By Kenneth Tiven
Global humiliation could greet US President Donald Trump if his Congressional majority is swept away in the mid-term elections on November 3, defining the pugnacious political leader as a LOSER!
Polling and anecdotal reporting indicate that many voters who supported Trump in 2024 no longer believe in him, either because of his personality or his performance during his second term. Even his MAGA core is expected to take some of its frustrations out on Republican members of Congress.
Trump, of course, remains president until 2028 regardless of what happens to the 435 seats in the House of Representatives that are up for election. The 100 Senate seats, meanwhile, have six-year terms staggered across two-year intervals.
The 2026 verdict is unlikely to bring another insurrection comparable to the Capitol attack that followed his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020. Trump’s health and behaviour have been erratic during his second term, but few believe this will translate into a calm 60-day period between the election and the swearing-in of a Democratic-controlled Congress in January.
Congressional races decided by modest margins are likely to attract court challenges, as well as federal efforts to seize ballots and recount them outside the control of state governments, which legally retain broad authority over the administration of elections. State and federal judges, lawyers and election officials could, therefore, find themselves exceptionally busy.
Republicans control the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while ICE—the administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus—could be deployed in ways that raise concerns about voter harassment on Election Day. No one should underestimate Republican behaviour under the stress of losing control of Congress while simultaneously worrying about losing the presidency in 2028. Desperate people resort to desperate measures.
Diminished voter confidence in Trump has been evident for more than a year. The Heritage Foundation and other key advisers may be authoritarian and mean-spirited, but they are not blind. Trump remains president despite what his critics describe as declining mental and physical condition.
Congress is the judge of its own members, but the swearing-in of the newly elected Congress on January 4, 2027, leaves limited options for challenging newly elected members. We should, therefore, expect Republican behaviour to be influenced heavily by the predicted results of this election.
Democrats are internally far more varied on social, military and economic policies. Yet, anger over what they regard as Trump’s policies favouring the rich could unite them in rapid and cohesive action.
The immediate problem for Trump and his cabinet could be Congressional investigating committees behaving like a pride of hungry lions chasing the president’s team.
Only Trump insists that the United States is in the midst of a Golden Age. His lifetime of challenging reality is a constant trait.
Consider, for example, the Republican focus on what it calls voting by non-citizens, a phenomenon not supported by serious research over the past several decades. Some states have discriminated against non-white citizens who wanted to vote, but no state is believed to have recruited or knowingly permitted non-citizens to vote on any significant scale.
A federal judge in Florida has, reportedly, ruled unconstitutional a federal law passed 40 years ago banning non-citizen voting. US District Judge David Leibowitz dismissed a prosecution, holding that the Constitution gives states the authority to establish voter qualifications.
He wrote: “Congress has no power to say who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections—that foundational power is reserved to the States, and limits Congress.”
The administration’s cases are based on this now-invalidated law, forming part of what critics see as a broader federal effort to control and delegitimise elections.
The Trump administration has consistently ignored what is known as the law of unintended consequences. The idea is simple: actions—especially government actions—can have effects that are unanticipated or unintended, even when the original objective is deliberate.
Trump wanted a war of immense proportions against Iran, beginning with a bombing strike that decapitated its political leadership gathered in a single location for meetings.
A mismanaged and diminished military leadership at the Pentagon clearly failed to calculate the Iranian reaction properly. Asymmetric warfare exists when a belligerent nation employs military power, strategy or tactics fundamentally different from those of its opponent. That is precisely what the United States faces in dealing with Iran.
Iran learned the lessons of asymmetric warfare while engaged in the disastrous conventional land war with Iraq that began in 1980 and lasted eight years.
Iran subsequently adopted asymmetric thinking.
As a major exporter of crude oil and petroleum products, Iran recognised that blocking the narrow Strait of Hormuz could be its most powerful weapon, cutting off oil shipments to Asia and Europe and inflicting severe economic damage.
Its missile and drone factories are dispersed and underground. Drones and missiles accurately targeted US military facilities in neighbouring nations allied with the United States, forcing complete evacuations at some locations because many lacked adequate defensive weapons. The Pentagon has not fully disclosed the cost of the destruction, but American service personnel were killed and wounded.
At the same time, the United States showed little sensitivity to the rate at which its expensive weapons were being depleted. Presidential denials did not make the problem disappear.
The United States subsequently moved $36 billion worth of B-1 bombers from England back to bases in the United States because of concerns that Iranian attacks on loosely guarded bases might succeed. Thus, regardless of whether the Iranian threat was real or exaggerated, Iran effectively removed a major American weapon from the game plan without firing a single shot.
Did that possibility not occur to military planners working for Pete Hegseth, whom critics describe as the least experienced defence chief in US history?
There were additional examples of questionable planning. The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln experienced technical and supply problems during an extended deployment off the coast of Iran, caused in part by Iranian action against US Navy facilities on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile, Houthi rebels in Yemen have defeated Saudi government troops and hampered the use of the Red Sea for petroleum tanker exports. The Houthis also delivered a psychological blow by launching missiles and drones at two major Saudi airports, ratcheting up the kingdom’s renewed war against the Iranian-backed militia in Yemen.
The final issue is money—and the opportunities that can emerge while negotiating.
The New York Times reports that Vladimir Putin pitched Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s real-estate associate, on a multibillion-dollar deal involving Lukoil, the Russian state energy company with sanctioned oil assets.
Shady deals in the open also include a $620 million Pentagon loan to a company into which Donald Trump Junior’s firm had recently bought, as well as a federal bank charter for the family’s cryptocurrency venture.
Democrats are already planning to investigate these and similar arrangements if they regain power in Congress.
The November election, therefore, is about far more than 435 House seats and a portion of the Senate. It could become a national referendum on Trump’s second presidency—and the opening shot in a two-year struggle over the future direction of American democracy, the power of Congress and the limits of the presidency.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post,
NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels
The post When Losing Congress Becomes Trump’S Greatest Test appeared first on India Legal.