U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, as he and Apple CEO Tim Cook

Following the blows of their most recent election losses, Republicans and President Donald Trump are ramping up their attacks on "almost every aspect of voting in the United States," according to The Guardian.

These assaults, The Guardian notes, are "raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies."

While Democrats are focusing on flipping the House and Senate in 2026, Trump and Republicans, The Guardian writes, "have sought to discredit the possibility that Republicans could lose in a fair fight and are using that premise to justify demands for a drastically different kind of electoral system."

And while Trump has discredited elections in the past, most notoriously his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020, it's a lot differnet now, The Guardian says.

"Now the president’s confidants are threatening emergency powers to seize control of a process over which presidents ordinarily have no control," they write.

Trump's recent push for Republican-led states to engage in mid-decade redistricting (political gerrymandering) to create more GOP-favorable U.S. House districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is one way he's trying to rig the 2026 election, The Guardian says.

These efforts, they write, have "gerrymandered an additional five GOP seats, Ohio two, and Missouri and North Carolina one each, and other states are considering whether to follow suit."

California voters, in response, have just approved a map promising five additional Democratic seats, thanks to Governor Gavin Newsom's successful Proposition 50, which passed easily last Tuesday.

The justice department, meanwhile, has abandoned its decades-long defense of voting rights, The Guardian notes, "and in some instances – notably, a pending supreme court case that risks erasing a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – has switched to the side arguing against protecting minority rights."

The Department of Homeland Security has also slashed funding and cut staff at an agency dedicated to protecting elections from physical and cybersecurity threats, they note.

And, "despite grave concerns about this deterring or disenfranchising large numbers of legitimate voters," the Trump administration is "also demanding states hand over sensitive voter data and purge voter rolls."

Even if the Democrats prevail in the midterms, The Guardian notes, Trump has ulterior motives to thwart their victories.

"The administration has a multi-agency infrastructure set up to trumpet allegations of voter fraud and threaten legal action, including possible criminal prosecution of poll workers, election administrators, political adversaries and individual voters," they write.

Trump may also seek to "wrest control of voting machines from state and local officials, as he came close to doing five years ago," The Guardian says.

Prominent Democratic election attorney Marc Elias, who has an extensive track record of legal victories in voting rights and election litigation, is sounding the alarm.

"Those of us engaged in this fight are witnessing a wholesale attack on free and fair elections,” he says. “From executive orders to budget cuts, the Trump administration is undermining election security and promoting voter disenfranchisement.”

Governor Newsom goes one step further, saying, "“I don’t think Donald Trump wants another election."

Justin Levitt, a lawyer who served as a senior adviser on voting rights in the Biden administration, points out the obvious, saying Trump is overreaching.

“Donald Trump is a marketing machine, and what he is doing right now is marketing power he does not have,” Levitt says. “It’s an attempt to fool people. Trump’s primary power is the power we give him when he asserts he is in control of everything, and we believe him."

Jasleen Singh, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, agrees, saying not to give in to Trump's cult of personality.

"“The law is on our side,” she says. “We have the right to vote. We have the right to participate … Part of this is not letting voters forget the power that they have.”

Trump's increasing unpopularity, experts say, are driving his attempts to thwart the elections.

“Everyone is seeing the polls,” says Elisabeth Frost, an Elias Law Group lawyer. “Literally none of their policies are popular, so they are terrified of this election. The more Trump can say that the vote count can’t be trusted, the more it serves his purpose … Either voters will be repressed by laws or they will be repressed by misinformation and made-up bombastic nonsense.”

"“The same way he’s been painting the Oval Office with gaudy gold adornments,” Frost adds, “he’s been trying to pre-paint all these conspiracy theories so if the election doesn’t go the way he wants, he and his allies can point to the sea of litigation they’ve triggered."

Marpheen Chan, a Cambodian-American author and Maine voting rights advocate says it will all come down to the courts.

“Congress isn’t going to do anything, and the executive branch is overreaching,” he says. “We need to make our last stand in the courts.”