Democrats and their unhinged operatives and media outlets are making a grossly unsubstantiated claim about something President Trump is ostensibly planning ahead of the midterm elections.
The operatives and some media outlets are raising alarms that Trump will invoke martial law or emergency powers surrounding November’s midterm elections, even as administration and military officials say no such plan is underway.
The latest controversy followed a report in The Atlantic examining a small group of Trump supporters who have urged the president to take extraordinary steps if they believe fraud threatens the November elections.
Those proposals have included declaring a national emergency, asserting greater federal authority over elections and, in the most extreme scenario, invoking martial law.
CNN reports Trump is so worried about Democrats winning the election that his "outside advisors" are telling him to declare martial law.
Scary shit and we need to be ready. pic.twitter.com/RrK5qvPh7H
— Mike Nellis (@MikeNellis) September 25, 2026
But the people publicly promoting those ideas are not administration officials responsible for election policy.
The Atlantic identified attorney Peter Ticktin, conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root and former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters among the outside Trump supporters advocating extraordinary federal intervention.
A White House official told the magazine that Ticktin, Root and Peters have no role in developing the administration’s election policy.
That distinction quickly became blurred as the story spread across social media.
Democratic operative Mike Nellis described the report on X by saying Trump’s “outside advisors” were telling him to declare martial law and warned his followers to “be ready.”
CNN also devoted airtime to the report.
Anchor Jake Tapper described the individuals as “outside advisers” who were encouraging Trump to potentially “declare martial law or declare a national emergency on or around Election Day.”
The underlying reporting, however, does not establish that Trump has decided to declare martial law or that his White House is developing such a plan.
Instead, it documents efforts by outside supporters to persuade him to take aggressive action.
Ticktin, a longtime Trump ally and attorney, discussed martial law as one possible response to what he described as a “nightmare scenario” surrounding the elections.
Root has separately urged Trump to declare a national-security emergency and impose election requirements involving voter identification, proof of citizenship and mail voting.
Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk convicted in a voting-system breach case stemming from the aftermath of the 2020 election, has also pushed claims about election systems.
Trump has fueled some of the concern by declining to categorically reject every emergency proposal presented to him.
During an August interview with Root, the host suggested Trump could declare a national emergency involving the elections if Congress failed to approve Republican-backed election legislation.
“Stranger things have happened, okay?” Trump responded. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Trump later reposted a Root column advocating the proposal.
Neither action amounted to an announcement that Trump would declare an emergency, however, and Trump has not publicly endorsed a martial-law plan for the midterms.
Administration officials have issued more explicit denials.
The White House told The Atlantic that the outside figures promoting the proposals do not determine election policy.
A Justice Department spokesman also rejected suggestions that the administration planned to arbitrarily declare voting equipment unreliable, saying there was no plan to take such action without credible evidence and appropriate legal procedures.
The military has offered another significant assurance.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., in writing that the military has no plans to deploy federal troops or National Guard personnel to polling places during the November elections.
“Election administration and security remain the responsibility of state and local officials,” Caine wrote.
The statement came after Slotkin sought assurances from military leaders that troops would not be used to interfere with voting.
The martial-law discussion is part of a larger political fight over Trump’s approach to election administration.
Trump has pushed for voter-identification requirements, proof of citizenship for federal elections and restrictions on mail voting, while repeatedly raising concerns about noncitizen voting and election fraud.
Democrats and voting-rights organizations argue some of those efforts could make voting more difficult and have been preparing legal challenges in case the administration attempts additional federal intervention.
Democratic congressional leaders have also sued the administration over the possibility of armed federal law-enforcement officers appearing at polling locations.
Those concerns are separate from evidence of an actual martial-law plan, however.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
