Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and has signaled he may do the same in Chicago.
Legal and constitutional experts worry Trump is laying the groundwork to use the Guard to seize control of any city he wants to bring to heel. On Monday, he signed an executive order that primes the Guard “for rapid mobilization,” across the country.
“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the President of the United States of America,” Trump said to justify the moves. “If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it.”
The president’s unfolding urban power grab — along with his ongoing attacks on mail voting, which he recently pledged to “get rid of” — have some observers fearing an even more worrying scenario: that the administration is laying the groundwork to deploy troops or law enforcement to the polls in key cities next year and in 2028.
Some top Democrats are echoing that alarm.
“I don’t think Donald Trump wants another election.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) warned Wednesday, predicting federal agents would be sent to polling places.
“This is not about fighting crime,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said Monday about Trump’s apparent plan to take control of Chicago. “This is about the President and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.”
In fact, there are fears we could soon see a test run for Trump’s plans in Virginia, which elects a new governor in November.
Such a move, wherever it happened, would threaten to keep large numbers of voters away from the polls, through intimidation, harassment, and delays, in Democratic strongholds. It could potentially even allow the administration to seize voting machines, claiming fraud.
Trump has mulled taking these steps before. Ahead of the 2020 election, he raised the idea of sending federal authorities to monitor the polls, falsely claiming a Democratic plot to commit fraud — a lie he maintains to this day.
“We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals (sic),” Trump told Fox News at the time.
And in the aftermath of the election, the White House drafted, though never issued, an executive order directing the defense secretary to seize voting machines.
Recent comments from several prominent MAGA figures have heightened fears about the threat to elections.
On his podcast, former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon urged Trump to “get these elections squared away”.
“They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places,” Bannon said. “You’re damn right.”
And at a recent Gateway Pundit conference, former Trump lawyer Peter Ticktin predicted an “emergency” was in the works.
“We’ve got problems in terms of the elections and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out, before the next election, that we’ll have an emergency called,” Ticktin said. “And with that emergency, we’ll be able to turn the tide.”
It’s not hard to see why Trump and his allies might fear a fair election next year. Trump’s approval levels now rival the lowest during Joe Biden’s presidency, and one leading polling aggregator found he has a -15 overall approval rating. Meanwhile, Democrats enjoy an eight percent lead on the generic congressional ballot.
If Trump does decide to use the military or law enforcement at the polls, Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, thinks he might try it first in Virginia.
Democrats hold the commonwealth’s House of Delegates by a razor thin 51-49 majority, while Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a loyal Trump ally, is leaving office.
That might provide Trump “an opportunity to conduct a ‘proof of concept’ operation for ‘election integrity’ purposes,” Eddington, a National Guard veteran and Virginia resident, wrote in an email.
In that scenario, Eddington would expect either Youngkin or Trump to start by “expressing concern” about potential voter fraud or other irregularities. Then Youngkin might ask Trump to call up Virginia National Guardsmen under Title 32 authority — a hybrid status that allows units to perform federal missions while technically remaining under the governor’s control — to “assist” state election officials.
“On election day,” Eddington wrote, “[Virginia state] police and/or [National Guard] personnel are deployed at polling places, primarily in areas with heavy Dem[ocratic] and/or minority voter demographics, for the stated purpose of ‘election security/integrity’ when the real purpose is voter suppression.”
Just the hassle from aggressive military and law enforcement patrols can discourage residents from venturing outside, as diners in D.C. can attest. The Washington Post reported that reservations at Washington’s restaurants have fallen by nearly a third since Trump’s takeover.
And if Democrats still won, Eddington believes that “Trump would claim voter fraud and challenge the election results in an effort to delegitimize” them.
Eddington acknowledged this is speculation.
But, noting that Trump refused to concede a certified election in 2020, he concluded: “It’s absolutely a plausible possibility.”