A political analyst warned on Monday that President Donald Trump's administration has already mobilized a stealth military force ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, despite the denials of top military officials.
Ken Klippenstein wrote in a new Substack essay that the Trump administration has already signaled that it will use the military to interfere in the midterms. That's despite the recent letter from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine that claimed the military does not have a plan to "send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections," Klippenstein wrote.
"Reassuring as that may sound, it is deeply misleading," Klippenstein wrote. "For as Pete Hegseth made clear last week, the military is undertaking an unprecedented role in the election — one that happens to violate the Constitution."
"While there probably won’t be the soldier boots-at-voting-booths nightmare feared by some, the military is mobilizing a secret cyber force as well as 'every authorized asset, capability, and partnership' of its intelligence apparatus to counter purported 'threats' to the election, to quote Hegseth."
Klippenstein argued that the Trump administration may invoke "national security" to mobilize its cyber forces during the midterms, citing a pretext such as foreign interference in the election. He pointed to a recent memo from Hegseth that declared the Defense Department will "effectively wield its capabilities to protect and uphold the reliability of America’s voting mechanisms against external manipulation and disruption from foreign actors."
"The almost Greek tragedy level irony here is that involving the military in elections is a greater threat to our democracy than all foreign influence operations combined," Klippenstein wrote.