Chuck Schumer Reveals He’s Running Tabletop ‘Doomsday’ Exercises With Dems to Prepare for Next Election

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer revealed that Senate Democrats are conducting closed-door “doomsday” exercises to prepare for what he described as worst-case scenarios surrounding November’s midterm elections, saying the party cannot afford to be caught off-guard.

Speaking after a two-hour simulation on Wednesday, Schumer told MS NOW’s Ali Vitali the planning was necessary to prepare lawmakers for a range of hypothetical threats before, during, and after Election Day, including disinformation campaigns, voter-roll disruptions and other scenarios that could affect the administration of elections.

“We have to prepare for it,” Schumer said. “What these so-called tabletop exercises teach us is when you’re prepared in advance, you can stop a lot of bad, bad things from happening. A lot of the stealing that [President Donald Trump] will do, but if you just wait for them to do it and then try to react that day? Not good.”

The gathering, attended by nearly a dozen Democratic senators, was the second such session Schumer has convened this year and the first since Trump’s recent primetime address questioning the integrity of the U.S. election system.

Schumer said one scenario examined how local authorities could respond if federal immigration agents were deployed near polling places: “What we would do is work with the local Houston Police Department, Dallas Police Department, Bexar County, San Antonio Police Department and figure out ways to stop this ahead of time.”

The Democrat pushed back on the idea that role-playing worst-case election scenarios risked undermining public confidence: “In a vacuum, you might be right. But Trump is trying – and all his people are trying – to scare elections. They threaten the election officials.”

“If you could do a truth serum and give it to Republican senators, about 80% of them would agree he’s trying to steal the election. The trouble is, they’re too scared to say anything about it,” Schumer insisted. “But if we keep at it and keep at it and keep at it, every so often you get someone on our side. And the more we do that, the greater chance we have of stopping them, but of also winning elections so we can prevent these bad things from ever happening again.”

The exercises also followed renewed debate over election security after New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill disclosed that a software error had led to thousands of noncitizens being registered to vote in 2023 and 2024, with several hundred ballots ultimately cast before the issue was corrected.

Schumer dismissed the incident as a “machine vendor issue,” arguing it did not support Republican calls for new voter identification legislation.

Reflecting on the unusual preparations, Schumer acknowledged he had never undertaken this type of planning in more than four decades in Congress but said Democrats could not allow potential election disputes to derail their broader agenda.

“You have to show that you can both stop Trump and try to have government move forward,” he said. “You have to. If every time Trump did one of these things we just froze, he’d win.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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