The history of the United States is replete with examples of white conservative groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, sending throngs of people to observe and intimidate Black voters at polling places.
The very Voting Rights Act that GOP-appointed Supreme Court justices have been effectively dismantling for decades, including just two weeks ago, features provisions specifically designed to protect against this kind of intimidation.
And that history looms over President Donald Trump’s touting of an “Election Integrity Army” that he has said Republicans will send to every state for this year’s midterm elections.
The president’s announcement came Sunday in a social media post in which he falsely accused Democrats of laying the groundwork for voter suppression. He basically attempted to sully a task force Democrats are standing up ahead of the midterms to protect against any offensive the Trump administration may wage on electoral processes this fall. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced the initiative late last month and said it would feature former Attorney General Eric Holder and liberal lawyer Marc Elias, both of whom Trump has repeatedly attacked.
It’s unclear what, exactly, Trump’s effort will entail, but his post said it will be larger than a similar GOP initiative in 2024. I’ll note here that Trump loyalist Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, previously pushed for the Republican National Committee to hire lawyers to challenge states’ electoral processes.
Meanwhile, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the idea of sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places during the midterms, while the president and his allies promote conspiracy theories about immigrants voting. Blanche doubled down on his stance last week, suggesting there would be nothing wrong with the agents being present.
But Trump’s ICE agents, whom a Reagan-appointed judge last year compared to KKK members, have become synonymous with his racist anti-immigrant crackdown. They have also been permitted by the conservative-packed Supreme Court to engage in racial profiling.
In other words: not the people you ideally want hanging around polling places. At least, not in a democratic society.
Since taking office, Trump has pardoned violent insurrectionists, said the U.S. “shouldn’t even have” midterm elections, told Republicans they should “take over” elections in Democratic areas and he literally deployed the military and other armed agents to “liberate” Los Angeles from a nonexistent “migrant invasion.”
Far from democracy, these are actions befitting a tyrant and other authoritarian movements of America’s racist past. Beware.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.