, until now, often required under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law gutted by the Supreme Court.

On Jan. 3, 2027, when the new House convenes, Republicans could object to the seating of Democratic members, alleging their elections were unconstitutional. The goal would be for a rump House to then have a Republican majority, elect a Republican speaker, and decline to seat the challenged members. On this theory, the seats of rejected members would be vacant, allowing a Republican-controlled House to proceed to business even with fewer than all 435 representatives. The Constitution defines a quorum as a simple majority of the House’s members, and past practice has been to not count vacancies toward that number. In other words, an outright purge of the House.

I'm very interested in this scenario because a few months ago I found myself arguing on Bluesky with people who think Jamelle Bouie is correct to say that President Trump is limited in his ability to interfere with the midterms. Bouie's argument:

here's what happens after house elections, which are conducted by each state and locality: the state certifies the winner the winners go to washington they convene a new house they choose a speaker notice who isn't involved here? the president or the current speaker or the senate.

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) January 15, 2026 at 11:47 AM

My belief is that the vast majority of Republicans now believe that Democrats cheat in every contested election that they win. Andy Craig worries that Republicans will challenge Democratic winners in districts created to comply with the Voting Rights Act. I worry that Republicans will challenge Democrats for all the reasons Trump challenged Democrats in 2020 -- they'll say Democrats allowed undocumented immigrants to vote, kept dead people on the voter rolls, slipped in fake ballots, and so on. But this time, they'll be doing it in an environment in which election conspiratorialists are already in office in many locales, and in a news environment in which print, TV news, and widely accessible mainstream online news have been supplanted by podcasts, vertical videos, and AI slop.

When I was arguing at Bluesky back in January, I didn't have a complete understanding of how a lame-duck House is replaced by a new House. Nevertheless, I think I had a point about how a Republican coup could unfold.

In Craig's UnPopulist post, his explanation of the process makes clear that there is, in fact, a process that Republicans could subvert, or at least try to subvert:

What gets the House started is a thin scaffolding inherited from the previous Congress. Federal law requires the clerk of the House to prepare a roll of representatives-elect from the credentials sent by the states. The clerk also gavels the chamber to order and presides until a speaker is chosen. Once a speaker is elected (which can take a while), the speaker is sworn in, then administers the oath to everyone else, and the House becomes a House and lawmaking can commence. The process normally goes without any hiccups.

The roll the clerk prepares is the essential starting point. The clerk is required to include those whose credentials show they have been certified as the election winners by their respective states. If any election results have been litigated, the final outcome will be the winner who gets this crucial piece of paper confirming his or her certification....

Here is where things get complicated. A member-elect may, after the roll is read out, object to the seating of another member. By custom, in more normal cases, the challenged member voluntarily stands aside while the rest of the House is sworn in. The chamber then disposes of the objection, either seating the member or not, and, if necessary referring the dispute to committee.

Craig think Republicans might challenge any Democrat from a district formed in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act as it was understood pre-Callais. I think Republicans might challenge any Democrat from a district where Republicans are claiming fraud. In fact, the coup could start much earlier, with officials in Republican-run states refusing to certify the victories of Democratic House candidates because Donald Trump or some random podcaster insists that woke trans Sharia globalist Democrats cheated to achieve the victory.

As Craig notes, the seating of House members usually proceeds without incident, but not always:

“In recent years things have mostly gone smoothly, but there is a deep history of organizing the House going haywire due to partisan disputes,” notes Kacper Surdy, an expert on congressional procedure. In 1839, the House was deadlocked for weeks over which set of credentials to accept from New Jersey, a fight known as the “broad seal war.” In 1863, the House clerk tried to unilaterally reject several Republicans while including on the roll disputed members more sympathetic to the Confederacy. As recently as 2021, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, objected to members from several states to highlight the contradiction of Republicans rejecting Biden’s victory in an election conducted on the same ballots as their own elections.

So while Bouie's enumeration of the steps involved in this process seems simple and tidy, it won't be a tidy process if Republicans declare total war on the legitimacy of Democratic victories.

I think there'll be a massive propaganda campaign, starting well before Election Day, to persuade Americans that Democrats are cheating, "illegals" are voting, and any blue wave should be discounted as fraudulent. Every Republican who wants to stay in the party's good graces will be required to endorse this view. And then, into that mix, toss in Craig's voting Rights Act scenario.

We need to hope that this would be too much for the American public, and that Republicans who know they were just on the losing end of a shellacking would realize that the public is repulsed by stunts like this and either wouldn't participate or would participate halfheartedly. Democratic wins might need to be overwhelming -- "too big to rig" -- so the public will reject the GOP disinformation.

This is all a worst-case scenario. Republicans might not fight this hard to overturn the midterm results. But they will fight. At the very least, they'll want to delegitimize incoming Democrats. And even if there's a blue wave, GOP voters will believe forever that the 2026 midterms were rigged.