Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig on Thursday warned President Donald Trump will soon “wage the final battle” against American democracy, explaining in a lengthy editorial published in The New Republic that Republicans could steal the midterm elections.

“Today, almost six years later, Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies are even more determined to prosecute the president’s war against American democracy to its catastrophic end than they were on January 6, 2021,” wrote Luttig, a conservative who was appointed by George H.W. Bush.

He continued, “That catastrophic end could well come on January 3, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats.”

Trump infamously refused to concede the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden and has repeatedly floated running for a third, unconstitutional term as a “reward” for the supposedly “stolen” election — with his lies sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Luttig warned that the MAGA leader has no intention of enduring yet another such humiliation.

“Trump and his Republican allies have been preparing for this final battle since January 6, 2021,” he wrote. “For the past six years, they have embarrassed themselves and the U.S. with their preposterous, win-at-any-cost denial that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.”

Luttig warned, “Trump’s every unconstitutional act in his effort to seize control over the midterm elections — each hailed by his prostrate Republican Congress — has been toward the end of ensuring that Republicans retain a majority in the 120th Congress.”

Trump is facing disastrous approval ratings amid a nationwide affordability crisis and his unpopular war on Iran, but has nonetheless decided to make the midterms a referendum on his supposed successes. However, many conservative pundits predict the GOP will face disaster at the polls.

Luttig rued how low Republicans have stooped during the Trump era, recalling that the party previously at least “professed to stand for the Constitution, principle, truth, honesty, integrity — even honor,” but now appears beholden to Trump and his suggestive demand for loyalty.

Trump has boosted numerous election deniers and installed loyalists at key positions in the Department of Justice. He has also tried to unilaterally change state and local election laws, insisted on unprecedented voter data access and threatened election officials.

The MAGA leader even openly urged Republicans to “nationalize” and “take over the voting.”

Luttig said Americans must “disenthrall” themselves from their “political bondage” to Trump, and left off with advice from former President Abraham Lincoln, who “urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time.”

“‘We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,’” quoted Luttig.

He continued with a warning, “The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from the MAGA political party cult. The writing is already on the wall, Republicans.”

Read the full editorial from Luttig at The New Republic.

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