Trump turns California into the main target of electoral interference in the 'midterms'

WashingtonCalifornia, the great progressive bastion that represents a substantial part of the Democrats' parliamentary pie, has become the main target of Donald Trump's electoral interference. Two weeks before the midterms, the US administration has executed what it has dubbed "Operation Protect the Vote," which is aimed at reinforcing its theories of electoral fraud regarding the existence of undocumented people who vote for the Democrats. It also fuels the idea that there are still people on the electoral rolls who are already dead or who moved to other states.

Under this operation, eleven people were arrested on Monday in different cities in California, while seventeen others were charged. The Department of Justice (DOJ) accuses them all of having registered illegally to vote, and in some cases, of having cast a vote. The arrests are part of a broader offensive against California election officials, whom the DOJ accused last Thursday of refusing to cooperate with the administration to verify if there are more than 20,000 non-citizens registered on the electoral roll. Once again, the timing of the lawsuit against the election workers is very tight.

Although this is the thesis of the US president, who faces the legislative elections of November 3 as a referendum amidst a peak of historic unpopularity, the charges presented are not proven. They are merely accusations put forward by the Department of Justice – now controlled by Trump's former lawyer, Todd Blanche – that a court will hardly be able to resolve before the elections.

"It is a sad and desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Department of Justice to try to suppress the vote of Californians," denounced the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, on X. Beyond the rivalry with Newsom, the White House is redoubling its attacks against California because it is the state that distributes the most seats in the federal Congress: a total of 52 in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. In the lower house is where the weight of the Democratic bastion is most felt, where the magic number to reach the majority is 218 seats.

In September, California already approved thirteen new laws that seek to shield the November 3rd elections from possible interference by the federal government. In other states such as New York, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and Virginia, similar rules have also been approved, ranging from restricting federal agent operations around polling stations to preventing the use of the National Guard in actions that could intimidate voters.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed that a small group of national security officials have been advising state governments and members of Congress on how to prepare in case the White House attempts to interfere in the midterm elections. In parallel, civil entities and pro-democracy organizations have already trained thousands of volunteers across the country in light of the fear that Trump might deploy ICE agents to polling places.

Background noise

At the beginning of the year, when polls were already predicting complicated legislative elections, Trump had already begun to prepare the ground by accusing Democratic states of allowing undocumented migrants to vote in order to retain power. Accusations that date back to the 2024 election campaign, although the tycoon never needed to execute them because he ended up winning. When, two years ago, the count handed him the keys to the Oval Office, Trump forgot all the bile he had spewed over alleged interference.

In February of this year several FBI vans arrived unannounced in Fulton County (Georgia) and seized 700 boxes full of ballots from the 2020 election, in which Trump lost to Joe Biden. The move sought to reinforce Trump's accusations that the election was stolen from him. Along with Maricopa (Arizona), Fulton was one of the other major epicenters of electoral fraud theories during that campaign.

In July, wheen Trump already saw that the Iran war would not be an "excursion" and that it was sinking his party's electoral forecasts even further, haddressed the nation to insinuate that China had interfered in the 2020 election against him. In that appearance, the American president already announced that he had detected "vulnerabilities" in the country's electoral system, which he wanted to "correct" ahead of the November 3rd elections.

In the final stretch of the midterms, Trump's approval rating has reached a new all-time low, with only 36% of voters approving of his presidency. The unrest over the rising cost of living has turned Senate races in Republican strongholds like Texas and Kansas into contested races. That Trump is now doubling down on his attacks against the progressive giant of California is once again another symptom of his temperament: when the Republican feels cornered, he attacks.