Democrats and activist groups plan to push back if Trump tries to
interfere in midterm elections
[September 15, 2026]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and MATT BROWN
Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an
operation for the midterm elections they're calling the "New Battlefield
Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places
in case armed federal officers show up.
Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries
to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are
distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the
government tries to seize ballots.
The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Donald Trump's
equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year's midterm
elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship
requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to
play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot.
The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a
marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once
stood as an example to the world.
“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have
now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.
Trump has given Democrats plenty of reasons to organize a resistance
Democrats say they have reason to plan for doomsday scenarios. During
his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe
Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career
officials and more establishment Republicans. Upon returning to power,
Trump has stocked his administration with those who helped his 2020
efforts, has used the federal government to target his political enemies
and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021,
attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification
of Biden's win.
Incumbent presidents' parties usually lose ground in the midterms, but
Trump has pulled out the stops to try to keep that from happening this
time. He's demanded Republicans redraw maps to create more safe seats
for themselves in the House of Representatives, held last week's unusual
midterm convention and tried to change election rules even as states
begin to send out ballots.
The advice for judges asked to approve search warrants for ballots, for
example, was inspired by the Trump administration's seizure of 2020
ballots and other election records in Fulton County, Georgia, which
includes Atlanta, based on old, disproven conspiracy theories.
Rick Hasen, a UCLA Law professor and director of the school’s
Safeguarding Democracy Project who helped write the guidance on
responding to voting machine seizures, noted that Trump has expressed
regret that he didn’t take more aggressive action to overturn the 2020
results, such as ordering voting machines to be seized.
“All these things take what was off the wall and put it on the wall,”
Hasen said. He said that while it is important not to unduly scare
voters about what might happen, it's "hard to walk the line between
alarmism and complacency.”
Trump's actions worry Democrats. Administration calls them common
sense
Last year, Democrats worried that Trump might intervene in off-year
elections in California, Virginia and elsewhere, only to have voting go
smoothly with no clashes with the federal government.
“The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by
extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation
that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and
other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” White House
spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Still, the stakes are far higher in the midterms, which will determine
whether Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress. So far
Trump has been unable to change voting procedures before the midterms.
Courts halted Trump's first attempt to reshape election rules via
executive order last year. The president backed a bill in Congress to
make even more sweeping changes but it's stalled in the Senate because
of opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.
Then Trump tried to limit mail voting by executive order, but the courts
again blocked it, saying the changes couldn't happen before the
midterms. That case is before the Supreme Court. Election officials warn
that it would be impossible to implement Trump's requirements in time
for this election.
Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the
National Bar Association last week announced an initiative to help
voters of both parties understand last-minute election rule changes and
to create a hotline for those who encounter trouble casting ballots.
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Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop
Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP
Photo/John Locher, File)
Concerns that polling places will become targets for immigration
agents
Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of
attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and
ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it's already
recruited a record number of poll watchers.
“The RNC has spent this entire cycle preparing not just to defy
history in November, but to protect it,” spokeswoman Ally Triolo
said. “We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in
Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every
legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our
elections.”
Democrats also have expanded their operations, and the Association
of State Democratic Committees is adding to that effort with its
“battlefield” recruitment project. That also will include a network
to share information about online threats and manipulation, said
Jane Kleeb, the chair of the group and of the Nebraska Democratic
Party.
“If they're saying they're going to put armed people outside polling
places, we should put friendly people outside polling locations to
film them,” Kleeb said in an interview. “There's a whole new
battlefield we have now.”
Kleeb was referring to widespread fears among Democrats that U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to the
polls, something that multiple administration officials for months
have denied will happen. There have been scattered instances of ICE
officers at polling places over the past year, usually saying
they're in pursuit of or investigating a specific person. Homeland
Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this month it's possible
that could happen again in November.
In an indication of the distrust of the administration's
reassurances, civil rights groups and the city of Denver last week
filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to formally bar ICE from
polling places. They cited a law dating to the Civil War era
prohibiting armed federal agents at election sites.
“This administration is basically using the rhetoric that
undocumented citizens are voting and that they’re going to have DHS
and ICE at the polls to try and intimidate and suppress the Latino
vote,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American
Citizens, one of the plaintiffs.
Activists see Minneapolis immigration protests as a midterms
model
A staple of the election buildup is a series of tabletop exercises
in which each side runs hypothetical scenarios to practice its
response. As part of that, Democrats and civil rights groups are
rehearsing for the possible deployment of ICE agents or the National
Guard to polling sites, although the Pentagon has said it has no
plans to deploy troops to the polls.
Levin, of Indivisible, said his group has run 17 different scenarios
preparing for what could happen in November. But the first priority,
he said, is to boost turnout.
The No Kings network, which has spearheaded large anti-Trump
protests over the president's second term and includes Indivisible,
is launching a campaign encouraging early voting that will peak with
rallies Oct. 17.
Others are organizing among both left-wing and more traditional
groups to push back if the administration is aggressive in November.
Some look to the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis as a possible
model.
Two activists were shot and killed by ICE agents during those
January demonstrations, and the administration eventually backed off
the aggressive crackdown the president had launched against the
city.
“We recognize there might be a similar moment in November, where
Trump attempts to do that again, where everyday working people and
students need to band together and say, ‘Actually, no, this is our
country, you don’t get to decide who gets elected or who gets to
take office,'” said Kidus Girma of the left-wing Sunrise Movement.
___
This story has been updated to correct the name of the White House
spokeswoman to Lauren Bis, not Lauren Blis, and the name of the
organization to the Association of State Democratic Committees, not
Association of State Democratic Parties.
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