Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee blocked a Democratic effort Thursday to strengthen existing bans on federal troops entering polling stations or seizing ballots or voting machines, two senators told MS NOW.
Democrats called the Republicans’ opposition to the measure “deeply alarming” and predicted that President Donald Trump would deploy federal troops in an effort to interfere in this November’s midterm elections, which polls suggest his party will lose.
“I introduced these amendments to protect our free and fair elections from military interference,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said. “It’s deeply concerning that none of my Republican colleagues on the committee voted to include it.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he feared the party-line vote was a sign that Trump and his Republican allies would try to use the federal troops to sway the outcome of the midterms.
“Republican opposition to barring use of federal troops at the polls is deeply alarming, signaling this extreme step is part of Trump’s agenda to suppress voting,” he said. “I’m fearful about it portending illegal domestic deployment of our military.”
The Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Slotkin said she first proposed that the committee adopt an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which approves the annual defense budget; the amendment would have prohibited the use of any funds to deploy federal troops to seize ballots, voter rolls, voting machines or other election materials.
After that amendment was voted down, she proposed a second amendment to require that Congress be notified of any deployment of troops to polling places for the only exception to the blanket federal ban: to repel “armed enemies of the United States.”
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Slotkin cited two moves by the Trump administration as evidence that the president intends to interfere in the election: Trump told The New York Times in January that he wished he had signed a draft executive order in December 2020 that would have sent the military to seize ballots in Michigan. And during an April Senate hearing, Slotkin asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if he would pledge not to send federal troops to polling stations.
“That’s not a hard question,” Slotkin said. “Time and time again, Secretary Hegseth has dodged, deflected and tried to change the subject.”
Slotkin said the amendments also included language intended to prevent U.S. military forces from facing pressure to carry out illegal orders. Slotkin was one of six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in November urging members of the armed forces not to obey illegal orders. Trump accused them of “seditious behavior” and directed the Department of Justice to prosecute them; that case was dropped in February.
“I introduced these amendments to protect our free and fair elections from military interference and intimidation, and importantly, to protect the military and service members from the exact kind of illegal orders I warned about last year,” Slotkin said.
Slotkin said Trump’s recent claim that elections in California are “rigged” is a way of laying the groundwork for him to improperly interfere in the midterm elections or refuse to accept the outcome.
“This is in line with the president saying over and over again that if his side loses, the election is rigged, including as recently as yesterday,” Slotkin said. “It’s deeply concerning that none of my Republican colleagues on the committee voted to include it.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.