President Donald Trump has never seen an election that he didn’t think was fixed. In each of his three runs for the presidency, he falsely claimed widespread fraud. In 2020, he tried to overturn his loss, first through the courts and then in the streets. Now back in power, and with federal troops deployed to multiple cities run by Democrats, there are mounting concerns that he could use his power as commander in chief to deploy the military during elections.
“He’d like to stop the elections in 2026 or, frankly, take control of those elections. He’ll just claim that there’s some problem with an election, and then he’s got troops on the ground that can take control if, in fact, he’s allowed to do this,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said in August as Trump threatened to send troops to Chicago.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, noted that Trump’s recently extended the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles that began in June amid anti-ICE protests through Nov. 5, when California voters will go to the polls to vote on Democrats’ plans to redraw the state’s congressional district maps in response to Texas’ recent mid-decade gerrymander that eliminated five Democratic seats in the state.
