{"id":19283,"date":"2026-02-23T19:32:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/dem-ags-plot-to-thwart-trump-election-interference\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:32:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:32:30","slug":"dem-ags-plot-to-thwart-trump-election-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/dem-ags-plot-to-thwart-trump-election-interference\/","title":{"rendered":"Dem AGs plot to thwart Trump election interference"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democratic attorneys general are bracing for President Donald Trump to interfere in the midterm elections \u2014 and war-gaming how to stop him.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s top prosecutors have been strategizing for months about how to counter a series of increasingly extreme scenarios they fear could play out this fall. They have huddled in hotel conference rooms and over Zoom meetings to run tabletop exercises anticipating the president\u2019s moves and choreographing responses.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re preparing for the administration to potentially confiscate ballots and voting machines, strip resources from the postal service to disrupt the delivery of mail ballots, and send military members and immigration agents to polling locations to intimidate voters. They\u2019re readying motions for temporary restraining orders to preserve election materials and remove armed forces from voting sites.<\/p>\n

And, as the president attempts to assert federal control<\/a> over elections, seize voter data<\/a> and relitigate false claims of fraud from 2020<\/a>, they\u2019re monitoring Trump and his allies\u2019 every word about elections for clues about what his administration could do next.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Trump] wants to continue to have his party prevail, seemingly by whatever means necessary,\u201d California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. \u201cSo we have to be ready for that, sad and tragic as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic attorneys general, some of whom battled Trump\u2019s election-subversion tactics in the courts in 2020, have already challenged the president\u2019s efforts to overhaul election administration and access sensitive voter data<\/a> ahead of a midterm contest that could turn him into a lame duck.<\/p>\n

Nineteen of them banded together to sue the administration<\/a> last spring over Trump\u2019s sweeping executive order targeting voting rules<\/a>, most of which has since been blocked by courts. When the Department of Justice dispatched election monitors to polling locations in New Jersey and California last November, Bonta deployed his own observers in his state in response<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the president\u2019s more recent moves have prosecutors ratcheting up their preparations for November, five Democratic attorneys general said in interviews.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Trump called on Republicans to \u201cnationalize\u201d voting<\/a> and suggested the federal government should intervene<\/a> in election operations in swing-states’ predominantly blue cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia \u2014 places that have been central to his election conspiracy theories for years. House Republicans passed one set of voting restrictions and are teeing up another<\/a>, though the measures are unlikely to clear the Senate. And Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem raised alarms among Democrats when she said her department is working to ensure \u201cthat we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies\u2019 rhetoric is the type of \u201cred-alarm fire that people need to take very seriously,\u201d said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, who leads the Democratic Attorneys General Association\u2019s election protection working group.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will try anything,\u201d Brown said, so \u201cwe have to just sort of think creatively about: If you were the president and you were trying to invalidate an election or undermine an election, what are the oddball, ludicrous, unconstitutional theories that you might advance?\u201d<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson fired back in a statement accusing Democrats of \u201cplotting to undermine commonsense election integrity efforts supported by a vast majority of Americans\u201d and arguing existing law gives the Department of Justice \u201cfull authority to ensure states comply with federal election laws, which mandate accurate state voter rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cThe President has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting to ensure the safety and security of our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic attorneys general have panned the SAVE Act<\/a> as an attack on the right to vote and urged Congress not to pass it and other measures Trump is pushing.<\/p>\n

They also fear the Trump administration could aim to intimidate legal voters by sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling locations.<\/p>\n

ICE chief Todd Lyons said in a congressional hearing earlier this month that there\u2019s \u201cno reason\u201d for ICE officials to be deployed to polling facilities<\/a>. But MAGA influencer Steve Bannon<\/a>, a former White House strategist, is encouraging the president to take that step to prevent noncitizens from voting, despite its rare occurrence<\/a>. He\u2019s also urging Trump to send in troops, further stoking Democrats\u2019 concerns. <\/p>\n

When asked about Bannon\u2019s comments during a briefing earlier this month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said<\/a> while she \u201ccan\u2019t guarantee that an ICE agent won\u2019t be around a polling location in November\u201d she hadn\u2019t \u201cheard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations,\u201d calling the question “disingenuous.”<\/p>\n

Democrats aren’t reassured.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the president said, \u2018Look, I want my ICE people to protect American elections \u2026 go to all these polling places and stand out in front with guns,\u2019 I think they would do it,\u201d said Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota, where an immigration enforcement surge earlier this year resulted in two deaths. \u201cAnd I think we all need to be prepared to deal with that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several Democratic attorneys general said they\u2019re particularly alarmed after the FBI seized voting records in Fulton County, Georgia<\/a>, based on a referral from Kurt Olsen, an attorney who worked with Trump to undermine the 2020 election results. They\u2019re now bracing for similar seizures in other places Trump has previously targeted over debunked claims of voter fraud.<\/p>\n

Those concerns are heightened in battleground states with contests that could decide control of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize that what happened in Fulton County could happen in Detroit. Not because there\u2019s any merit to claims that anything wrong happened in Detroit, but because we know that those claims will be made again,\u201d said Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel of swing-state Michigan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president and his administration know and understand that Democrats don\u2019t win statewide in Michigan without counting the Detroit vote,\u201d she added. \u201cSo of course Trump wants to undermine in people\u2019s minds the integrity of Detroit elections, even though that\u2019s not borne fruit whenever that has been investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats in states that rely heavily on mail-in ballots are also girding for an assault on the voting system that Trump is trying to eliminate, but that GOP operatives<\/a> and even some Republicans in Congress<\/a> support as a way to keep voters engaged in non-presidential years.<\/p>\n

They are worried about Trump weaponizing the postal service, either by again blocking funding for the agency<\/a> or installing allies to slow operations<\/a>. And they cautioned that his push to discount ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward could disenfranchise voters in states with grace periods. The Supreme Court is due to consider a case on ballot deadlines next month.<\/p>\n

Democratic attorneys general, meanwhile, will argue in a lower court next week in a multistate lawsuit seeking to permanently block portions of Trump\u2019s executive order \u2014 which includes cutting off mail ballots and requiring documentary proof of citizenship for the national voter registration form \u2014 from taking effect.<\/p>\n

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is co-leading the lawsuit alongside Bonta, urged his counterparts to \u201cstay nimble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump \u201clikes to sow chaos because he thinks it\u2019s going to throw people off their game,\u201d Ford said. \u201cBut he has met his match when it comes to the Nevada attorney general\u2019s office; he’s met his match when it comes to the Democratic attorneys general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elena Schneider contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic attorneys general are bracing for President Donald Trump to interfere in the midterm elections \u2014 and war-gaming how to stop him. The party\u2019s top prosecutors have been strategizing for months about how to counter a series of increasingly extreme scenarios they fear could play out this fall. They have huddled in hotel conference rooms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}