It is January 3, 2027. The Democrats, fresh off their sweeping victory in the November elections, are set to take the majority in the House of Representatives.
All that remains is for the House clerk to compile a list of new members from the certified winners of the November races. It is an administrative technicality, a rote task that has gone off largely without incident every two years since 1789.
At least it did before Donald Trump turned the Republican Party into an election-denying cult. Now it has become the latest tool in the GOP arsenal to overturn election losses. Following the Democrats’ triumph in November, House Speaker Mike Johnson replaced the nonpartisan House clerk with a MAGA loyalist. Citing allegations of election fraud, the new clerk announces that he will not accept the documents certifying Democratic wins in key races. As a result, the members-elect cannot take their seats.
The Democratic National Committee unleashes an army of lawyers to challenge the move. But when the matter arrives before the Supreme Court, the Roberts majority, invoking the “political question doctrine,” rules that it cannot interfere in the internal operations of another branch.
And just like that, the Republicans have stolen the midterms.
According to election experts, this scenario, though unlikely, is entirely feasible. Worse, such a scheme might prove to be a dress rehearsal for the main event: a GOP gambit to overturn the 2028 presidential election. In 2020, Trump lost the election but tried to hang onto power regardless. Why would 2028 be any different?
Sure, Trump is barred from running for another term, but the Roberts majority might not see it that way. In any case, one would scarcely expect a different nominee to show more respect for the democratic process. That includes JD Vance. “If I had been vice president” in 2020, he once mused, “I would have told the states … that we needed to have multiple slates of electors”—a reference to an illegal scheme to keep Trump in office.
Freedom-loving people need to plan ahead to counter any Trumpian coup. Fortunately, there is an effective blueprint that we can follow.
The idea of the Trump administration successfully defying an election loss might seem fanciful. After all, these guys are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Perhaps they would try, but could they really pull it off?
They probably won’t. Even still, complacency is dangerous in the face of a cold-blooded autocrat who’s already challenged laws and defied norms willy-nilly. What Trump and his allies lack in brains, they make up for in power. He failed to reverse the 2020 election because the White House and federal bureaucracy were staffed by professionals who refused to go along with the plan.
That is no longer the case. The institutionalists who once stymied Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are long gone. In their place are MAGA flunkies committed to doing the president’s bidding. With their help, he could conceivably defy any resistance from Congress and the Supreme Court.
Leading experts agree that the U.S. has transitioned to authoritarianism during Trump’s second term. The days when constitutional checks and balances were enough to keep a rogue president in line are over. What’s more, defeating a Republican at the ballot box no longer guarantees that he will accept defeat.
Still, Trump is not some omnipotent demigod casting thunderbolts at will upon his hapless subjects. No dictator can rule without the people’s consent. Withdraw that consent, and he is just another guy with a spray tan and a chancy comb-over.
Nonviolent rebellion—the strategic use of protests, strikes, and similar methods—has paralyzed authoritarian regimes and forced despots from power the world over. It can work in America too.
Political scientists have found that nonviolent rebellion is the most reliable path from dictatorship to democracy. Decades of research point to four steps that successful rebellions follow.
Consider Serbia, where a handful of students launched a movement called Otpor! (“Resistance!”) that brought down strongman Slobodan Milošević in October 2000. The first step was to get organized. Members set up chapters in dozens of towns, trained volunteers in nonviolent resistance, and forged links with labor unions, nongovernmental organizations, independent media, and opposition parties.
Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. Instead of trying to avoid it, they harnessed the public outrage that it sparked. This backfire effect proved to be their best recruitment tool.
Eventually, Milošević forced through constitutional changes that allowed him to run for another term. Soon after, he called an early election. When the votes were counted, he had lost decisively. But he was not about to heed the will of the voters. The movement had to ramp up the pressure, but how?
Protests can be effective at signaling public support. But they rarely damage a regime on their own. So the third step was to diversify resistance methods. The rebels complemented their protests with a general strike that brought the country to a halt.
The fourth and final step was to sweep away the dictator’s pillars of support. For months, the movement had been courting police officers, officials, and other regime insiders. When hundreds of thousands converged on Belgrade on October 5, Milošević’s loyalists saw the writing on the wall and abandoned him in droves. Even the police stood aside. He had no choice but to concede.
It was a stunning feat. But it would have been much harder to pull off were it not for Otpor!’s efforts to maintain nonviolent discipline. Pitched street battles with police might have galvanized Milošević’s allies to close ranks rather than defect. Such violence could also have sapped public support for the rebellion, preventing the backfire effect from working.
If the conventional political process is not sufficient to restore democracy, nonviolent rebellion remains the most effective tool. To counter GOP election theft, Americans might have to mount a rebellion of their own. The good news is that our fellow citizens have already produced one such movement during Trump’s second term.
When jackbooted federal thugs began forcing Minnesotans into unmarked vans, Minneapolitans responded. First, they got organized. Activist groups trained citizens in specific resistance tactics. They also established support networks for immigrant families who had been forced into hiding.
Second, they used the dictator’s repression against him. The sight of armed thugs manhandling children brought waves of new recruits into the resistance. By the end of January, local organizations had trained nearly 30,000 citizen-volunteers to monitor federal agents.
Third, they deployed a range of nonviolent resistance methods, including protests, boycotts, and the tracking of ICE agents.
As for step four—sweeping away the dictator’s pillars of support—Trump and his goons took care of that by themselves. The tragic killings of two resisters, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, proved to be a tipping point. Public anger over the shootings prompted numerous allies to break from the president. A leading GOP gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota dropped out of the race. Republican members of Congress spoke out against the roundups.
With the pressure mounting, Trump was forced to beat a public retreat. Gestapo enthusiast Greg Bovino was shown the door. Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was relieved of operational responsibility and eventually sacked.
In the coming years, Americans might have to replicate this feat on a bigger stage. Only this time, the goal will be to reverse a stolen election. The four steps above offer a road map to victory. But the work starts now. If Serbia and Minnesota proved anything, it is this: The people determine whether the dictator rules—not the other way around.
