An email from TPM Reader PK on yesterday’s post about seating a new Congress in 2027.
Your post was dead on today. I can easily see a scenario where [T]rump GOP majorities in both houses refuse to seat enough Democrats to retain control. There’s actually some examples of this back in the 19th Century where the clerk of the House refused to acknowledge various members-elect. In any event, there could be several Ds elected in states where the GOP SecState refuses to certify the election based on bogus fraud charges—all helped along by bogus DOJ/FBI investigations. And even if the vote is certified, sore loser GOP candidates could ask the House to determine the winner in their races. Again a GOP majority could then seat the losing GOP candidates by a simple majority vote.
In any event, congressional Dems need to figure out how they will handle such a scenario.
The last point is key. This isn’t a call for dooming but rather preparation.
The whole call of “will there be free and fair elections” is simply the wrong question to the degree it is framed as a binary question or of something that Trump will “do.” Under the present circumstan