MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow weighed in on the 2026 midterm elections on Monday night (August 18) as she said President Donald Trump is trying to “rig” the elections to give Republicans ultimate control of Congress.

Maddow explained how Trump recently called on Texas to redraw their congressional districts, an effort to try and take five seats in the House of Representatives for the Republican Party. But it’s not just Texas involved in this map-moving effort, as the host shared on Monday’s edition of The Rachel Maddow Show.

“Vice President J.D. Vance flew to Indiana last week to put pressure on the Republican governor there to also rig the Indiana maps; for the Republicans in Missouri and New Hampshire and South Carolina and Florida to try to get those states to all rig their congressional maps as well,” she said, per The Wrap.

Maddow stated that if these efforts are successful, it would “effectively guarantee Republican control of Congress for years to come… demanding changes to congressional district maps to essentially make it structurally impossible for Democrats to control Congress. Again, using Republican-controlled states to do it.”

She then focused on how Trump recently demanded a “new” census, despite work on the 2030 census already underway. According to NPR, Trump said in a social media post that his idea of a new census would exclude millions of undocumented migrants.

“The census is how we get congressional districts, and if Trump can effectively nullify the existing census by blaming the counting of immigrants or something, by doing so, he will lay the ground for claiming that all the existing congressional districts in this country, which all only exist because of that census … are all somehow bad and they can’t be used,” Maddow explained. “Therefore, we can’t have congressional elections using the congressional districts that we thought we have.”

Maddow concluded the segment by claiming Trump has been taking ideas from his “best friend,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, when it comes to controlling elections. This stemmed from Trump posting on his Truth Social account that he intends to sign an executive order to end mail-in ballots and voting machines, deeming them “highly inaccurate.”

“Trump said Putin gave him advice on how to conduct elections here in our country,” Maddow shared. “Putin says that people shouldn’t be allowed to vote by mail. He says he got that idea from Putin. And so, today, Trump says that he will sign an executive order barring Americans nationwide from voting by mail and potentially banning voting machines as well.”