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Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Days after President Donald Trump suggested that Republicans should “nationalize the voting” in Democratic districts, his former White House adviser telegraphed another way Trump may seek to prevent a free and fair election later this year: illegally flooding polling places with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
'You're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,' Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Tuesday.'We're not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again,' he continued. 'And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.' What Bannon proposed would be in direct violation of state and federal law. As Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program, explained back in October: The law is crystal clear: It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place. In fact, it is a federal crime for anyone in the US military to interfere in elections in any way. More specifically, it is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to deploy federal “troops or armed men” to any location where voting is taking place or elections are being held, unless “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” ...It is also a federal crime for anyone, including federal agents, to intimidate voters. Anyone who does so may be liable for a number of different federal criminal offenses.While Trump has not explicitly said ICE should be deployed in 2026, he has said he regrets not deploying the National Guard to seize voting machines during the 2020 election, which he attempted to overturn with a litany of disproven fraud allegations.He has since followed through somewhat on this desire, sending the FBI to seize 2020 election materials from a voting hub in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of what the FBI said was an 'investigation' into election fraud, which he said caused him to lose the election to former President Joe Biden.It's unclear how, if at all, ICE may figure into his goal, stated earlier this week, to have Republicans 'take control of the voting in at least 15 places,' which would violate the constitutional right for states and localities to administer their own elections. He has, however, used ICE to demand that Minnesota—a key swing state in 2026—turn over its voter rolls to the federal government in exchange for a withdrawal of agents who have killed three US citizens over the past month and unleashed a wave of violence and civil rights violations.Expressing fear that Republicans will be trounced in November’s midterm elections—which polls currently indicate is likely—Trump has also recently suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should simply be “canceled” outright. Sen. Chris Murphy said all of this adds up to a frightening picture.'Donald Trump can't win the 2026 election, so he's putting in place a plan to steal it,' he said in a video posted to social media. 'That is not hyperbole. That is not conspiracy. He is literally doing it, and telling you he's going to do it every single day.'Murphy said, “He wants the federal government, meaning Donald Trump’s MAGA loyalists, to run elections in places like Georgia and Minnesota, and probably Pennsylvania and Texas and Maine—anywhere that there’s a race that might determine control of the House or the Senate.”Trump's threats come amid negotiations in Congress over whether to provide additional funding to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security . Democrats have said they will not provide the necessary votes to fund DHS unless certain reforms are put in place to rein in the agency's abuses—such as requiring agents to wear body cameras, carry identification, and obtain judicial warrants before making arrests. Rep. Dan Goldman , who voted against the bill Tuesday to extend DHS funding for two weeks while negotiations continue, has said Democrats must also pursue guarantees that ICE will not be used to interfere with elections.'We must not agree to another dollar for ICE until we add my amendment blocking the federal government from seizing voter rolls, ballots, or voting machines,' he said on Tuesday. 'If the House GOP is serious about election integrity, they will agree that elections must remain run by states, not rigged by a wannabe dictator.'Sen. Ed Markey agreed: 'This is a red alert moment... We have to start working to protect polling places from Trump's paramilitary ICE goons before it's too late.'
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