Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., plans to introduce a bill Thursday that would ban the president from sending armed military or federal agents to polling sites during American elections.
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The legislation, Slotkin said in a statement, would prevent President Donald Trump from “weaponizing our military and armed federal officers to interfere in our elections.”
The bill is backed by several other Democratic senators, including those representing electoral battleground states, like Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
NBC News has reached out to the White House for comment on the bill.
Earlier this year, Trump said in a podcast appearance that Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting” in at least 15 places. Later, in an NBC News interview, the president pointed to cities in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all battleground states — where Republicans should take over election systems.
His remarks drew outcry from local officials from both parties in those states. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., also pushed back on the idea of federalizing elections in the wake of the president’s remarks.
The comments, which came months after Trump deployed members of the National Guard to cities run by Democratic mayors over their objections, sparked fears among Democrats that the president could deploy armed military members to polling sites to depress turnout in certain cities.
According to Slotkin, the president is already prohibited under federal law from deploying armed military members or agents to polling sites, with one notable exception: “to repel armed enemies of the United States.” Legal experts also note the prohibition against such action by the president.
This bill, the “Protect Our Polls Act,” would require congressional approval for the president to send armed federal agents or military members to defend against armed enemies at polling places.
“The idea that a president would send troops or armed agents to polling places to intimidate voters is un-American and illegal,” Kelly said in a statement Thursday. “Federal law has protected polling places from military interference since the Civil War for a reason. President Trump has made clear he thinks he can ignore those limits. We’re making sure he can’t.”
In a January interview with The New York Times, the president did not dispute reporting that he considered deploying the National Guard to seize ballot boxes during the 2020 election, which he falsely claims to have won.
“I should have,” Trump said. He also did not rule out doing so in an upcoming election, but questioned whether the National Guard was “sophisticated enough” to handle such a request.
Slotkin has for months raised questions about whether Trump would deploy armed military members or federal agents to polling sites for this year’s midterm elections. In response to questions about it in April, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called the scenario a “gotcha hypothetical.”
Earlier, in February, a senior Department of Homeland Security staffer told state election officials that ICE agents would not appear at polling sites during this year’s midterm elections.
During this term, the president has already sought to interfere in state elections infrastructure as he continues to question the validity of the 2020 presidential election, which former President Joe Biden won.
In January, the FBI executed a search warrant at an elections facility in Fulton County, Georgia, seeking records from the 2020 presidential election. Officials at the Justice Department have also sought to obtain voter rolls from states, but their efforts have been shot down by federal judges in at least three instances, in Oregon, California and Michigan.
