The Right’s Fascistic Fever Dreams Are a Sign of Weakness

MAGA wants us to believe that Trump can simply declare “martial law” and wipe away the system - but it’s just not true. A threat assessment before the midterms.

By Thomas Zimmer, October 25, 2026

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This is the third and final part of my deep dive into the political situation in the United States before the midterm elections – an attempt to answer the most urgent questions, think through the dangers that lie ahead, and reflect on where we stand in the struggle between authoritarian escalation and democratic resilience. In Part I (Opens in a new window), I reflected on whether we can trust the polls and discussed the attempts by the Trump regime to manipulate their way to victory by taking control and subverting the process before we even get to election day. Part II (Opens in a new window) focused on the attempts to overturn the election results and the dangers from election day through January 3, when the new Congress will be seated. This Part III deals with those in and around the government who harbor fantasies of Trump declaring a “national security emergency” or “martial law” and asks: What are we to make of such fascistic fever dreams?

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MAGA extremists are fantasizing about Trump ending the American Republic. Faced with an election they know they are almost guaranteed to lose, they want us to believe Trump can wipe away the system if he finally dares to the pull the lever that has “Dictatorship” written on it.

Let us not help them perpetuate such authoritarian propaganda. It is not true. There is no such lever. These fascistic fantasies of mass violence are acutely dangerous. But they also reek of desperation rather than strength. 

For many months, the Trumpists have tried, in ways blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, to take control of the election, to manipulate their way to victory by imposing new rules that would have disenfranchised millions and thrown the entire process into chaos. But their major schemes to subvert the midterms have so far failed.

Now their focus has turned to intimidation efforts on election day – and especially on overturning the results of the election afterwards, in the two months between November 3 and January 3, when the new Congress will come together.

We must brace ourselves for ever more outlandish claims, ever more ridiculous initiatives. On Friday, for instance, news broke that the Department of Justice is preemptively suing (Opens in a new window) to block Alaska from certifying the result of the senate election – in case the Democratic candidate wins. Get ready for more such shenanigans. The attempt itself, regardless of the outcome, constitutes a direct assault on the constitutional order. I do not believe, however, that the Trumpists will succeed. There is no evidence they have managed to organize a comprehensive effort of the scale that would be necessary to steal an election that, at least in the House of Representatives, won’t be particularly close. And there are many among the MAGA extremists who understand this precisely.

That is exactly why they are indulging in fascistic fever dreams of Trump doing away with all this election nonsense by declaring “a national security emergency,” of putting an end to the threat of liberal democracy by imposing “martial law.” But their theory of power boils down to making big, scary proclamations that are not actually connected to plans they can implement. They can, and likely will, cause tremendous damage. But that is not the same as consolidating authoritarian rule. They hope that if they threaten large-scale, state-sponsored violence, everyone will cave. But that is not what has been happening in America, as resistance has been hardening since last summer.

Let’s assess the danger and discuss what is actually behind these threats of declaring a “national emergency” or “martial law” and ask where exactly, how, and to what effect the Trumpists could apply force and coercion? Let us find the balance: Alarmed and vigilant but not panicked; determined, not despairing; insisting on analyzing the situation as it actually is instead of bowing to the assertion that reality does not apply to these dangerous clowns.

They are throwing stuff against the wall

It’s worth dwelling on the MAGA regime’s bizarre Alaska stunt, as it is indicative of where things stand. Here is what’s up: (Opens in a new window) The Department of Justice, under direct orders from Trump (at least that is what the president himself has claimed (Opens in a new window)), is preemptively filing a lawsuit in an attempt to block the state from certifying the result of the senate race… should the Democratic candidate win. In Alaska, the incumbent senator is Republican Dan S. Sullivan. According to the polls, Democrat Mary Peltola is ahead and favored to take his seat. There are two more candidates on the ballot – both identifying as Republican. And one of them is named… Daniel J. Sullivan. No relation to the incumbent senator.

What the Department of Justice is alleging (without providing any evidence whatsoever, of course) is that the other Daniel Sullivan – who, I will repeat, identifies as a Republican – was planted by Democrats in a ploy to confuse GOP voters and channel votes away from the current senator. This whole thing is ridiculous. Even if any of this were true, no laws have been broken, the federal government has no role in the process of adjudicating this. There is no actual legal argument here, nothing that would give judges any plausible deniability to go along with this nonsense. This lawsuit, if that is even the right term, is obviously frivolous.

More importantly, these are not the actions of a confident regime fully in control of the nation’s destiny. This certainly does not indicate there is a comprehensive secret scheme - some devious, unstoppable master plan. The MAGA government is in Hail Mary territory.

It is precisely this sense of having their backs against the wall that is fueling these fascistic dreams of using the military to install Trump as a dictator. Envisioning such direct violent oppression is a sign of weakness. Modern authoritarian regimes are always hoping to avoid such escalation. If they have managed to consolidate power, they rely on fully rigged elections in order to make some gesture towards democratic legitimacy to support their claims. They don’t want to resort to mass violence. Because they understand that in a complex modern society, the government – no matter the regime type – inevitably depends on millions of people following along to some degree. They depend on some measure of consent from institutions and individuals alike. In the face of widespread popular discontent, it can become very difficult very quickly to ensure the compliance of millions in order to keep the machine going. The federal government in the United States certainly does not have the apparatus or the manpower to do that by force across the entire country. You start shooting people in the streets, things can get away from the regime fast.

Fascistic fever dreams

And yet, that is exactly what the extremists on the Right desire. Not only do they want the federal government to interfere in the electoral process directly (Opens in a new window) by stopping the count in supposedly “suspect” districts and seizing ballots by claiming “fraud” – the type of intervention attorney general Todd Blanche (Opens in a new window) was installed to perform. Some corners of the MAGA sphere believe Trump shouldn’t bother with what they consider half-measures, especially since they are unlikely to keep Republicans in control of Congress. Prominent MAGA activists, some of them in direct contact with the White House and long-standing personal ties to Trump, have been calling for the president to declare (Opens in a new window) a “national security emergency” and impose “martial law” if the election “is rigged” – by which they mean: if Democrats win.

What does a realistic threat assessment look like in this situation? Well, it would certainly be a lot easier to dismiss such extremist fever dreams if we didn’t have ample evidence that there are influential people in and around the government who lust for a chance to violently oppress any opposition. Trump’s white nationalist homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, for instance, has been urging for such measures for a long time. He has been restlessly searching for ways to further militarize the conflict and get Trump to deploy the troops against the “enemy within.”

What does “martial law” even mean in the U.S. context?

Let’s start by clarifying terms to get an idea what we are even talking about here. What people are most often referring to when they say “declare an emergency” or “martial law” is not actually the replacement of civilian government by the military. They tend to think of deploying the military in order to complement and assist law enforcement while leaving civilian authority in place.

There are indeed ways for the president to deploy the military domestically. For that, Congress has set strict guidelines – that is, for instance, what the Insurrection Act does (and more on that later). But “martial law,” as in: removing civilian government and replacing it with military rule, is not really a thing. As this excellent explainer published by the Brennan Center (Opens in a new window) makes clear: Nothing in the Constitution and no existing statute authorizes the president to do that.

There is, in tension with this legal and constitutional baseline, the historical reality that something akin to martial law was often instituted, especially from the middle of the nineteenth through the middle of the twentieth century – especially by the states, but in some cases also by the federal government. There is also the fact that the Supreme Court’s decisions on the matter have been vague and inconsistent. And yet, the larger point stands: There is no basis in the Constitution or in the law for Trump to declare martial law. Most importantly, the president has no authority whatsoever to suspend or violate the Constitution.

This is the point where I am anticipating criticism that misunderstands the point I am trying to make: How can I possibly believe that the law will constrain the most lawless president in history? I don’t. My argument is not that Trump wouldn’t do anything illegal or unconstitutional (come on now…), nor does it rely on Trump following norms or the idea that he would show restraint. It matters that there is no constitutional or legal pathway to martial law because it means there is no avenue for Trump to exploit, no realistic mechanism for him to abuse, no lever to pull. That simply makes it far more difficult to apply the kind of pressure he would need to apply, to generate the kind of force necessary, to get enough people to comply and enough institutions to acquiesce.

So far, the MAGA regime has not shown the ability to get around this fundamental problem. I have not seen any indication that the Trumpist government is seriously preparing anything that would amount to the type of comprehensive action the extremists are envisioning. Could they have found a pathway to instituting something akin to martial law and made plans in secret? Theoretically, that is possible. But Trump has not exactly been running a tight ship. Journalistic investigations are constantly penetrating the inner circles of the regime. The more likely interpretation is that all this talk of “martial law” is deliberately designed to intimidate and project strength as part of a propagandistic effort to assert dominance – mixed with a whole lot of wishful thinking from a bunch of wannabe-totalitarians who are increasingly desperate.

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What about the Insurrection Act?

That doesn’t mean the Trumpists haven’t been actively discussing deploying the military in the streets. In fact, Trump himself has been talking about invoking the Insurrection Act for years; he brought it up repeatedly (Opens in a new window) during the 2024 campaign. Since returning to the White House, he has often claimed that he has the power “to enact a certain act” (Opens in a new window) whenever he wants to. The president mentioned it again recently in an interview with Time Magazine (Opens in a new window), where he mused, in typical Trump fashion: “I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”

The Insurrection Act basically creates an exception from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (Opens in a new window), which bars federal troops from being deployed domestically for law enforcement purposes. It allows the president to, as the Brennan Center puts it in a very helpful explainer (Opens in a new window), “suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.” What situations? Well, this is where it gets tricky. Unfortunately, the president has quite a bit of leeway over when and why to invoke the Insurrection Act. According to the Brennan Center: “In theory, the Insurrection Act should be used only in a crisis that is truly beyond the capacity of civilian authorities to manage. However, the Insurrection Act fails to adequately define or limit when it may be used and instead gives the president significant power to decide when and where to deploy U.S. military forces domestically.” Throughout U.S. history, it has been invoked about 30 times – most recently when President George H.W. Bush sent federal troops to Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots in the spring of 1992, at the request of both the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles.

It is obvious why the Insurrection Act appeals to Trump: He undoubtedly imagines it as a kind of cheat code that would give him “unquestioned power” (Opens in a new window) – including to suppress protests, to “just shoot them,” (Opens in a new window) as he believes he should have been able to order the military to do during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020.

But here it is imperative we push back against such notions that present the Insurrection Act as the ultimate weapon in the hands of the authoritarian regime. Leave aside, for a moment, the question of how the courts would react (and how the regime would react to a court intervening, which would almost definitely happen): While this step would undoubtedly constitute a major escalation – one Trump has so far been reluctant to force, despite all the bluster and unhinged rhetoric –, invoking the Insurrection Act is not akin to waving a magic wand that vanquishes all opposition.

The Insurrection Act does not suspend the constitution and civil liberties, it does not establish martial law or a military dictatorship. It would allow Trump to put regular troops in the streets to serve as law enforcement. Federal troops patrolling the streets would still be constrained by the law, restricted to regular law enforcement powers.

The question we must insist on asking is: What would a realistic path be from there to a consolidated autocracy?

We can also turn the perspective around: Why hasn’t Trump invoked the Insurrection Act yet? If it makes him omnipotent and lets him install a dictatorship in an instant, why hasn’t he done it yet? The people who control the government are certainly not the most patient or a particularly prudent bunch. As a matter of practical reality, the idea that the minute Trump invokes the Insurrection Act all resistance is futile, Trump has won, Game Over is nonsense. That’s just regime propaganda. Perhaps the Trumpists, underneath all the bluster, know this too? Could it be that some in the administration are concerned that once they actually invoke the Insurrection Act, they can no longer use it as a constant threat? And if that doesn’t get their enemies to surrender, what do they have left?

Different factions inside the MAGA regime

Sources from within the administration have been adamantly claiming that these MAGA extremists who are urging Trump to declare martial law do not influence the decisions inside the White House.

As a default position, we should not trust anything any of these habitual liars say. In this case, however, the reporting points to crucial dynamics within the regime and the broader MAGA movement. They don’t exist as a monolith. There are different factions and there is real friction between them. And they are not entirely in agreement about how to handle the obstacles they have so far failed to overcome.

Not for the first time, the country is facing an inflection point in the struggle between authoritarian escalation and democratic resistance. We know (Opens in a new window) that the MAGA government internally contemplated radical steps that would have potentially ended the American Republic in previous such moments. In late April 2025, for instance, Stephen Miller pushed for the president to suspend habeas corpus for unauthorized immigrants in order to speed up the regime’s mass deportation efforts. Habeas corpus is the most foundational principle on which the rule of law is built: Anyone who has been detained by the government has the right to challenge their detention in court. They must have the chance to petition a court to order their release. If the government can arbitrarily detain you, all other rights you may possess on paper are null and void. Suspending habeas, without authorization from Congress, would have been a radically unconstitutional step; it would have taken the conflict between the Trump administration and the courts to a whole different level. And the Trumpists, one must suspect, would have inevitably extended the suspension beyond just unauthorized immigrants sooner or later. This regime, after all, is centered around the promise of purging not only the “illegal aliens” and “alien enemies” but also the “enemy within” who is supposedly in cahoots with those nefarious outside forces.

The Trumpists deliberated despotism – and those who demanded it are still very much part of the inner core of this regime. However, they ultimately decided against taking that step. They didn’t dare to suspend habeas corpus. And despite all their aggressive posturing about representing the “will of the people” and therefore standing above the law and the Constitution: They didn’t start entirely ignoring the courts either.

We encounter a similar dynamic in late January, when Miller and Vice-President JD Vance were urging for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy federal troops to suppress the protests against the ongoing paramilitary occupation of Minneapolis carried out by ICE and Border Patrol. Yet once again, that is not what ultimately happened. The regime instead suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the good people of Minnesota who decided they were not going to acquiesce as their neighbors were being terrorized in the streets by masked agents of the state. 

Recalling these previous inflection points reminds us that there are not only different ideological camps within the MAGA government, pursuing overlapping, but distinct visions of what America should look like. There are also fault lines defined by temperament. The different factions aren’t entirely in agreement about how far they should escalate – they differ in terms of appetite for radicalism. Those two dimensions, ideological extremism and temperamental radicalism, are certainly correlated. It is not a coincidence that Stephen Miller, a full-on white nationalist ideologue, has consistently been pushing for escalation. But there are evidently other factors playing a part.

The overriding concern among those who argued against the kind of escalation Miller and Vance demanded was to avoid self-inflicted damage. That doesn’t mean they might not also have substantively disagreed. But what they feared, first and foremost, was a high-stakes battle with the courts they believed the administration would lose – as well as an ongoing public relations disaster and the further loss of public support.

What did Donald Trump do in these moments – and what does that suggest about how he might act now? Well, in recent months, the president’s attention seems to have been increasingly focused on matters of monumental self-aggrandizement: The White House ballroom, the Triumphal Arch he wants to build, the Reflecting Pool… Meanwhile, the day-to-day operation of governing – or: consolidating authoritarian rule – has clearly not been his priority. It is a weird form of personalism we are confronted with. Personalism is the type of authoritarian regime where control is centralized in the hands of a leader figure, the center of gravity is one person at the top (rather than a party apparatus, or perhaps the military), power and influence are entirely dependent on the relationship with the regime’s leader. What we have here is personalism with a lazy, mentally and physically exhausted, increasingly delusional leader at the top who doesn’t want to be bothered with the actual work of governing and cares about the pageantry of power more than about consolidating it properly first.

In the spring of 2025, the available reporting suggests (Opens in a new window), Trump was at least somewhat involved in the deliberations over whether or not to suspend habeas corpus. But even then, he was not willing to fully side with one camp or the other. In January 2026, as his vice-president and chief white nationalist were pushing for him to invoke the Insurrection Act, Trump seems to have been largely absent. In key moments, when different factions within his government were engaged in a struggle for supremacy that would define the trajectory of his regime, Trump either hesitated – or simply couldn’t be bothered to pay attention, participate, and make a decision either way.

The most likely scenario for the midterms, I believe, is that Trump will once again hamper the efforts of the most extreme voices in and around the White House by displaying a similar lack of discipline and decisiveness. Unfortunately, the situation might be very different in 2028. I find it very hard to believe Trump will leave the White House willingly. At the risk of psychologizing too much, his ego and narcissism will be a much bigger factor two years from now, when Trump himself is about to lose power; he also understands he needs to be president in order to avoid accountability for his unprecedented crimes and corruption. But that is 2028. For the midterms, I struggle to see him becoming the energetic, ruthless, cunning fascistic leader his most extreme followers wish he were. 

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Where does America stand?

I want to end with a threat assessment in three thoughts and observations.

One: MAGA will continue to escalate

If my analysis is correct, the Trumpists will fail to subvert the election, their attempts to overturn the results will be thwarted. But by no means is that a reason to relax.

We are faced with a somewhat paradoxical situation. The Trumpists are in a relatively weak position. As societal resistance has been hardening, they do not really possess a plausible strategy for how to impose and consolidate authoritarian rule across the country. But that weakness is also a source of radicalization. It is precisely the mounting frustration over the gulf between the authoritarian unreality and the real world that is fueling the frantic search for ways to assert the kind of dominance they so desperately desire.

MAGA is ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of moderating. It is a hysterical movement that exists in a constant state of imagined emergency. There is no room for compromise or restraint. Every crisis, every defeat only heightens their sense of being under siege, legitimizing and amplifying calls to hit harder, more aggressively.

This is where the gravest danger lies: When delusion, authoritarian desires, ideological zealotry, ineptitude, and mounting desperation all combine, things are bound to escalate further.

I believe MAGA will ultimately fail to consolidate authoritarian rule across all spheres of American life. But for the time being, the powers of the U.S. government are in the hands of a regime that is hellbent on imposing its unreality on the country and the rest of the world. And that is a truly frightening position to be in for all of us.

Two: No irresistible march towards authoritarianism

They will keep trying. But that doesn’t mean they must succeed. How we interpret the past 20 months of Trumpism in power shapes our expectations regarding the midterm elections. Has the country been irresistibly marching towards a Trump dictatorship? Will this be just another step in that direction? I don’t think so. 

I see a different dynamic: Several times over the past twenty months the Trumpists seemed poised to vanquish the democratic opposition and break through whatever obstacles the constitutional order was still placing in their path – but then were unable to force that next step. About three months into Trump’s second presidency, as outlined above, the government announced it would henceforth ignore the courts entirely – but then didn’t. In the early summer of 2025, the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles seemed to suggest the regime was ready to use emergency powers to quash the resistance in urban centers – but then pulled back from several major cities at the end of the year. After the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Trumpists laid the pseudo-legal groundwork for a sweeping criminalization of all political and societal opposition – but then didn’t actually implement the type of comprehensive oppression the Right has been clamoring for. In January, the Trumpists wanted to break the will of the people in Minneapolis, hoping it would serve as a warning to the rest of the nation. But the failed paramilitary occupation of the city turned into something else: A reminder of democratic freedom and solidarity.

This pattern stands in contrast to the idea of Trumpism’s irresistible march towards consolidated authoritarian rule. A past pattern is not a guarantee that the regime won’t ultimately break through somehow. But it should be a reminder: Being lawless, immoral, and violent does not make the Trumpists omnipotent.

Three: Panicked defeatism is neither savvy nor helpful

I said this in Part II of my deep dive and I will repeat it here because it is so fundamentally important: In order to successfully subvert the election or overturn the results, the Trumpists are not only dependent on the complicity of MAGA supporters, but also on the widespread acquiescence of those who oppose the regime.

I have no doubt about the MAGA movement’s intentions. But let us refuse to help them propagate the notion that reality does not apply to them. All those who value democratic self-government have agency and can act to block the path towards authoritarian consolidation.

And here, I will allow myself to write grumpy: I have very little patience for doomsaying and catastrophizing. If it is caused by sincere concerns and justifiable fears, I sympathize. But too often, it’s become a mindless reflex (or, worse yet, a calculated attitude intended to attract an audience). Some people – even among my own readers – react with consternation, even anger to anything that doesn’t reflect their own level of alarm back at them. I understand. But please consider this: If what you are saying boils down to “Trump could end the Republic whenever he wants to,” you are not contributing plausible analysis.

I don’t think it’s particularly helpful or enlightening to approach the political situation as if the task was to pour all our creativity into coming up with doomsday scenarios - without weighing their likelihood, regardless of the empirical evidence, and without considering the actual track record and trajectory of this regime. 

The assertion of irresistible power is itself a key element of the authoritarian assault. We must not help them perpetuate it by giving in to pseudo-savvy cynicism and defeatism.

Let us always remember: The Trumpist lust for authoritarian control is limitless. But the gulf between those desires on the one hand and the realities of a pluralistic modern society and complex political system on the other remains vast. And in that space, politics continues, resistance can thrive, there is ample opportunity and agency to push back.

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