Having seemingly given up on the House of Representatives, President Donald Trump and the officials in his administration are indicating that they intend to steal the 2026 midterm election to maintain Republican control of the Senate.

Trump continues to try to use the power of the government to boost his own popularity. On Friday and Saturday, Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano sent an email to people with online Social Security accounts declaring that under Trump, “the Social Security Administration (SSA) is transforming into a model of excellence,” producing “the best performance in the agency’s 91-year-history.” More than 100 million Americans have online SSA accounts.

In fact, as Tara Siegel Bernard reported in the New York Times in July, the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts of about 14% of SSA staff have created service delays. It’s much harder to get an in-person appointment, and although the agency reports that average phone response times dropped from 11 minutes to 5 minutes, it achieved that reduction by counting anyone who agrees to hang up and accept a return phone call as waiting zero minutes.

But it’s not just in boosting Trump that the administration is corrupting our government. Yesterday, in an astonishing illustration of just how thoroughly Trump and his cronies are weaponizing the government to cement their power, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to stop threatening local and state election officials with criminal prosecution if they don’t do as the administration demands.

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