White House’s chilling warning about midterm elections: ‘Can’t guarantee an ICE agent won’t be around polling locations’
Threat of stationing immigration agents around voting locations has become a concern as it can be a deterrent to legal residents of color who are concerned they may be harassed by federal agents
The White House refused to rule out following through on the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents being sent out to “surround the polls” when voters cast ballots in this November’s midterm elections as a way of depressing Democratic turnout and boosting chances of Republican victories in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said she could offer “no guarantee” that ICE personnel would not be stationed at polling sites when Americans are in the process of choosing whether to extend the Republican stranglehold on power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
She had been asked about former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s recent call for Trump to deploy ICE around election sites on his War Room podcast on Tuesday, just days after Trump himself called for a Republican “takeover” of vote-counting in Democratic-led states and municipalities.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/white-house-midterms-2026-warning-ice-b2914933.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Democratic leadership is sleepwalking us into a permanent state of authoritarian rule.
That's not fair. They are still working super hard to disarm the people in blue states.
I think it's open jealousy about how you can get away with practically anything from undermining constitutional amendments to profit personally - all without seemingly being held accountable.
Like not being held accountable for supporting a genocide because of First Past The Post voting forces people to vote for democrats?
The very act of floating this idea is election fraud. Even if they don't do it, threatening to do it could discourage voters.
We can offer no guarantee that democrat voters won't be harmed, detained or even murdered while voting.
Republican voters are probably gonna get harassed, arrested, or killed too if they happen to not be white. Then there will be outcry from Republicans who were perfectly fine with it happening to democrats
When Obama ran, local organizations rented vans and escorted people to and from polls.
We can do it again if needed.
Honestly, idk why it stopped. That shit enables better voter turnout…
Those vans would make nice targets for ICE.
Well even a regular car can hold 3 to 4 guests.
So even if people drive around all day with their one car, one person can potentially get 30 people to the polls.
Ding ding ding!
Obviously.
This is obviously where it was going.
From day one, from the first lie, to the arming of his own private army, this has been the goal. Obviously.
Americans will be surprised, of course. As always.
No one's accused Americans of being smart.
"Back when it was step 3, all the alarmists were warning me about how bad step 10 will be. Now that we're at step 7, the logical thing to do is continue to accuse people of being alarmist."
Republicans have stolen every presidential election they've won since 2000. There haven't been consequences yet, and the future won't be any different unless we stand up.
They tried damn hard to steal the ones they lost as well, and know that because of the last year they may not get voted for, for another couple decades. They know they can't win, so they are abandoning democracy.
Yes, but also I’m not convinced they haven’t done so by voter suppression. I’ve seen a lot fewer articles on that and that may not be part of voter fraud invests. There continue to be way too many attempts to suppress votes. How do you even count how many votes didn’t happen?
And it only needs to happen in swing states. You combine that with gerrymandering and it doesn’t have to prevent many voters to make a difference
Exactly. Look back at the Jim Crow era. That's the goal. Jim Crow didn't work by white people stealing the vote. It worked by writing laws that openly made it so black people couldn't vote. Ultimately it's a lot more sustainable to simply write laws that serve your side than it is to try to hold onto power by repeated election fraud. With the latter, you ultimately have to worry about the military just refusing to acknowledge clearly fraudulent elections. But if the elections are crooked but entirely within the law? Much more difficult for the military to refuse to acknowledge those.
You put too much faith in the military not being full of fascist sycophants and those going along to get along.
It goes beyond this. Voter intimidation is classified federally as an "active threat". This is basically a hostile crime that can be dealt with via lethal force. The constitution is built to deal with this. Camping outside poll locations and blocking entry is a crime, and it can be deal with as a crime.
I can definitely see ICE agents prowling around the voting places looking over people's shoulders at who they voted for.
"I see you're voting for AOC. Time to die, friend."
AOC somersaults out of the shadows and karate chops the agent in the throat so hard his head comes clean off
Shia Labeouf
Normal Tuesday night
(Shia Labeouf)
This is getting me hot. Tell me more.
Let everyone you know that mail-in ballots are still an option... but educate them that they must bring the ballot to the post office IN PERSON, and ask the postal staff to post-mark it IN FRONT OF THEM. I have read (please correct me if I'm wrong!) that works around the recent regulation change that allows dropped-off post to be stamped when it's delivered, instead of when it's first dropped off, which is a rat-fucking tactic to increase the likelihood of ballots being marked late, knowing they'll probably take many days from drop-off to delivery.
That's effectively what's happening.
The USPS,
under DeJoy (who has long been trying to undermine the USPS from within),has posted this site, which attempts to debunk (i.e., gaslight) over what the change is. They claim the same process applies and only is being clarified, but that's false since now postmarks will use the process rather than the sending date and that's a major change. This is key:This is entirely to help support GOP legal challenges that will claim that laws which allow election-day postmarked mail-in ballots to be counted can be struck down, because they will encompass votes that took place after election day, and therefore selectively invalidate mail-in ballots. It's essentially poisoning the reliability of postmarks to allow for ballot suppression.
Here's a PBS story about it as well. It also notes that the staffing crunches at the USPS and closing processing facilities will exacerbate the issue since "processing" times will increase, especially for high-volume days like election day.
Edit: David Steiner, not DeJoy, is the current postmaster general.
Bloody hell, why aren't the Democrats doing everything they can to kick DeJoy out?? What a travesty.
Well, I double-checked and nevermind, DeJoy was out in July of 2025. The new guy is David Steiner, who I suppose the dates make responsible for this.
I live in WA and just drop them off at the county provided ballot boxes, no post office required. There are more of the drop boxes than post offices too.
in california at least you can still bring your absentee ballot to your polling location to drop off. mine is open a week ahead of time, they got someone sitting there with a ballot box.
Yes however I can attest that some states make it easier than others to do mail-in. For example: WA, automatic mail-in, no questions asked. NC, you need to request it, then have your voting observed and certified by either two witnesses or a notary. Every step of the way highly encourages using your driver’s license number or including a copy, otherwise you have to complete more paperwork. THEN you have to take it to the post office to get marked etc. You also go on a list of absentee voters after it is tallied — a nice little target. I used to do it out of spite until it was just too inconvenient compared to early voting.
Oh no what happens if ICE agents around polling locations are shot dead.
Everyone else at the polling place leaves and probably doesn't come back.
Polling location(maybe others) are now closed for public safety from the radical left Democrats.
Will not happen.
How the fuck did we get to a point where it's normal for the government to say these things?
Conservatives stopped respecting our Constitution and our nation as a whole.
But they're pretty good at showing up to vote, unlike many other Americans. That, combined with our electoral system being a joke and designed to allow a minority to have control, and you've got our current situation.
Capitalism
This is what Hitler's SA did, so that's to be totally expected.
It's sad how accurate this is...
You know Jan 6 rioters with guns and pipe bombs who attacked officers got pardon.
And employment.
It can't be guaranteed that an ICE jackass won't be shipped to the local junkyard.
I'll believe it when I see it
Can't guarantee I won't communicate with my community to show up to the polling stations with a large group of armed citizens to ensure we can vote safely without the interference of terrorists.
Doesn't stop them from ratfucking the votes after they're submitted, but hey, gotta do what we can.
I hear ya, but consider that will make a VERY tense situation that will likely deter voters from engaging.
Can you imagine getting abducted when you try to vote? Now you don't have to!
I am sure this will help the voter turnout and is definitely not a thinly veiled threat meant to cause voter suppression.
How would that lead to a good outcome?
Dead Nazis is always a good outcome.
The only good nazi is a dead nazi.
But seriously, people giving their lives for democracy and so that others can enjoy the inalienable rights they were promised is a good outcome.
It's the only possible good outcome from this scenario.
If your take on this is genuinely "do nothing, give up democracy, because they might kill even more people than they already have" then you're a coward and your rights and democracy were always going to be taken from you anyway.
ICE agents should not come to the polls on election day unless they are ready to die for it.
I mean, they aren’t leaving us a whole lot of boxes left to choose from.
How would it lead to a bad outcome?
ICE agents would get to ask God firsthand about whether what they're doing is right.
There is no God or hell. They would just be dead Nazis. I'm ok with that.
That's the neat part. This device is designed such that "out comes the lead."
Gear up, the hopefools will learn too late.
Well I guess we’re going to be exercising our second amendment rights because that’s tyranny.
Why is she so obsessed with getting ICE agents killed?
So they can escalate.
Escalate how? They don't hold the flyover sovereign and they are actively losing control of territory. Their navy is spent and overspending, the national guard has its fucking jugular hanging open in every small town, and they're about to commit the army to Iran. If all they have is ICE and CPB they are going to have a very bad time.
This is dicey. If it happens, there will be a lot of problems around the polling areas. The fascists will use that as an excuse to invalidate the results.
They will have 100 different reasons to invalidate the results anyway.
It's crazy to think they don't already have them loaded up.
they already had their "one of ours, all of yours" slogan and couldn't even wait until they had a martyr to parade it out. So much for the violent left.
I supposed the Chinese are less likely to use it against us at this point.
99 because hilary ain't running. sorry.
I don't know what the conditions will be for my blue city in a red state come November. My plan is to vote early and spend election day seeking out ICE at any polling locations to film and heckle them. If they want to arrest me, my vote is already in and it will take them out of play for their role threatening voters. MN is showing us how we massively outnumber them and can stymie their tactics.
Their goal will be to "assist" purple states with their voting. I predict big ICE deployments to Pennsylvania this year.
Weird. I didn't realise all the American polling stations are located so near the borders with other countries.
I read somewhere that anywhere within 250 mile (I think this was the number) of an airport counts as a boarder
Wouldn't it need to be an international airport at minimum?
i heard it was 100 from an international airport (not domestic, we have a domestic airport in my town but not an international. the difference is it's basically one of those little take your own plane airports. also full of explosives because it's run by raytheon but y'know) and because i'm on the internet and you're not my fact is more true
100 miles.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
This one is older, but has the great image showing just how many cities are in that 100 miles:
https://www.southernborder.org/100_mile_border_enforcement_zone
That's atrocious.
Can't guarantee that antifa won't be around polling locations...
Don't need Antifa. Regular Americans will do just fine. Anyone who believes in democracy and the right of citizens to vote will do just fine.
That's antifa. Democracy is anti-fascist.
Prominent Republicans have been saying this kind of thing, in various ways, since at least the 1980s. If people want to delude themselves and call standard Republican stuff "trumpism" or even more incoherent and nebulous things like "maga", I don't know what to tell them. This is stock conservative/Republican stuff.
This is Paul Weyrich in 1980:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw
I got PTO, i don't mind protecting people and staying at the voting place all day to protect them from the ICE thugs taking them to a concentration camp.
Problem is people won't show if they fear ICE will attest yhem, even if they are citizens as ICE has already proven.
Its intimidation
Imagine the optics of these rabid dogs pepper spraying people in line to vote
The optics don't need to get any worse, they're already murdering people in broad daylight...
Yeah, I guess we're kind if past the Ghandi trap's efficacy at this point. I don't know why I keep reverting to previous stages of how this escalated
"Can't guarantee we won't continue to violate the law with impunity."
Honest question: there’s not that many of them to cover a substantial number of polling stations, are there? If memory serves, there like 16k agents.
Seems like the WH is on its bullshit again.
At this point they can deploy noone and it will still have the desired effect. People are scared already.
The threat of appearance will be enough for a not insignificant number of people. But also, they can use historical voting numbers to selectively target certain locations. No need to send anyone to the R+17 or the D+22 districts.
Sounds like a good reason to pretend to support their bullshit and go vote against it anyway.....register independent then vote however
The declaration of party only helps metrics not the actual outcome of the vote
I’m sure it doesn’t matter what party you register as, but this is purely racist.
They’re not saying they’ll interfere with elections but they may kidnap anyone who looks like an undocumented immigrant who shouldn’t vote. Generally that’s been people with brown skin.
As a white person who is registered Democrat, I wouldn’t be worried at all. However if I were Hispanic or otherwise not obviously white, I sure as hell would be, and may decide I can’t risk voting
This is exactly what Black Panthers tried to solve half a century ago
Or differently sounds like a good reason to have black panthers show up and watch ice
If you register independent that prevents you from participating in the large party primaries in many (most/all?) states. You can only vote in the primary for your registered party. So that also locks you out of at least attempting to prevent the Democrats from incessantly fielding dumbass GOP-lite candidates like they've been doing.
Theoretically if you register as Republican that also allows you to surreptitiously torpedo their worst candidates in their primaries, but it's unlikely we'll get enough trolls on board to swing the needle meaningfully with that strategy.
Thats not a warning intended to keep the public safe, it's a threat intended to get the public to give up on democracy
Every voter come armed.
We the People of the United States can.
Fucking brown shirts