Slotkin presses Hegseth, Caine to pledge no troops at polls
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- Elissa Slotkin sent letters Tuesday to Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine asking DoD to confirm it "will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind," citing Trump's 2025 deployments of National Guard to cities and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles as part of a pattern "laying the breadcrumbs" to contest midterm results.
- Hegseth characterized Slotkin's similar ballot-seizure question at an April congressional hearing as a "gotcha hypothetical," adding: "I've never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won't."
- White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump using the military to suppress voting in the midterms was "categorically false, will not happen," but provided no on-record commitment from the President.
- Federal law prohibits armed federal forces at election sites unless "necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States," making state-controlled National Guard the more likely vector for any military election role.
- Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, responding to a parallel 2020 letter from then-Rep. Slotkin, wrote: "In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military."
Why it matters: Slotkin's shift from verbal questioning to a written demand forces Hegseth and Caine onto the record before November — silence now reads as non-commitment. Federal law already constrains federal troop deployment at polls to repelling armed enemies, meaning any election-day military role would more likely route through state-controlled National Guard, relocating the political fight to governors and state legislatures rather than the Pentagon.
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