'Trump is showing us the playbook': Officials scramble to protect against election interference [View all]

Source: MS NOW News

Feb. 9, 2026, 5:00 AM EST


In Minnesota, state election officials are gaming out how to respond if armed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement show up at polling places this November. In the nation’s capital, congressional Democrats are discussing how to respond if a Republican governor sends National Guard troops into a Democratic stronghold on Election Day to lower turnout.

And in multiple private conversations, former national security and law enforcement officials are considering the best legal strategies to defend the midterm elections against interference by Trump administration officials, including FBI agents seizing voting machines on Election Day. President Donald Trump’s call for the GOP to “nationalize” elections is spurring many officials, lawyers and lawmakers across the U.S. to bolster their defenses against election interference.

While many Republicans brush off the president’s threats, election officials are rushing to organize meetings and conference calls to prepare for scenarios in which Trump might use federal agents, troops or MAGA-aligned local officials to interfere in elections. “This now belongs in the same category as a power outage, a bomb threat, a weather incident, because it would be irresponsible now for us not to plan what the response would look like,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told MS NOW.

The threat of the Trump administration trying to interfere in the midterm elections is being taken seriously, he said, citing Trump’s deployment of federal agents and military personnel to some American cities and recent calls by his allies for such forces to be placed near polling stations. “We’ve now gotten to the point, sadly, in 2026 where the process of federal interference with our elections — either directly or indirectly — is something that we have to game out and plan for,” Simon said.

Read more: https://www.ms.now/news/trump-election-interference-2026-midterms-politics