Totalitarian Threats to US Democracy in the Shadow of the Hungarian Elections

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Yesterday and today, The Review of Democracy (or RevDem) published my new analysis of the Trump/Republican threats to rig or simply negate the results of the 2026 US midterm elections.  Although I originally wrote it as one (long) op-ed, the editors sensibly broke it in two and published the parts under separate titles:

"The Threats to Nullify (or Ignore) the US Midterm Elections are Very Real," and

"US Midterms: Will The Results Matter?"

My analysis in those op-eds expands upon my Dorf on Law column from two months ago, "What Would "Nationalizing the Election" Look Like, and Could It Be Stopped?"

Interestingly, RevDem is an especially important outlet right now, because it has been a key part of the opposition to Hungary's so-called "illiberal democracy."  When I wrote my first op-ed for them last November, I noted in passing in a Dorf on Law column that RevDem "is the online journal of the CEU Democracy Institute (the non-university part of Central European University, which Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban drove out of Budapest several years ago)."  It is thus gratifying to see my warnings about growing autocracy in the US published in that journal.

Orban's overwhelming defeat in the April 12 elections in Hungary is rightly being described as an important reminder that even locked-down autocracies can be vulnerable to the people's will.

I will have more to say about all of this, of course, but I am aware that people have limited free time, which means that it would be unrealistic to hope that they could read the RevDem op-eds and then read another full piece here.  I will thus stop for now, returning tomorrow with some additional thoughts.

- Neil H. Buchanan