Military experts warn Trump can 'easily' justify dangerous new escalation

President Donald Trump watches a match during the UFC 327 event at Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, on April 11, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump has refused to rule out a dangerous new escalation involving the military as he grapples with an impending midterm wipeout, and as a trio of military experts warned in a new piece for The Hill, he could "easily" create the "false facts" needed to justify it.

Published on Monday morning, the piece hailed from Steven Lepper, a retired Air Force major general; Dan Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel; and Eugene R. Fidell, an expert in military law. Despite the insistence of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine that military forces will not be deployed to election sites during the midterms, the trio argued that "Trump has made it impossible to dismiss fears of military interference."

"To the contrary, his persistent assault on the integrity of the voting process, his suggestion that Republicans 'should take over the voting in at least 15 places,' and his refusal to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act have led many to begin bracing for an imminent collision," they wrote. "Americans across the country are worrying that their constitutionally-assured right to vote will be curtailed by Trump’s increasingly frantic search for anything that will preserve his party’s congressional majorities."

Analyzing the possibility further, the trio explained that "the bar for legally deploying troops to polling places is high," as the Posse Comitatus Act, previously used to oppose Trump's National Guard deployments in blue cities, bars the president from using "federal military troops for law enforcement purposes." The law also bars, with some exceptions, "troops or armed men" being stationed at polling places; the Insurrection Act could allow Trump to get around that rule, though.

"If the president wants to deploy troops to election sites, he can easily come up with a set of fake facts that satisfies both legal loopholes," the trio warned. "Most senior commanders understand the damage that can be done if troops are deployed to polling places; not only would it present real threats to democracy but it could subject them — not the president — to criminal prosecution."

Should Trump manage to force his way past the rules against deploying the military to polling places, the trio suggested that "military commanders and their judge advocates can mitigate the impacts of these actions by exercising good judgment."

"First, state and local officials and commanders must be transparent with each other and with the media about what is happening at every polling site," they explained. "Commanders will need to display moral courage if the facts they perceive on the ground are different from those Trump and his minions are peddling. If ordered to polling places, they must first and foremost focus on de-escalation."

They added later: "They must also resist the inevitable pressure of mission creep. Exceptions to federal law allowing deployment of troops to polling places are very narrow. Commanders cannot let their responses exceed those narrow limits. For example, federal troops deployed to quell discontent cannot seize voting equipment, ballots, or otherwise interfere in election processes. If the Secretary of Defense orders commanders to wield an iron fist, they can and must refuse to intimidate anyone or to interfere in the voting process, donning velvet gloves instead."

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