What Time Is It? Fascism and the 2026 Elections

When you turn on the TV or your favorite podcasts, spend time on socials, talk to your friends and family and coworkers, what kind of conversations are you hearing and having about the 2026 midterm elections?

We’re being inundated with talk about:

• What positions are electable?

• How can we build the broadest electoral coalition possible?

• How can we transform the Democratic Party?

• What’s the ideal age, gender, experience, and charisma level of individual candidates?

• Are support for genocide, ignoring trans rights, or accusations of sexual assault red lines for individual candidates?

These are the wrong fucking conversations.

What if, instead, the conversations we had about these elections focused on topics like:

• What is this fascism that we face?

• What is it rooted in and what would it actually take to stop it?

• Can fascism be contained by the electoral process?

• The existential urgency of meaningfully confronting global warming

• The trajectory of increasing repression and opposition to fascism being prosecuted as terrorism

• The efforts to disenfranchise, denaturalize and dehumanize anyone who isn’t a white christian pro-capitalist cis-male

• How far have the fascists gotten in dismantling any checks on their power, including the integrity of the elections themselves?

• Is the Democratic Party capable of fighting fascism the way it must be fought?

• Are elections the only way that change is made?

• What would a movement capable of stopping fascism look like?

• How can people, including you, actually contribute to making that movement real right now?

So all of this is what Sam and Mark talked about this week on episode 298 of the Refuse Fascism Podcast. Listen in.

Note: this episode was published before the murder of Joan Sebastian Guerrero by ICE in Maine. We will have much more to say about that.

Those who insist that lobbying and the midterms will stop Trump fascism are asking people to place their hopes in a future the regime is actively working to foreclose. They are not preparing people to stop fascism—they are preparing them to live with it. Sam and Mark break down why that’s true, what the regime is doing to consolidate power, and what actually aligns with the stakes of this moment.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Heat Is Everywhere (Grace Blakely)

• Extreme Heat Takes Farming to the Brink (Counterpunch)

• Russell Vought’s Latest Plan to Gut the Government Should Terrify You (The Nation)

• The SAVE Act is dead. That’s not stopping Trump. (USA Today)

• Administration Demands States Change Voting Rules or Lose Antiterrorism Funds (The New York Times)

• ‘It’s threats, it’s intimidation’: Nevada secretary of state slams Trump DOJ letters targeting election officials over noncitizen voting (Democracy Docket)

• Trump DOJ to target Democratic strongholds for election monitoring: ‘The more eyes on elections’ the better (Democracy Docket)

• ‘Dangerous … reckless … desperate’: Trump’s firing of EAC leaders escalates his war on voting, election chiefs and lawmakers warn (Democracy Docket)

• Trump-appointed judge dismisses seditious conspiracy case against Proud Boys (The Guardian)

• What One Week of Trump News Says About Our New Normal (The Nation)

• Trump’s DHS Plans to Launch Its Own 24/7 Deportation Airline (The New Republic)

• The FBI Has Deputized Local Cops as Federal Agents. Communities Are Resisting. (Truthout)

• How Local Cops Are Running With Trump’s NSPM-7 Attacks on Antifa (The Intercept)

• FBI Raided Texas Activist’s House – Then Offered Her $200,000 to Become Antifa Informant (The Intercept)

• How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar (The New York Times)

• Refuse Fascism statement: America at 250: Ruled By An Illegitimate Fascist Regime On Track to Destroy the World

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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown