The January 2025 Coup

Usually, conspiracies and plots are hatched in complete secrecy. Conspirators gather in dark, windowless rooms, communicate in code and distribute information bit by bit. Only a few insiders know the plan in its entirety, its exact date and hour.

However, conspirators are currently planning the greatest coup d’état in the history of modern democracy in broad daylight. We know their goal, the actors and how they plan to do it. We also know it will take place in January 2025. Its objective is to restore Donald Trump to power, in the highly likely case that he loses the presidential election in November 2024.

In order to be elected president of the United States, you don’t need a majority of votes, but a majority of states. If you win the popular vote in a state by only a single percentage point, you win 100% of the Electoral College votes for that state (except in very rare exceptions). Last year, even though Joe Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump, his victory was only possible because of narrow majorities in a number of key states.

He won Georgia, for example, by only 10,000 votes. The Republicans, who control the state legislature, have since introduced two extremely effective measures. They are ending the experiment with mobile polling stations, popular in Black neighborhoods, and will now reject the votes of those who go to the wrong polling station, votes which had previously been accepted. If these measures had been applied last year, they would have flipped Biden’s majority by more than double. Georgia’s electors would have voted for Trump.

Arizona is another state that Biden narrowly won. When the vote takes place, it must be certified by a public official, the equivalent of a chief election officer. But in the U.S., this official is elected by a party. This has almost never been a problem; respecting the vote has become the norm. But we now live in a partially post-democratic world. The Trumpists, who control the Republican machine, are both deniers of Biden’s victory in 2020 and plotters actively preparing for the next election.

In Arizona, the Republicans who control the legislature want to shift the power to certify an election from the secretary of state, an elected Democrat, to the attorney general, a Republican.

In Nevada and Michigan, other states which turned to Biden, Trump’s team is attempting to elect Republicans to secretary of state positions in next year’s midterm elections. They will therefore be in a position to refuse to confirm victories for Biden in 2024.

The plotters are acting on several fronts. First, by trying to make it more difficult for Democratic voters to vote – Black and Latino Americans, those from lower classes – in order to limit or eliminate pro-Biden majorities. This is being followed by placing conspirators in key positions, people who can then use various pretexts to reject the majority vote, if the vote were to go to their adversary.

Preventing a repeat of Biden’s past victory isn’t enough. It is also necessary to prevent him from making progress. Election after election, Texas has slowly leaned toward a Democratic majority. But, in addition to major restrictions on the right to vote, local Republicans have just approved a measure which would allow the Republican majority in the legislature to refuse to accept the victory of a party, even without any evidence of fraud.

In the event that these strategies fail, Republicans have another way to block a future Biden presidency: preventing Congress from certifying his election. We saw this on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol riot, when 138 Republican House representatives formally refused to certify Biden’s election in multiple states. The few brave Republicans who refused to participate in this refutation of democracy are in grave danger of being replaced by Trump clones in the next election in 2022.

Democrats only have an eight-seat majority in the House. If Republicans win nine seats next year, they will hold the majority. Republicans expect to achieve this through restrictive voting laws, as we have seen. But they have another strategy: redistricting. Thanks to Republican control in some states, they have the ability to redraw 187 counties to their advantage, while the Democrats can only play this game in 75 counties.

So, a Republican majority elected to the House next year could certainly impede Biden’s legislative agenda. But Republicans will also have the power to block certification of Biden’s victories in enough key states to steal the election from him. In the event of a deadlock, the Constitution is clear: it falls to the members of the House of Representatives to elect the presidential candidate of their choice. This is to say, the Republican candidate, most likely Trump. The vote will take place in January 2025.

This is obviously a disastrous scenario. The worst case is not certain. But it is concerning to consider that the bulk of the Republican Party, its lobbyists, its elected officials, its governors, the billionaires who fund it, are all working relentlessly for this scenario to triumph. American democracy will face its most perilous test in modern times in the next presidential election.