Slotkin Presses Hegseth, Caine to Keep Troops Out of Midterms
The Michigan senator wants written assurance the Pentagon won't send federal troops to polling places or seize election materials in November.
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin on Tuesday asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to publicly commit that the military will stay out of November's midterm elections.
"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," Slotkin wrote in letters to both men.
The Pentagon said it will respond directly to Slotkin, as it does with all congressional correspondence. The Joint Chiefs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Slotkin told The Associated Press that President Trump has been "laying the breadcrumbs" to claim the midterms were stolen if Republicans lose control of Congress. She pointed to Trump's consideration of using the military to seize voting machines after his 2020 loss, his deployment of National Guard troops to cities over the objections of Democratic leaders, and his use of active-duty Marines in Los Angeles during the 2025 immigration crackdown.
Slotkin had asked Hegseth a similar question during an April congressional hearing about whether he would follow an order to seize ballots. Hegseth called it a "gotcha hypothetical" but added, "I've never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won't."
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles denied last year in an interview with Vanity Fair that Trump would use the military to suppress voting in the midterms, calling the idea "categorically false."
Federal law bars the deployment of armed federal forces to election locations unless "necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States." Any military involvement in elections would most likely fall to the National Guard under state control.
In 2020, then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley responded to a similar letter from Slotkin, then a member of the House, writing that he believed "deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military" and that election disputes must be resolved by courts and Congress, not the military.
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