Final Takeaways and Outlook for 2026

We’re just a few weeks out from the very first state primary elections of the year. And President Donald Trump and the GOP are, at the moment, unpopular.

As people around the country prepare to head to the polls to decide who will run in this year’s midterms, the president is once again trying to undermine the most basic functions of elections. He’s still spreading lies about past elections he lost and is now sowing seeds of doubt in the local elections process. There is no evidence to support Trump’s repeated, false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

In late January, the FBI seized boxes of 2020 election ballots and other voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which for years has been the focus of his baseless conspiracy theory that the election was rigged.

In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we explore what the president’s latest attacks on election integrity mean for the future of our democracy.

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