As the January 6 committee holds its last pre-midterm hearing, the US’s next coup is on the ballot

Today’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack will be its last public session before the November midterm elections, and its final chance to make an argument to voters before they head to the polls in a few weeks (notwithstanding the fact that many voters will cast their ballot before then, either in person or by mail).

Former president Donald Trump’s behavior leading up to the riot has been the focal point of the hearings thus far, which have covered every aspect of his attempt to steal back the 2020 election even as many in his administration explicitly told him he had lost.

What the hearings have also made clear is that one of the crucial reasons why Mr Trump’s efforts failed was that public servants at every level of government – from Democratic secretaries of state Jocelyn Benson (Michigan) and Katie Hobbs (Arizona) to state Republicans like Rusty Bowers (Arizona) and Brad Raffensperger (Georgia) – refused to bow to his demands.

As tragic and bloody as January 6 was, after the dust settled, the would-be usurpers failed, and Congress certified Joe Biden as president. In the end, vigilant guardians of democracy truly “stopped the steal,” to borrow a phrase.

But so far, less public attention has been paid to another threat: the US is slowly but steadily slouching toward the next coup.

For all that Republicans hope that this one won’t be as bloody as the events of 6 January 2021, it could be more successful. That’s because a shocking number of anti-democracy Republican candidates are running to win power at every level of government, including in offices whose current holders formed a bulwark against Mr Trump and his outriders.

Congress, for one, will likely look quite different come January. Republicans are generally favored to win back the House majority in November; with control of the chamber, they could easily prevent the certification of an election of a Democratic president.

They have already rehearsed this. Even after the Capitol was attacked by a violent horde of Trump supporters, 147 Republicans voted to object to the election results. So did almost every member of House GOP leadership, including would-be speaker Kevin McCarthy; the notable exception was Representative Liz Cheney, the 6 January committee’s vice chairwoman, who will leave the House at the end of this year after losing her re-election primary to a Trump-backed challenger.

Her only Republican select committee colleague, Adam Kinzinger, will also be gone, having decided against seeking re-election, while six of the other eight Republicans who voted to impeach Mr Trump over the riot will leave Congress having lost their primaries or opting to retire. They will surely be replaced by Republicans who would have voted the other way.

The coming changes don’t stop at Congress. If there’s one ray of hope, it’s in Georgia, where Mr Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, both of whom rebuffed Mr Trump, look set to win reelection. But in Arizona, the aforementioned Ms Hobbs is locked in a tight gubernatorial race against Kari Lake, a hardcore Trump convert who has called for the decertification of election results in both her own state and Wisconsin. (My colleague Andrew Buncombe profiled her here.)

In Nevada, meanwhile, QAnon-flavored candidate Jim Marchant stands a real chance of winning the secretary of state job; he has repeatedly promoted lies about the election result. Meanwhile, Rusty Bowers, the Arizona state house speaker who rebuffed Mr Trump’s advances, lost his primary for state senate.

The implications of this cohort taking power are extremely grave. But despite the 6 January committee’s efforts, it is not easy to focus voters’ attention on something as ponderous as the control of state bureaucracies, and the national midterm cycle has for the most part revolved around other matters, with national Democrats highlighting the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v Wade while Republicans try to zero in on inflation.

The mechanisms through which the US enacts decisions about abortion, crime, inflation, climate change and every other issue are being slowly subverted by would-be bureaucratic insurrectionists. The next coup attempt is already happening – and Americans could be sleepwalking into it.