To the editor:
The president in his July 16 speech continued to lay the groundwork for physically interfering with the 2026 election by ICE, the military or the national guard or maybe all three. He claims he is very concerned about the integrity of our entire voting system. But again this is a situation of “watch what I do, not what I say.” He has dismantled key guardrails against election interference and he tried to interfere with the 2020 election post-election.
He has substantially cut back resources for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure agency which is responsible for protecting physical and digital election systems. This specifically includes eliminating over a dozen staff positions focused entirely on monitoring foreign disinformation campaigns.
He totally shut down the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information, Manipulation & Interference office, whose job was to counter online manipulation and propaganda from foreign actors like Russia, China, and Iran – the very countries he mentioned in his speech doing those very things.
His DOJ has declined to set up its traditional election “command center” used in prior elections to monitor and respond to fast-moving polling day issues like voter intimidation and coordinated disinformation. That same DOJ has deleted its 281-page manual on prosecuting election offenses and canceled regular election-integrity training sessions for federal prosecutors and FBI agents. And that same DOJ has dismissed a majority of the attorneys in the Public Integrity Sector and left the director position of Election Crimes Branch vacant.
After the recent Supreme Court decision giving him unfettered firing power, he abruptly fired the two Democrat commissioners of the bipartisan U.S. Election Commission and pressured the remaining Republican to resign (there are supposed to be six members but he never appointed any). There is now no one to administer federal grants to state & local election offices to strengthen the security of their election systems.
At his recent committee confirmation hearing, his Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche refused to rule out the deployment of federal agents to voting places in 2026. Trump has suggested ICE agents and/or the national guard should be sent to polling places during the 2026 elections and even before these hearings Blanche has defended doing so.
He explicitly ordered his then Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, to Atlanta to oversee the execution of a search warrant by the FBI to seize 700 boxes of voting records & ballots from the 2020 presidential election. The DNI has no statutory authority to engage in domestic law enforcement or local election investigations. Jay Clayton, the nominated DNI replacement, at his recent committee confirmation hearing claimed he wasn’t aware of what she did in Atlanta nor was he aware that Trump ordered her to do it. He dismissed it as hypothetical when asked if a DNI should participate in domestic law enforcement raids.
Both of these nominees are obviously not just willing but eager to do the bidding of the president in interfering with the 2026 election. We can expect to hear continuing baseless attacks on our voting system to justify physical interference with the 2026 election. What can be done to stop this plan? The first thing that can be done is to refuse the confirmation of these two nominees. Our two senators, Marshall and Moran, have two key votes. Will they have the courage to vote to save our constitutional democratic republic?
Ron Svaty
Ellsworth
