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Maniac Monday’s Madmen Reel: Jacobin’s Revenge! Wait for the kicker at the end of this video clip. "We will arrest" Trump officials "using our Capitol Police, and we will reconstruct a jail on the Capitol." Political scientist Norman Ornstein warned that Donald Trump could seize on election-day disorder to declare an emergency. In one scenario he outlined aligned groups would spark violence at polling places; Trump would then announce that events were “getting out of control” and amounted to a “left-wing conspiracy,” invoke the Insurrection Act, send in the military, and attempt to suspend the elections. Ornstein noted that while the statute does not formally hand the president control of the vote itself, it confers “tremendous power to basically control everything.” He added that the same tool could be used after the ballots were cast. After the election, Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act simply to freeze an “appalling status quo” and convert the country into “a full-fledged police state.” Looking further ahead, Ornstein argued that survival of the current crisis would still leave unfinished business. Once a Democratic president takes office in 2028 alongside a Democratic Congress, he said, “we need a trial similar to Nuremberg. We need to hold these people accountable.” Allowing the present wave of corruption and contempt for the rule of law to pass unpunished, he warned, would only embolden the same actors: “If we let these corrupt monsters get away with their actions, they will say, ‘Wow, next time we’ll do even more.’” In the nearer term, Ornstein urged a Democratic House and Senate to abandon conventional deference. Subpoenas, he insisted, must be enforced by Congress itself rather than referred to a hostile Justice Department. “If you defy a subpoena,” he proposed that the new majority declare, “we will not simply refer the matter to the Justice Department for criminal contempt of court. We will arrest you using our Capitol Police, and we will reconstruct a jail on the Capitol and hold you until you are ready to testify.” The goal, he explained, is to “play rough” against the officials who have already shown they will stall and defy. That accountability, Ornstein stressed, should focus first on cabinet-level and senior administration figures rather than a third impeachment of Trump. Most Americans, he said, still do not grasp the scale of abuses already committed by officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and others who have dismantled food-safety and transportation safeguards. Even without immediate removal of the president, Congress must “reveal the truth,” hold “these corrupt individuals accountable,” and set an agenda so that, when full power is eventually obtained, those responsible face consequences. Relentless, issue-by-issue hearings, he concluded, are the practical means of informing the public and forcing the press to cover what has so far been allowed to pass. These explicit calls for a Nuremberg-style reckoning, the reconstruction of a Capitol jail to detain officials, and the aggressive pursuit of cabinet-level prosecutions reveal the lengths to which certain political actors are prepared to go in order to challenge legitimate presidential authority during and after an election. This is why voters must choose common sense candidates in this midterm cycle. The modern Jacobins are out for blood, and only a decisive choice at the ballot box can save our republic.