Trump and the 2026 Midterms: Is American Democracy for Sale?

There are statements made during an election campaign that are simply designed to generate headlines, and there are others that deserve closer scrutiny because they reveal something deeper about the state of a democracy. Donald Trump's promise to give $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate belongs, in my view, to the second category. It is not merely an economic proposal, nor simply one of the many campaign promises that may be forgotten after Election Day: it is a political message that raises fundamental questions about the relationship between democratic consent, institutions and public money.

On November 3, 2026, Americans will vote in the midterm elections. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and approximately one third of the Senate will be contested. Midterms are the ordinary constitutional mechanism through which voters, halfway through a presidential term, can either confirm the existing political balance or change the distribution of power in Washington.

Trump, however, has chosen to turn this election into something different: a referendum on himself and his presidency. At the Republican convention in Dallas, he explicitly linked payment of the so-called "Trump Dividend" to a Republican victory in both chambers of Congress. According to estimates reported by American and international media, distributing $5,000 to every adult would cost more than one trillion dollars.

And this is precisely where the issue ceases to be purely economic.

In a democracy, it is perfectly legitimate to campaign on tax cuts, bonuses, public services, cash transfers or new welfare policies. Elections also exist to allow citizens to choose between competing economic programmes. It would therefore be legally incorrect, without additional evidence, to claim that every promise involving money automatically constitutes vote buying.

US federal law does, moreover, contain specific provisions addressing electoral corruption. Under 18 U.S.C. § 597, offering or making an expenditure to a person in order to induce that person to vote, refrain from voting, or vote for or against a particular candidate is a criminal offence.

Trump's promise, however, is formally conditioned on the overall electoral success of the Republican Party, rather than on proof that an individual citizen actually voted Republican. It would therefore be improper to transform a highly critical political assessment automatically into an allegation of criminal conduct.

The democratic problem nevertheless remains enormous.

Telling voters, in substance, that if your party wins Congress they will personally receive $5,000 changes the traditional language of an electoral promise. The message is no longer simply: "Vote for us because we will adopt a particular economic policy." It becomes much more direct: if we win, you will receive money.

It is precisely this overlap between political consent and individual financial benefit that deserves scrutiny, because it risks transforming the citizen from the holder of democratic sovereignty into the recipient of a reward promised by the political leader of the moment.

There is also a second issue, and this one is distinctly constitutional.

The President of the United States does not have unrestricted control over the federal Treasury. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gives Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare. More importantly, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 provides that no money may be drawn from the Treasury except as a consequence of appropriations made by law.

This is the constitutional principle known as the "power of the purse": the nation's purse belongs to Congress, not to the President.

Consequently, distributing a sum of this magnitude would require congressional involvement unless an existing statutory authorization already provided a lawful mechanism for doing so. A President may advance a political proposal, but cannot simply turn more than one trillion dollars in federal resources into personal cheques by presidential decree. The proposal currently lacks a clearly defined legislative and financial structure.

This, in my view, is the most troubling aspect of the entire affair: not so much the $5,000 themselves, but the progressive personalization of institutions.

The President does not own the federal budget, and Congress should not be reduced to an instrument through which the head of the executive implements personal political promises. Above all, voting should not be presented as a transaction in which a political force offers an individual financial advantage in return for remaining in power.

Constitutional democracy exists precisely to prevent this confusion by separating party from State, political programmes from personal interests, and executive power from the financial instruments entrusted to democratic representation.

In the United States, separation of powers is not a procedural detail. It is the architecture created by the Constitution of 1787 to prevent the concentration of political authority. Congress, the Presidency and the federal judiciary are not subordinate branches of a single political command. They have distinct constitutional powers and mechanisms through which they can check one another.

This is why the 2026 midterms have a significance that extends far beyond Trump.

Americans will not elect a President on November 3. They will elect Congress, which is supposed to constitute one of the principal constitutional checks on executive power. Turning that election into a personal plebiscite therefore alters its political meaning, even though it obviously does not change its constitutional rules.

The strategy is also risky for the Republican Party itself. Trump retains an exceptionally loyal political base, but he enters the midterm campaign during a period of significant difficulty in public approval, while some Republican candidates fighting competitive races have sought to maintain a certain distance from the Dallas convention. The economy and the consequences of the war with Iran are also weighing on the electoral debate.

On the other side, however, it would be far too simplistic to portray the Democrats as a united alternative ready to benefit automatically from Republican difficulties. The Democratic Party is itself experiencing significant tensions between its progressive wing and its more moderate faction.

The 2026 midterms therefore tell us more than the story of a presidency in difficulty. They reveal a polarization running through both of America's major political parties.

And the 2028 presidential race is already visible in the background.

JD Vance is using this period to consolidate his relationship with the Trump base and potentially position himself as Trump's successor. This demonstrates how the midterms are simultaneously an election about the present and the opening stage of the battle for the future of the Republican Party.

Perhaps this is also the question that should concern us in Europe.

What remains of a democracy when citizens are progressively treated not as holders of sovereignty, but as consumers to whom a political product must be sold? How resilient can a Constitution remain when loyalty to an individual becomes more important than the distinction between institutions, party and State?

The United States has built a substantial part of its international identity around presenting itself as a model of Western constitutional democracy. For precisely this reason, what is happening today deserves to be examined without caricature, but also without indulgence.

Trump's promised $5,000 may never be distributed. The proposal could be modified, restricted by Congress or abandoned altogether, as has happened with other political proposals. But its political meaning will remain.

A democracy cannot be measured solely by whether citizens are allowed to cast a ballot. It must also be measured by the quality of the relationship between voters and political power, the credibility of its institutions, the separation of powers and the fundamental understanding that public money does not belong to whoever happens to govern.

When the message becomes, "If I win, you get $5,000," the boundary between a political programme and an electoral transaction becomes dangerously thin.

And a democracy that begins to put a price on political consent should seriously ask itself how much the vote is still worth.