Some of Trump’s most devoted outside allies are urging him to declare martial law and seize control of this fall’s midterm elections, according to new reporting from The Atlantic.
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Martial law is when the military takes over jobs normally handled by civilian government, like policing and running the courts. It has never been used to take over a federal election. Under the Constitution, states run elections, and Congress can change the rules. A president has no clear power to take them over.
The loudest voice in the push is attorney Peter Ticktin, who went to military school with Trump when they were teenagers. In 2022, Ticktin helped Trump sue Hillary Clinton. This year, he pushed Trump to secure a pardon for Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted on charges tied to tampering with election equipment.
Ticktin told The Atlantic he sees three ways this fall could go. A smooth election is off the table in his view, because he claims, without evidence, that Democrats already cheated in the primaries. The second option is Trump acting before Election Day to stop what Ticktin calls cheating. The third is Trump moving to declare martial law on or around November 3.
“Either martial law, or step aside,” Ticktin said of Trump’s choices in that last scenario.
When the reporters asked him about the possibility of riots if Trump tried to overturn election results, Ticktin brushed it off. “Believe me, our armed forces are a lot bigger than they are,” he said.
Ticktin, Peters and conservative host Wayne Allyn Root all took the stage earlier this month at the “Storm Summit,” a gathering at a hotel off the Las Vegas Strip billed as a fight for “honest elections.” Attendees told The Atlantic they expect the midterms to be canceled, suspended, or left in limbo, with results or the certification of winners held up for an unknown stretch of time.
Root described what he called a nightmare scenario to the crowd: Democrats win, flip Congress and impeach Trump. He got a standing ovation after claiming, based on research from a friend, that the election could be upended if Trump declared a national security emergency. A national emergency is a formal declaration that unlocks special powers under federal law, and it has been used for things like sanctions and border funding, not elections.
The push to declare martial law is coming from outside the White House. Inside it, Trump’s senior advisers and Cabinet secretaries meet regularly as an elections working group, and according to The Atlantic, they have spent months trying to move Trump’s focus away from the fraud theories Ticktin, Root and Peters promote. At the same time, those same advisers have authorized efforts to find evidence that would make those claims look more credible.
CNN’s Jake Tapper covered the reporting Thursday on The Lead.
Trump has not announced any plan to declare martial law or a national emergency tied to the election. The midterms are set for November 3.
