Sue Halpern, writing for The New Yorker, has the story regarding what I think is the most important thing that’s likely to happen between now and the next election—If there’s even going to be one.

So far, it’s a tossup which of the Trump Administration’s wrecking balls will prove most destructive: the one that accelerates global warming, the one that abandons our allies, the one that torches the economy, or the one that compromises public health. Yet all of these are distractions from the President’s long-standing pet project: decimating free and fair elections. It may be that we have become so accustomed to hearing Donald Trump’s false claims about rigged elections and corrupt election officials that we have become inured to them, but in the past seven weeks he has pursued a renewed multilateral program to suppress the vote, curtail the franchise, undermine election security, eliminate protections from foreign interference, and neuter the independent oversight of election administration. And, as with the rest of Trump’s calamitous agenda, he is doing it in full view of the American people.

Democracy is a complex machine. Trump, Musk, and his Cabinet are systematically dismantling its core components.

First, they are targeting election security. For years, they’ve been chipping away at voter verification processes, compromising ballot handling procedures, and undermining the integrity of voting systems.

I expect 2026 will be a trial balloon to see how much they can get away with at the Federal level. What they learn will be crucial to 2028. The goal is to make future elections either impossible or irrelevant. Trump, if he’s still alive, will undoubtedly run in 2028 and it won’t matter who he runs against.

He will hold all the cards and there won’t be a trusted authority to turn to or established process to fall back on when questions inevitably come up about the results. This might even happen if it’s Vance or some other Republican running.

This is how democracy dies – not through outright revolution, but through a calculated dismantling of its foundations.