As Election Day approaches, top Democrats on the intelligence committees in Congress are preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump will allege foreign interference to discredit unfavorable results.

And they want leading U.S. intelligence officials to be immediately reachable if he does.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, outlined the scenario — one of among 50 they say they’ve considered — with reporters on Wednesday, less than two weeks before voting ends in the midterm elections.

“So when the president makes that announcement, you answer your cellphone to give us information about what’s happening,” Himes said the Democrats have told Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has ramped up efforts targeting noncitizen voters, with arrests across the country, and is attempting to block suspected noncitizen voters from having their ballots counted in California. Democrats and voting rights advocates have warned for months that Trump could try to interfere in voting in the midterms.

All of it comes as Trump stares down the possibility that voters will place Democrats in control of Congress — an outcome that could doom his legislative agenda and mire him in investigations.

“We’re making the assumption that the president is not going to accept the results of what looks to be a very challenging election for him and his party,” Himes said.

But amid the highly publicized campaign against noncitizen voting, Democrats have kept an eye on the possibility that Trump could instead invoke a foreign threat to justify an attempt to assert control over elections or undermine the results, even as the Trump administration has cut federal support for election security.

China ‘election meddling’?

When Trump delivered a primetime address on election security in July, he spent a significant portion of the speech describing what he called China’s “sinister election meddling.” He said China had acquired 220 million voter files and the White House released declassified intelligence reports on the vulnerability of voting machines to foreign hacking.

Trump floated the possibility that vote totals could be electronically manipulated or that voting machines could change results. He suggested that election websites, poll books and voter registration databases could be vulnerable to exploitation by foreign adversaries.

“This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference,” Trump said in the July speech.

The speech was met with sharp criticism from election security experts, who noted that the United States maintains a decentralized election system that makes any attempt at widespread interference extremely difficult. 

For instance, every state except Louisiana uses paper ballots or generates some form of paper record for each ballot cast, according to data compiled by Verified Voting.

“Can we pre-bunk the notion that he may come up with a fabricated or single piece of intelligence that could be used as a reason to take illegal action?” Warner said, describing the Democrats’ thinking.

As a hypothetical, Himes outlined a scenario in which Trump announces at noon on Election Day that Iran has kicked off an operation to interfere in the election. Himes said he would go on TV and say he has received no briefings and no information, giving him no reason to believe the president’s comments are accurate.

“Now, does that end the crisis? No, but that’s the first step,” Himes said.

Doubts about interference

Warner and Himes belong to the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of high-ranking lawmakers who receive classified briefings on matters of intelligence and national security.

The pair drew a sharp distinction between foreign interference — which includes things like messing with voter rolls and attempting to alter results — and foreign efforts to influence elections, such as social media bots spreading certain messages. 

Himes said that, as of now, “we are not seeing either the capability or the intent to interfere.”

He also said lawmakers haven’t received pre-election reports about the election threat landscape required by law. 

In July, Himes, along with Democratic Reps. André Carson of Indiana, Joaquin Castro of Texas and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, wrote in a letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, that the intelligence community had missed a report on election security vulnerabilities and foreign intelligence threats to federal elections that was due on May 7.

The ODNI didn’t respond to questions from States Newsroom on Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement that Trump had done more than other previous president to ensure free and fair elections. She said the president is making clear that anyone who votes illegally “will be held accountable.”

“While extreme Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud, the Trump Administration is taking decisive action to protect our elections including prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion,” Bis said.

Reductions in workforce

The Democrats’ planning for a claim of foreign interference comes as the Trump administration has reduced cybersecurity resources for state and local election officials. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which typically plays a large role in election security efforts, has lost roughly a third of its workforce since Trump began his second term.

Trump has attacked CISA — a component of the Department of Homeland Security — under the leadership of previous director Chris Krebs, who worked to debunk misinformation after the 2020 election. Trump fired Krebs less than a month after the election. DHS has previously proposed eliminating CISA’s election security program, a $39 million initiative. 

Jennifer Morrell, CEO and co-founder of The Elections Group, a nonpartisan organization that provides trainings and other resources to election officials, said the Trump administration “essentially decimated” CISA. Morrell said she had been a contractor for the agency.

“We lost years of work building our cyber and physical security infrastructure,” Morrell said Thursday during a University of Pittsburgh panel discussion on election integrity.

In September, Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, and Rep. Joseph Morelle, a New York Democrat, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and CISA Acting Director Nicholas Andersen that CISA hadn’t provided any funding to its Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, despite instructions from Congress to continue funding the program.

Padilla and Morelle noted that the center had for years provided security services to local election offices at no cost before funding was abruptly cut in early 2025. While the center continues to provide some services through a paid membership model, they wrote that it lacks its former reach.

Briefing urged

On Wednesday, Himes and Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, urged Mullin to brief lawmakers on election security efforts. In a letter, they wrote that state and local election officials “are under tremendous pressure this election cycle.”

Homeland Security didn’t answer questions from States Newsroom on Thursday.

In some of the country’s largest jurisdictions, the consequences of the federal pullback have been muted. Big counties, with hundreds of thousands or even millions of residents, often have their own sophisticated cybersecurity programs.

Monica Gordon, the clerk of Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, praised her information technology team. In a call with reporters, the Democratic official said her office was fortunate to have the latest innovations to protect voters’ information.

“We’ve been very fortunate but I am concerned about some of our smaller counties that have less resources,” Gordon said.

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at Election Center, an organization overseen by the National Association of Election Officials, said on the same call that states this year are leaning on their own resources because of the changes at CISA. Election officials have also relied more on help from nonprofit groups, she said.

State and local officials have done a great job of finding needed funding to replace some of those services and ensure sensitive systems are protected, said Morrell.

“But state officials and local officials cannot gather intelligence about threats from foreign nation states,” Morrell said, adding that “we’ve lost sort of the ability to be quickly alerted to that type of intelligence.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — The latest cosponsor of a U.S. House bill to provide single-payer health insurance defeated a Republican incumbent in a suburban and rural Oregon district by fewer than 10,000 votes two years ago.

U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat now seeking her second term, doesn’t have the far-left profile of past Medicare-for-All champions whose mission failed in Congress.

But the policy is popular in her purple district that stretches from central Oregon to the edges of Portland, and aligns with her values as a lawmaker, she said at an October event with the bill’s lead sponsor, Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

“If you ask me anything about my politics, I’ll tell you it’s about agency and freedom,” Bynum told a crowd at Portland Community College. 

“There’s a lot of Americans that have paid into a system, meaning going to work every day, trying to live the American dream, trying to just be good people, and yet this country can’t promise that you can go to the hospital or go to your doctor and not be bankrupted.”

Bynum and Jayapal argued support for single-payer healthcare, long sought by the party’s most progressive members, is growing. And it is one demonstration that voters are in an anti-establishment mood, spurring a possible Democratic takeover of Congress after next month’s elections.

Dissatisfaction with high prices, made worse by President Donald Trump’s unpopular war in Iran, along with aggressive tactics on immigration, have Democrats in a favorable position less than two weeks from Election Day, polling shows.

After a sometimes-bitter primary season, shared policy goals on affordability for Americans and accountability for the Trump administration have bonded the party’s left wing and its establishment factions, analysts say.

But as Democrats eye a likely House majority, and possible U.S. Senate control, they will soon face decision points about the rest of their legislative agenda — and which wing of the party it favors.

Class of 2026

On successive Tuesdays in June, four House Democrats running for reelection, three in New York and Colorado’s Diana Degette, lost primaries to challengers backed by the far-left Democratic Socialists of America. 

Observers and campaigners, including Republican leaders, were quick to describe the ascendancy of far-left views in the Democratic Party.

But that narrative is somewhat out of step with a qualitative analysis, according to an August study from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

Of 64 DSA-backed members running in Democratic congressional primaries this year, 19 won, according to Brookings. Only one, Will Lawrence in Michigan, is seeking to represent a competitive district. 

The ideological makeup of the caucus next year will be “about the same,” the study’s author, Elaine Kamarck, said in an interview. 

Kamarck, the director of Brookings’ Center for Effective Public Management, has worked for the Democratic National Committee and presidential campaigns.

While the rhetoric of the House Democratic Caucus might be more progressive in tone next year, many members of the incoming class from blue districts are replacing progressive lawmakers, Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic campaign operative, said.

Practically, progressive House newcomers are likely to accept incremental wins rather than hold out for a future product, he said.

“Is that DSA member, if there’s a piece of legislation on the floor that is going to strengthen healthcare, and might not be everything that that member wants, are they gonna vote it down?”  he said.

To Trump they are ‘lunatics’ 

Republicans have used the media attention on the often young, progressive primary winners to criticize the entire party.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, sought to make the primary winners, all of whom are almost certain to join Congress next year, the face of the entire party.

“The barbarians are inside the gate,” he said at a July 14 press conference. “We’re fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic or we’re going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism. That is the question on the ballot this fall.”

Republicans continue to campaign nationwide against progressives in general, especially Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat who defeated establishment candidates to become the nominee for the state’s open U.S. seat.

“From Chuck Schumer to AOC, moderate Democrats no longer exist,” RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre wrote in a Thursday email, referring to the Senate Democratic leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of New York. 

Trump has also falsely painted El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, as a terrorist sympathizer. The attack appears based only on El-Sayed’s race and religion. He was born in the United States to parents from Egypt. 

Republicans, including Trump, have sought to tie even centrist candidates to El-Sayed and far-left ideology.

In a speech in Kansas in late October, Trump criticized Adam Hamilton, a preacher who is the Democratic nominee challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, as “pretending to be a moderate.”

“In 15 days, we’re going to reelect Roger Marshall,” he said in a late October speech in Kansas, referring to the state’s incumbent U.S. senator. “We’re going to defeat the communists, the jihadists, and the corrupt anti-American lunatics once and for all.”

Size of majority 

But Democrats and experts say the establishment Democrats, especially on the House side, will retain control in the caucus, even if their numbers are bolstered by new left-wing members.

Election analysts predict Democrats will pick up between 10 and 20 seats in the House next month, which would give them a majority of 13 to 29. The party is projected to pick up two to six Senate seats, leaving party control a toss-up.

A larger cushion in the House would give Democratic leaders more room to maneuver in the majority, Mollineau, a former Senate staffer, said. Internal division is more likely with a smaller majority, where any single member could be a deciding vote, he added.

But even with a smaller majority, the disparate wings of the party agree on enough of an agenda to keep the chamber busy, he said.

“There’s a lot of shared interests that you will see in this caucus they can pursue and move the ball forward, without getting into fights every single day on ideology,” Mollineau said.

That will likely continue as long as Trump is in the White House, Kamarck said. Divisions would emerge, she said, if Democrats take both chambers and the presidency in 2028.

“As long as defeating Trump and his folks are on the agenda, Democrats are going to be pretty united,” she said. “You will only see the depth of these issues when we get the trifecta.”

The overall mood of the electorate minimizes any problems Democrats may have, Lee Hannah, a political science professor at Wright State University in Ohio, said.

“I think it was an ideal year to have some of these challenges” in primaries, he said.

Lawrence, the former DSA member running in a swing Michigan House district, is an example of someone who may not have succeeded under different circumstances, David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in Michigan, said.

That is a sign the party is changing, with an expanding progressive wing, he said.

“I think the messages that those candidates are taking to the Democratic base are being noticed,” he said. “And people are thinking, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good.’”

Mood for change

The primary-season distinction was less between progressive and centrist Democrats and more between establishment and anti-establishment candidates, Mollineau said.

El-Sayed’s campaign has targeted Trump voters in northern Michigan with “a similar anti-establishment” message, Dulio said.

Jay Ward, a Medicare recipient at the Bynum-Jayapal event, said growing frustration with the healthcare system has increased the attractiveness of a single-payer model.

“I think different members had different solutions,” he said of past Democrats. “And I think times have changed.”

Jayapal made a similar point in an interview before the event, predicting that more swing district Democrats would support the measure.

“I’m really thrilled that we have people like Rep. Bynum, like Rep. Shomani Figures in Alabama, these are folks that represent really tough districts,” Jayapal said. 

“It’s unfortunate that this cruelty that American families are dealing with right now has gotten us here, but I do think there’s an opportunity here,” she said. “I think that we’re going to see more and more folks in the Democratic Caucus signing on that are not just in blue districts, that are in tough districts, that are even in red districts.”

She said the bill would receive a committee markup in a Democratic House next year.

Hannah Winchester, a political and community organizer with the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Practitioners, said following the event that her organization does not have an official position on Jayapal’s bill, but does seek to endorse candidates whose goal is universal high-quality healthcare.

“I think we all know something needs to change,” she said. 

Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman made a surprise video appearance Wednesday at the GOP convention in Dallas, praising Republican Sen. Dave McCormick while vowing the pair of Pennsylvanians would continue working with President Donald Trump to “defend the steel way of life right here in the Steel Valley.” 

The brief, pre-recorded appearance, which wasn’t advertised on the convention’s schedule, showed a deepening rift between Fetterman and mainstream Democrats. The video boosted speculation that Fetterman could switch parties.

“Yes, I’m a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I’m a common-sense Democrat,” Fetterman said in the video, where he stood in front of a U.S. Steel mill in Braddock, Pennsylvania, roughly 10 miles outside Pittsburgh. 

Fetterman also distanced himself from a wave of progressive Democrats, some affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, who have won primaries this year.

“I’m always going to stand with America,” he said. “I’m always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life.”

In addition to a more ideological divide with Democrats over issues such as Fetterman’s strong support for Israel amid the continuing war in Gaza, Fetterman has taken heat from former aides who told The Wall Street Journal that he is indifferent toward his job.

Wednesday’s video introduced McCormick before the GOP senator took the convention stage. 

Fetterman lauded McCormick as “the kind of senator that gets the job done” and is “going to fight for Pennsylvania.” 

“I have this opportunity to introduce this great American, a great senator, and yes, he’s in a different party, but I’m proud to count him as my great friend,” he added. 

Dems mock video

Democratic members of Congress criticized Fetterman’s cameo at the convention.

“A year ago I labeled John Fetterman ‘Trump’s favorite Democrat,’” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, posted to social media. “Tonight, he yet again proves why.”

Delaware Democratic U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride compared Trump’s presidency to a historic disaster.

“Being a Democratic politician who decides to speak at Trump’s midterm convention is like boarding the Titanic after it hit the iceberg,” she wrote.