“We are taking strong, joint legal action to block Donald Trump's threats to deploy federal agents, including ICE and FBI agents, to polling places this November. Sending armed federal agents into American neighborhoods to intimidate voters is not only wrong – it's illegal and would mark a new and extremely dangerous escalation of this administration's disregard for the rule of law and repeated attempts to rig the midterms. … Federal law explicitly forbids voter intimidation and stationing armed federal agents at polling places. Our case is clear, and we're confident we'll defeat Trump in court yet again.
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The Justice Department Says It Will Send a Record ~1,000 Monitors to the Midterm Polls — and a Senator Asks the Pentagon to Put in Writing That It Will Not Send Troops or Seize Ballots
August 18, 2026
Two announcements eleven weeks before the November 2026 midterms put the question of federal presence at American polling places back in front of Congress. On Monday, August 17, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told Bloomberg Law that the department would deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors in November — "probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration." Dhillon said the monitors would observe rather than intervene, would be trained on the same materials used by previous administrations, and would watch for language-access and disability-access barriers as well as suspected fraud. The number is many times what the department has typically fielded, and it lands as President Trump repeatedly predicts Democrats will "cheat" to retake Congress and after his call for Republicans to "nationalize" elections. The next day, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine asking them to confirm in writing that the Defense Department "will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind." She pointed to Trump's 2020-era consideration of using the military to seize voting machines, his National Guard deployments to cities over Democratic governors' objections, and the 2025 deployment of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles. The Pentagon said it would respond through normal congressional correspondence channels; the Joint Chiefs did not comment. Hegseth, asked a version of the same question at an April 2026 hearing, called it a "gotcha hypothetical" but said he had never been ordered to do anything illegal and would not follow such an order. Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee had earlier blocked a Democratic amendment to strengthen the existing statutory bar on federal troops at polling places. Democrats had already gone to the department about the monitors: on August 3, 2026, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine led a ten-senator letter pressing DOJ to confirm the program would stay within its statutory limits and would not target jurisdictions on partisan lines. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, whose state saw monitors during the summer primary, has filed public records requests seeking the factual basis for the deployments.
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17 Statements
“We are taking strong, joint legal action to block Donald Trump's threats to deploy federal agents, including ICE and FBI agents, to polling places this November. Sending armed federal agents into American neighborhoods to intimidate voters is not only wrong – it's illegal and would mark a new and extremely dangerous escalation of this administration's disregard for the rule of law and repeated attempts to rig the midterms. … Federal law explicitly forbids voter intimidation and stationing armed federal agents at polling places. Our case is clear, and we're confident we'll defeat Trump in court yet again.
“The right to vote, and to do so without fear of intimidation, is fundamental to our democracy and to being an American. Stationing ICE agents near polling places is only meant to scare people and suppress votes. We'll fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
“ICE isn't there to patrol the polling places. We're there to enforce specific threats.
“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.
“The Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections. Likewise, the Joint Force has no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election-related material.
“Election administration and security remain the fundamental responsibility of state and local officials.
“I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections.
“I’m really shocked. I mean this is the state that went overwhelmingly [for Trump] more than any other state. I don’t like that; I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes either.
“We were delighted to let them participate as observers. But as "monitors," as per Wyoming state law, they weren’t allowed to go interview voters; they weren’t allowed to check the tabulators. Those are the sorts of things that could potentially put an election at risk. It could have been done in advance, in a far less disruptive way.
“They did not offer their credentials until I requested they do so. Wyoming law has no provision for election monitoring.
“Voters deserve absolute confidence that their ballots are secure and their voices are heard without interference. We are working alongside local officials to ensure every lawful vote is protected.
“He's very clearly laying the breadcrumbs to be able to say the day after the election that he didn't really lose the House or he didn't really lose the Senate.
“I'd ask you to confirm a simple statement: the Department of Defense will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind.
“We just did it in the primary. We will do it to the tune of approximately 1,000 election monitors in the November election. This is something that DOJ does.
“Election monitoring is an ongoing priority for this office. Nondiscriminatory monitoring ensures all elections remain free, fair, and accessible to all.
“probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration
Background (2)— earlier statements that set the stage▸
“U.S. elections are safe, secure, and fair. The Department's election monitors program must not be used to undermine that fact.
“Federal election monitors will focus only on their statutory ambit and will not target jurisdictions in a partisan manner. The Constitution clearly assigns states and territories the primary responsibility for administering elections.