As the 2026 midterm elections approach, the usual stakes of a congressional referendum are eclipsed by the fact that – unless something is done soon to prevent it – the Trump presidency is about to be skewered by its own mismanagement of domestic and foreign affairs. This much even President Trump will be acutely aware of.
Already in serious trouble according to the polls – approval ratings are at 36% to 38% – to arrest and turn around its self-inflicted rapid fall from grace, the Trump administration will need to resolve interrelated geopolitical and economic crises. This will require Rubicon-like decisions to be made.
Like Caesar before him, Trump knows that left unresolved, these crises will lead to political and, most critically, personal ruin.
Geopolitical Mismanagement
Abroad, the US-Israeli war against Iran – with its promises of ignominious defeat and plummeting support among ordinary citizens at home – presents few opportunities for a face-saving withdrawal.
Along with other strategic blunders, the Iran war has eroded US relations with its traditional allies in Europe. Washington’s unilateralism – combined with pressure on European allies to sever economic ties with Tehran and underwrite the war; his claims of Greenland, which have resulted in a security agreement Trump celebrated on social media as ceding “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in Greenland to Washington; on-again off-again tariffs; and so on – has put considerable strain on NATO. Much the same can be said regarding the Trump regime’s management of its involvement in the Ukraine war.
As a result, European leaders are beginning to show signs of diminishing faith in their gang leader – diminishing faith that must somehow be managed at the same time as rising fear. They are learning the hard way that mafia dons do as they please and gang members are compelled to do as they must or suffer the consequences.
These deteriorating relations have already produced economic and geopolitical liabilities that the Trump administration has shown itself to be ill-equipped to manage.
The midterm elections on 3 November 2026 could stop Trump dead in his tracks, reducing his presidency to a lame duck. A congressional defeat would enable an opposition legislature to invoke war powers, limit or stop funding, and launch investigations into the administration’s actions. Conversely, a victory would give Trump licence to continue to ignore conventional diplomacy in favour of a well-rehearsed “America First” doctrine based on duplicity, caprice, exploitation and extraction, and military might.
Domestic Economic Miscalculation and Electoral Manipulation
At home, the war with Iran has disrupted global energy supplies and those of other critical commodities like fertilizer, driving consumer price index inflation to 3.4%. While core inflation numbers have shown marginal declines, the prices of working-class consumables have risen significantly: the fuel oil price by over 52% and gasoline by 27%. Trump’s support base has been hit hardest by this.
Faced with mounting voter anger and disillusionment, at the Republican party’s recent Dallas midterm convention, Trump promised to give a $5,000 “dividend” check to every adult US citizen, contingent upon the party maintaining control of both chambers of Congress. A manoeuvre so desperate that it has even been questioned within his own party – by outgoing Rep. Ralph Norman who publicly balked at the $1.2 trillion price tag and labelled the scheme as “pay-to-play politics”.
Implemented or not, there could be no clearer signal of the Trump regime’s panic, and its contempt for the remnants of US political democracy.
Further evidence of such contempt can be seen in the regime’s attempts to manipulate voter turnout in other ways, revealed when the executive branch decreed that the US Postal Service restrict its mail-in voting procedures – a voting method widely used by his political opponents (Centre for American Progress, 2026).
While the US Supreme Court denied the White House’s request to fast-track these restrictions before November, it did so narrowly. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that while the Postal Service had the legal power to make these changes, the Court was blocking them solely because the election calendar allowed insufficient time to implement them properly (e.g., Mallon, 2026). The high court’s ruling has forestalled this manoeuvre, but the attempt itself confirms the Trump regime’s reckless disregard for the democratic process.
When Julius Caesar marched his legions across the Rubicon in 49 BC, he did so because returning to Rome as a private citizen without immunity would have made prosecution by his enemies in the Senate inevitable. For Trump, a decisive defeat in the 2026 midterms sets up an identical prospect when his term as president ends. While a loss on November 4 does not affect his presidential immunity or remove the protection of Trump v. United States 603 US 593 (2024), it guarantees two years of relentless congressional scrutiny designed to produce a legal trap that will snap shut the moment his term expires in January 2029.
The incentives for Trump to do whatever it takes to prevent electoral defeat could not be greater or clearer.
These and other authoritarian developments and prospects – the latest symptoms of an increasingly autocratic state (e.g., Balzano, 2026) – are in addition to those that had made Chris Hedges (2026) conclude in January this year that this election could well be the United States’ last.
Pre-Election Pre-Emption
Staring a resounding midterm defeat in the face, the Trump regime must resolve these reciprocally interdependent crises before November 3. This makes the intervening weeks an unprecedentedly dangerous period in an already highly fraught epoch.
Radical pre-emptive measures could include:
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The Geopolitical Sphere: In the Iran war, a last throw of the dice might entail an “October Surprise” attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, perhaps using tactical nuclear weapons; or another attempt to enforce a total naval blockade in the Gulf.
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The Economic Sphere: Here, Trump could invoke emergency powers to challenge central bank independence and then force interest rate cuts by executive decree; and/or, by invoking emergency statutes, introduce price controls on fuel and other selected consumer goods to provide a short-term consumer high just before the vote.
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The Electoral Sphere: If the other measures discussed are deemed insufficient, the Insurrection Act of 1807 could be used to quell manufactured civil unrest (Faguy, 2026). This would entail the deployment of federal troops or militarized border personnel whose real purpose would be to “secure” polling places with a view to suppressing voter turnout in heavily opposition-leaning urban districts (ACLU, 2026).
The Maniacal Flailing About of a Foundering President
You might well say that every day of a Trump presidency is heavily laden with uncertainty and catastrophic risk, so what’s new?
The novelty lies in the fact that the chances of something very bad happening in the next few weeks are multiplied exponentially by what can be inferred from the president’s rambling public statements, his unscripted tirades, and from medical commentaries on his rapidly deteriorating psychological state. The worsening symptoms of his documented malignant narcissism (e.g., Gartner, 2025) and observable cognitive decline reduce his already low stocks of executive restraint, long-term strategic calculation, and basic rationality virtually to zero.
Medical consensus emphasizes that dementia is an irreversible, “all downhill” neurodegenerative disease. When combined with malignant narcissism, the cognitive deterioration – that even to the lay observer has been evident for years, and which has drawn public warning letters from over 200 mental health professionals in the “Duty to Warn” movement – eliminates impulse control while heightening paranoia and defensiveness.
The chances of rash decision-making with catastrophic consequences of course rise accordingly – whether it be a “limited” nuclear strike in the Middle East or the domestic deployment of troops under the Insurrection Act.
Whatever happens, the crossing of Trump’s Rubicon will be driven not so much by careful calculation, but by the frantic, unmoored defensive/aggressive impulses of a rapidly degenerating mind and a hypersensitive ego.
In short, the stakes for President Trump have never been higher, and his dangerously volatile mental state has never been worse and is in steep and irreversible decline.
The world trembles in anticipation of what he might do.