How to Protect the 2026 Elections from Donald Trump
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable discusses Donald Trump’s threats to “nationalize” elections in fifteen states, the recent F.B.I. raid to seize 2020 voting records at an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and the ways in which the Administration might meddle with a free and fair vote in 2026. Their guest, Richard Hasen, is the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at U.C.L.A.’s School of Law. “I actually think that now is the time to be preparing for this,” Hasen says. “I think states and localities should think about getting injunctions from federal courts against Donald Trump to prevent him from interfering with the tabulation of ballots.”
This week’s reading:
- “Donald Trump Already Knows the 2026 Election Is ‘Rigged,’ ” by Susan B. Glasser
- “Dan Bongino’s Podcast Homecoming,” by Jon Allsop
- “Why the D.H.S. Disaster in Minneapolis Was Predictable,” by Jonathan Blitzer
- “Is ICE Leading Us Into a Constitutional Crisis?,” by Isaac Chotiner
- “How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post,” by Ruth Marcus
- “ ‘Melania’ Is a Forty-Million-Dollar Journey Into the Void,” by Lauren Collins
- “How Trump Is Debasing the Dollar and Eroding U.S. Economic Dominance,” by John Cassidy
- “Russia Is Swarming Europe with Young Agents,” by Ian Crouch
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| 0:00.0 | We should talk about the terrible troubles of our friends and colleagues at the Washington Post. |
| 0:06.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:07.1 | Evan, you are a product of the Washington Post Foreign Service. |
| 0:12.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:13.5 | You know, my parents were posted to Moscow. |
| 0:16.8 | My dad was a Washington Post reporter in the 1970s. |
| 0:20.7 | And the idea that you would try to dismantle an |
| 0:24.7 | institution in order to save it is bizarre and offensive. And disingenuous. Yeah, and frankly, |
| 0:33.6 | I don't understand how this in any way accords with what Bezos was saying in those early statements he made about wanting to invest in a great American institution and democracy dies in darkness. |
| 0:46.5 | Well, of course, it doesn't. I mean, and I have to applaud Marty Barron, the former terrific editor who just came right out and said it, he said, |
| 0:54.8 | this isn't about Bezos losing money on the Washington Post. This is about Bezos trying to |
| 1:00.3 | please Donald Trump. And it is about money in a larger sense in that Bezos wants a lot of |
| 1:07.1 | things for his companies from Donald Trump's administration and fierce retribution. |
| 1:12.5 | And that is what's changed is we've got these billionaires. They've bought up the news |
| 1:17.2 | organizations and they are basically undermining them and replacing trusted sources of |
| 1:23.6 | independent news with propaganda. It's just a tragedy. |
| 1:29.2 | They actually fired a young correspondent |
| 1:32.3 | who's on the front lines freezing in Ukraine right now. |
| 1:37.8 | Meanwhile, the publisher of the Washington Post |
| 1:40.1 | couldn't be bothered to join the Zoom call |
| 1:42.0 | and is photographed walking the red carpet |
| 1:47.2 | at a pre-Super Bowl event. |
... |
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