House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN over the weekend and told reporter Manu Raju that Republicans are cooking up a “diabolical scheme” to steal the 2026 midterms. You know, the same midterms Democrats have been insisting they’re absolutely going to win… except most of them would probably need to cheat to have a chance.
I have a hard time thinking anyone with a brain would vote Democrat after all the damage they’ve done, but I understand not everyone has a working brain these days.
Jeffries told Raju that Democrats are “on the verge” of taking back the House and making him the first Black Speaker in history. But then Raju asked if anything kept him up at night, and Jeffries let it rip. “Well, you have to assume, as we’ve done from the very beginning, that Republicans are going to try to come up with any diabolical scheme to prevent Nov. 3 from being a free and fair election,” Jeffries said.
When Raju pressed him on what exactly he meant, Jeffries said, “We’ve been planning from the very beginning to push back against all of the voter suppression efforts that they’ve tried to jam down the throats of the American people. Now up until this point, we’ve successfully stopped their scheming.”
Raju then asked the obvious follow-up: is cheating really the only way Republicans can hold onto power? “I’ve been saying that from the beginning!” Jeffries replied. He did not, however, name a single specific scheme he was actually worried about. Not one. Classic move: maximum alarm, minimum details. Very helpful, Congressman.
For more on what Jeffries actually said word for word, Jeffries CNN midterm election interview has the full rundown of his Sunday appearance.
Here’s the part that should make Jeffries and his friends at CNN very uncomfortable. While Jeffries was busy conjuring Republican boogeyman plots on television, PBS reported that the Trump Department of Justice is preparing to deploy 1,000 election monitors across all 50 states on Election Day. That’s more than double the 388 monitors the Biden DOJ sent out during the 2022 midterms. One thousand federal monitors, coast to coast, guided by federal statutes. But sure, Republicans are the ones trying to steal the election.
According to PBS, a senior DOJ official confirmed these monitors will include DOJ lawyers and will focus on ensuring voting rights laws are followed. Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, described the job of an election monitor as “pretty passive,” saying “they’re there to just do as their name suggests, which is to observe.” So the party Jeffries is accusing of rigging elections is the one doubling the election watchdog force. Meanwhile, Jeffries is on CNN making accusations he can’t back up with a single concrete example.
It’s funny how Democrats spent years telling us that questioning elections was a threat to democracy. Now, a month out from the midterms, Jeffries is on national television warning of diabolical Republican plots without naming a single one. If Democrats lose in November, we’ll know exactly what talking point is coming next. Stay tuned for the post-election “scheme” press conference they’re clearly already writing.
