Trouble at the Polls
The Trump Administration Threatens States Ahead of the Midterms
On the evening of July 16, 2016, President Donald Trump addressed the nation on national television. He began by ranting about three major stations — ABC, NBC, and CNN — that chose not to cover the address live, prompting the president to say that the FCC should revoke their licenses. Next, the president launched into a full-scale attack on the integrity of the American electoral system, alleging that:
There were major vulnerabilities in the system that opened it to foreign hacking. He singled out electronic voting machines as especially vulnerable. He said they should not be used in future elections (most electronic voting systems produce a paper trail recording each vote physically. In fact, in the 2024 election, 98% of votes were cast on systems that produced a paper record).
That China tried to interfere in the 2020 election. He presented as evidence the fact that China stole 220 million American voter files. What he failed to mention was that American intelligence assessed that China was stealing voter data to better target the American population with social media propaganda, not for election interference or tampering.
Claimed that large numbers of non-citizens are illegally registered to vote and remain active on voter rolls. Trump cited a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) review of state voter rolls and public records that “identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.” He added that because “Democrat states refuse to share their voter files the real number is actually much higher than that,” and that “even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.”
The president vowed to release long-held intelligence reports on foreign meddling in the 2020 election, “but a trove of intelligence documents that Mr. Trump declassified in hopes that they would bolster his assertions arguably made a stronger case that a different country — Russia — had meddled in the race,” the New York Times reported recently.
THE RESURGENCE OF POLITICAL TERRORISM CONFERENCE
Earlier that day, Trump’s two main advisors—Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—hosted a forum titled, “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” In front of delegates from 60 countries in Europe and Latin America, both Rubio and Miller launched into a widespread attack on “left-wing extremism and terrorism.”
Rubio and Miller described left-wing violence and terrorism as the preeminent threat of the time to the security of the United States. Never mind radical Islam, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia, or domestic right-wing extremists—it was domestic anti-ICE protesters that really threatened the might of the US empire.
Rubio called left-wing violence a “distinctive and unique evil”. “It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself,” he said.
Miller went further, describing left-wing political violence as a “fatal cancer to civilization.” Unchecked, it “always becomes a Gulag,” Miller told the gathering. “It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering, in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror.”
The most disturbing aspect of Miller’s speech, however, was the way he dehumanized his nemeses, describing far-left “terrorists” and activists as physically “deformed.” “Why is there not one normal-looking person among them?” Miller asked rhetorically. “Every one of them, through the course of their life and their decisions, has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways to the point in which their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred.”
THE DHS THREAT TO STATES
In his speech on the 16th, Trump announced that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to notify every state about non-citizens on their voter rolls and to direct the removal of all ineligible voters immediately. He also urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which he said would require photo voter ID (and related citizenship verification measures).
The next day, on July 17, 2026, newly-appointed Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin issued a threat to states that refused to cooperate with his department to examine state voter rolls.
Incredibly, he even threatened prison for state officials: “If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said.
The Trump administration previously threatened election officials with jail time. In July, the Justice Department warned all 50 states and Washington D.C. that they could face criminal charges if they counted ballots from noncitizens in upcoming elections. Last year, high-ranking Justice Department officials looked into charging state or local election officials with crimes.
THE ENDGAME
Taken together—the President’s speech, Rubio and Miller’s conference on leftist terrorism, and Mullin’s threats to state election officials—was a direct and loud threat to their political enemies, the integrity of the American electoral system, and the upcoming midterm elections.
According to a recent article by media company Zeteo, a coalition of Democratic Party operatives, liberal attorneys, state governors and attorneys general, and state election officials, are currently wargaming out scenarios where the Trump administration and Republican Congress attempt to suppress the Democratic vote or steal the election outright.
“The Trump administration is engaging in numerous dirty tricks, intimidation tactics, and voter suppression salvos during this election cycle,” the article states. “But perhaps the most depraved among the lot is the administration’s ongoing public threat to sic men with guns – FBI agents, ICE officers, or even U.S. troops – on voting sites or election offices in counties that President Trump has deemed enemy territory, to both intimidate Democrats and potentially even seize ballots and election materials.”
Normally, under the Constitution, it would be almost impossible for any President to send armed forces to polling sites. Still, President Trump has shown many times he can carry out the unimaginable—such as the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021.
However, the Trump administration would likely need a believable pretext to initiate a militarization of the midterm elections. A pretext and the invocation of emergency powers like the Insurrection Act in order to federalize state National Guard forces and move them, and federal agencies like ICE, to polling sites.
These scenarios are the stuff of nightmares, but certainly possible. President Trump has made it clear that if the Democrats win big in the midterms, he will not only be impeached, but his entire administration might face prosecution. He has everything to lose, and this election is existential for him and the Republicans. Those facts make the situation that much more dangerous.
The midterm elections are three months away. Between now and then, many things can happen. This journalist will certainly be paying close attention to how both sides prepare for November. Stay tuned for more reporting.
NOTE: I discuss the specifics of the Insurrection Act and how Trump may use it in a previous article, “The Insurrection Act—and Martial Law—is Coming.”