Curious about the claims/predictions that Trump would do what must be done to prevent a Democratic victory in the November elections, last week I assembled some serious reporting on these claims and posted what I found on Substack. A few more articles, focused on the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed Trump’s plans to control mail-in voting, found their way into last Sunday’s CFOW newsletter.
This week several more articles were posted on-line, including an excellent overview by Chris Hedges; but what intrigued me the most were reports of the unfolding disaster re: Pentagon leadership as a result of Sec. Of War Hegseth’s personal abrasiveness and incompetence. The question on my mind became: What if Trump/Hegseth told the military to deploy to Chicago or Detroit or someplace where there were protests against Trump’s election meddling, would the Pentagon obey orders? Evidence that this may be a real problem is presented below.
To recall: Trump’s desire to seize control of the November elections may have greater ambitions, but the bottom line is his determination not to let the Democrats win the House or the Senate. Now it seems possible that the Democrats will do this. Impeachment hearings, Epstein investigations, inquiries into Trump family corruption, and a zillion other things would follow. And Trump could no longer govern “with the consent of Congress”; if the Democrats win one or both Houses, Trump will have to rule with Executive Orders. The possibility of a Republic congressional defeat become ever more likely/possible, as Trump’s “approval ratings” have now sunk to their lowest level ever. I don’t see this changing.
And this just in (Wednesday afternoon):
Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz, “Trump Administration Begins Blitz to Find Elusive Voter Fraud Ahead of Midterms,” New York Times [Link].
---- “The extraordinary operation reveals the extent to which the Trump administration is searching for evidence of fraud ahead of the November elections. The government is privately calling the effort the Unlawful Voter Initiative and is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism.”
Aaron Blak, “The light is blinking red on Trump messing with the 2026 election,” CNN [Link].
CHRIS HEDGES’ REPORT
“The Next Election May be Our Last: - August 31, 2026
---- “The Trump White House has put into place a series of mechanisms to fix or invalidate the midterm elections. Congress will not save us. The courts will not save us. Our only hope — should the election be rigged or stolen — is nationwide strikes. Our only hope is to cripple the machinery of commerce and government, although this militancy will be met with savage state repression. Otherwise, we are doomed. There will be no exit.
If the measures advocated by the Trump administration are implemented, emergency powers will be invoked to assert unprecedented federal control over voting. Federal agents will seize election materials. They have already seized ballots from previous elections. The U.S. Postal Service will only send ballots to those included on federally approved eligibility lists drawn from state voter rolls. These rolls, subject to citizenship checks, will deny election-mail services entirely in states that refuse the administration’s demands for voter data.
Trump-backed mid-decade gerrymandering has already dismantled Democratic-held districts and created new ones for the Republican. Federal ID and citizenship-document requirements will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, including lower-income Americans who lack access to the required documents and married women whose current names do not match those on their citizenship records.
Federal troops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — with $113.5 billion in additional funding allocated by Congress through September 2029 — will be deployed to or near polling stations which have a traditional Democratic Party majority. Those branded as “anti-capitalist” and “anti-Christian” or charged with belonging to antifa will be intimidated or blocked from voting. The Republican majority in the House — regardless of the vote — will use its authority to certify election results to retain power, gaming the Electoral College and refusing to seat newly elected members of the opposition.” [Read More]
USING THE MILITARY TO “WIN” THE ELECTIONS
---- What tools do the Trump people have to use the military to win the elections? For me, this is still a study in progress, and the relevant laws are complex, but the basic outline is simple: federal troops, “federalized” national guard soldiers (from the states), FBI and other federal law enforcement people, and perhaps Trump’s brown-shirted ICE troops would be deployed to put down demonstrations and assemblies, invade and “monitor” polling places, and seize ballots and voting machines at the end of the voting day. In short, anything can happen.
The laws that would “allow” Trump to do this are complex, with many holes and acres of room for endless litigation. To take two examples:
-- The Insurrection Act (1807) is “the common name for statutes enacted by Congress — in 1792, 1795, 1807, 1861 and 1871 — governing when the U.S. president can use military force in response to an array of domestic crises,” according to a useful analysis in the Washington Post. The Act was modified with Amendments during and then after the Civil War. Based in the 1871 version of the law, according to the Washington Post analyst, the Act “allows the president to send troops when “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” prevents enforcement of state laws in a manner that deprives residents of that state of their federal constitutional rights. The statute requires the president to issue a formal proclamation before invoking any of these powers. But once he does, there is no intrinsic limit on how long he can use federal troops to enforce federal law.” – The Post analyst concludes his explanation by noting that the Act “may not be constitutional.”
-- “Federalizing the National Guard” (of a state) – state governors and/or legislators can “call out” their National Guard for a broad range of purposes. The question for the mid-term elections is, can Trump “federalize” the National Guard of a state, essentially incorporating it into the US Armed Forces, and can Trump “federalize” a National Guard against the wishes of the state’s governor or legislature? This latter question is obviously relevant, but is beyond me at the moment. The complexity of the issue is explained by the Brennan Center for Justice in “The President’s Power to Call Out the National Guard Is Not a Blank Check” [Link].
IF ASKED, WOULD THE US MILITARY OBEY A COMMAND TO INTERVENE?
---- This week there were several unusual developments among the military leadership of the Armed Forces and between them and Sec. Of War Hegseth. In part, they were the culmination of a series of events In which Hegseth acted disrespectfully or antagonistically toward this military leadership. And also in part, Hegseth has been revealed to be incompetent, for example in his handling of the Iran War, or in the procurement disaster, where the US now has a shortage of major defense systems,
Max Boot, a right-wing historian and military analyst, ordinarily in love with all things military, published an article in The Washington Post this week called “Hegseth’s purges are endangering national security.” He begins:
It was obvious from the start that appointing Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News weekend host — as secretary of defense was a spectacularly bad idea: He was, by far, the least qualified person ever to lead the Pentagon. So, too, was it obvious that Hegseth’s decision to fire more than two dozen senior officers and to block the promotions of at least 45 officers — for reasons he never explained — was a spectacularly bad idea that would deny the armed forces the veteran, apolitical leadership they need. What was not so apparent, until now, was the consequences of those decisions. They have created a dangers leadership vacuum that is jeopardizing national security and military readiness.
And he goes on, enumerating the Iran War disaster, Putin laughing at us, the poor use of intelligence, the many vacancies among the 4-star general staff, and the resignation (yesterday) of Secretary of the Army Driscoll. After listing more Hegseth sins, Boot concludes: “While all this is going on, the administration is trying to expand the defense budget to $1.5 trillion. But all the money in the world can’t make up for the crippling loss of leadership caused by Hegseth’s purges. Trump and Hegseth may be buying more hardware, but they are endangering the apolitical professionalism — the operating system — that once made the U.S. military the envy of the world.”
Boot, of course, is just a pundit, but it appears that he is accurately representing the thinking of much of the US military leadership, those still working and those recently fired. On August 30, 2026 the Washington Post published “Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations.” The article reported that “a recent classified assessment advised that prolonged large-scale operations in the Middle East risk weakening U.S. capabilities elsewhere.” The report described a general’s use of something called The Secretary of Defense’s Order Book to raise questions about the use of Naval forces. But more to the point, the article described several instances of 4-star generals questioning Hegseth’s policies and Hegseth ignoring what the generals had to say. The generals also warned against the damage caused by extended deployments of forces, as illustrated by the situation of sailors on board the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. “The military’s warning to Hegseth,” concludes the article, “offers new insight into the administration’s dilemma as Trump seeks to end the conflict on terms favorable to the United States while Iran, cognizant of the war’s unpopularity with most Americans and its mounting toll on the U.S. arsenal, refuses to capitulate. “
I think it is fair to hypothesize that the US military leadership hates Hegseth’s guts, and thinks he is an incompetent stooge endangering “national security” and the lives of thousands of active-duty soldiers and sailors. Presumably they are also at odds with those military leaders who, having favor with Hegseth, replaced leaders formerly admired but now fired.
In yesterday’s New York Times, former Secretary of the Air Force (under Biden) Frank Kendall wrote “Military Officers Can’t Look Away From This Any Longer.” Reviewing the military’s obligation to support the Constitution and to refuse to obey illegal orders, Kendall concluded with some remarks about the possibility that the military would be used to subvert the November elections:
“Although General Caine has indicated that there are no plans for the use of troops in the midterm elections, Mr. Trump has refused to rule out the possibility. No pretense of normality, no artificial distinction between policy and military matters, and no lawyer’s justification can relieve our senior military leaders from their oath, the burdens of their conscience, or of the judgment of the men and women they lead, the American people and history. From all of these, there is no place to hide.”
There may be little that “ordinary people” can do to affect the flow of likely clashes among the US political-military elite if Trump tries to subvert the elections or seize dictatorial power. But there may be quite a lot we can do. For openers, I think we must pay attention to the possibilities now swirling in the winds, We have a lot at stake.
