Hutzell: Election Day follows Halloween by 3 days. In 2026, it is much scarier.

I am afraid of war.

President Donald Trump said he won’t launch new attacks on Iran before Election Day on Tuesday. All bets are off come Wednesday morning.

“We have to finish up, and it’s only a question of which way. Do we want to do it the nice way or the not so nice way?” the president said during his recent appearance in Baltimore. “And pretty soon you’ll find out.”

Halloween is Saturday, a day for costumes and candy, jump scares and good-natured frights. It also should be a national day to carefully look at what scares us.

That can be a reality check, a communal discussion of whether we should fear the unexplained howl outside the window or dismiss it as a byproduct of a too-fertile imagination and a diet too rich in social media.

War is near the top of my frights.

The White House released an intelligence summary suggesting Iran is in the advanced stages of planning an attack — possibly on U.S. soil — to destabilize elections here or in Israel.

Is this real or pretext? We are in an unpopular war no one asked for, with shifting justifications. Counting on the administration that started it to tell the truth about the dangers days before an election requires a lot of trust.

Even more is required if we’re to believe that leaders who knocked the world economy a-wobble with fuzzy ideas about the use of force can keep from lurching into something worse.

And why is my news algorithm suddenly telling me that the leaders of Britain and, strangely, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission think storing three days of water, food and other essentials is a good idea?

The WSSC was participating in Imagine a Day Without Water, highlighting aging water infrastructure. Its call to store three gallons of water per person for three days had nothing to do with Be Prepared in Britain, a campaign about climate disasters and power outages.

It’s just about being prepared. Honest.

I am frightened of the election shamfuggery that could counter a blue wave.

Maryland resolved the president’s attempt to interfere with voter rolls and mail-in ballots.

“Resolved is a relative term, right?” said Jared DeMarinis, Maryland’s elections administrator. “It’s resolved for the 2026 election.”

For this election, at least, he’s focused on assuring voters their ballots will be counted, whether by mail, during early voting or on Tuesday.

“My job is to administer the election and to worry about every possible scenario and plan and have contingencies,” he said. “A voter, you know, should not feel intimidated or threatened to vote.”

DeMarinis can’t worry about what happens beyond Maryland. The rest of us can.

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche set the stage in Alaska. Justice Department lawyers preemptively asked a federal judge to block certification of results if Democrat Mary Peltola narrowly beats Republican Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan because retired teacher Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is also on the ballot.

Dan No. 1 is marked as an incumbent, but the administration is worried voters aren’t smart enough to distinguish him from Dan No. 2. Now it looks like he may be a Democratic plant.

“At least let him use the name Sen. Dan Sullivan as opposed to incumbent,” Trump said Sunday, “because a lot of people don’t know what incumbent means.”

The administration seems equally poised to discredit unfavorable results in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, where the balance of power in Congress will be decided.

I fear the Democrats.

If anyone can waste a political moment, it’s the Democratic Party.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is on the cusp of becoming the first Black speaker of the House. He has a 100-day plan ready, promising votes to restore Affordable Care Act tax breaks, reverse Republican Medicaid cuts, undo Trump’s tariffs and force the president to end his war with Iran or seek congressional approval.

Democrats must simultaneously rebuild Congress’ relevance and pursue Trump world grifters. They have to go after corruption so effectively that it discredits complaints about weaponizing government from the people who weaponized government.

Without a clear Senate majority, the danger is prolonged congressional virtue signaling that accomplishes nothing.

The 2028 presidential campaign, which begins Wednesday, complicates this with ego and ambition.

We should all fear what Trump will do next.

In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy launched a morally repugnant political ad targeting his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. It featured her estranged mother and so cruelly twisted charges that Acton’s stepfather raped her at age 12 that it could decide the election.

“A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote Sunday.

“We are better than this. We have a responsibility to show it. Today, we endorse Democrat Amy Acton for governor.”

Trump and Vice President JD Vance saw it differently, praising Ramaswamy for a bare-knuckled campaign.

The next 24 months could easily bring more of that kind of thinking.

Groups opposed to the administration’s purge of immigrants regularly use social media to post warnings about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Some fear the Justice Department will use a 2025 national security memorandum to label them domestic terrorists.

Trump has ignored Republicans’ control of Congress, and there’s no reason to believe he’ll be any more bound by Democrats.

The result could be a constitutional crisis unlike any we have seen so far, with a suspect U.S. Supreme Court majority holding the outcome in balance.

If the president has an opportunity to appoint another justice, Democrats might follow former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s 2016 example and refuse to approve a nominee until after the next election.

Trump is unlikely to mimic President Barack Obama’s failed attempt to rally public opinion and a sense of fair play to get around it.

Trick or treat. We’re about to find out what’s real and what’s paranoia.

That’s what scares me most.