Trump Alludes to Ominous Plans When Asked About ICE At the Polls

This is your TPM evening briefing.

May 12, 2026

US President Donald Trump speaks during a “Rose Garden Club” dinner in honor of Police Week at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 11, 2026. (Photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images). TPM illustration.

While administration officials went from side-stepping the question to openly embracing the potential that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers might be being deployed (illegally) to polling places in November, President Trump himself has yet to speak on the topic — whether by design, as ICE’s popularity plummeted earlier this year, or not.

On Tuesday, Trump finally directly answered a question about sending armed federal law enforcement to the polls in the fall. PBS Newshour’s Liz Landers asked Trump if he planned to send the National Guard or ICE agents to voting locations.

“I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” Trump said. “We have to have honest elections.”

The remarks come after he posted on Truth Social over the weekend, ominously foreshadowing the deployment of some sort of “Election Integrity Army” of his allies for the midterms.

“During my Historic Election in 2024, when I won every single Swing State, and decisively won both the Electoral and Popular votes by wide margins, the Republicans had an Election Integrity Army in every single State to preserve the sanctity of each legal vote,” Trump wrote. “We will be doing the same again in 2026, but it will be much bigger and stronger.”

It was not clear what any of this might mean — or, crucially, how seriously to take it. The Republican National Committee provided one possible explanation on Tuesday, stating that it would be sending RNC staff out to at least 17 different states to serve as “poll watchers” and “election observers” during the midterms. They’ve described that plan in similar terms as Trump, saying it’ll function as a nationwide “election integrity” operation.

Though poll watchers and election observers are a normal component of U.S. elections, “election integrity,” as we all know by now, means a very different thing when Trump and his allies are using the term. Since 2020, the term has been weaponized as a catchall phrase for whenever Trump loses elections and Republicans want to blame his loss on whatever version of the rampant, widespread voter fraud myth is most politically advantageous to them at the moment — whether it be spreading conspiracy theories about suitcases of ballots being shipped in to key counties that are typically Democratic strongholds or blaming electoral losses on chimerical voting by undocumented immigrants.

RNC Chair Joe Gruters confirmed on Tuesday that the work that this supposed election integrity team does on the ground, in a still-unspecified 17 states, will be a lot more than robust than just serving as traditional poll workers. Per Democracy Docket:

In comments Tuesday, RNC Chair Joe Gruters confirmed the party has already placed staff on the ground in targeted states tied to competitive House and Senate races.
“You know, we’ve already deployed field staff and we’ve hired state directors and election integrity directors,” Gruters said. “And I think [in] 17 states we’ve deployed people already.”
The RNC has not named the 17 states, but Gruters described the deployment as part of a broader strategy to maintain Republican control of Congress after 2026.
“We focus on the big picture. We focus on winning. We have a plan. We’re executing the plan,” Gruters said.

South Carolina GOP Won’t Carve Up Clyburn’s District

The above remarks from Trump come against the backdrop of an absolutely brutal and devastating race in red states across the South to gerrymander Black voters out of electoral power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling. You can catch up on our live coverage of the flurry of actions in the immediate aftermath of the SCOTUS decisions that obliterated the Voting Rights Act here, but one small bit of positive news on this front, from my colleague, Kate Riga:

South Carolina Senate Republicans became the first to buck President Trump’s demand for a post-Callais redraw Tuesday, sinking the amendment that would have tacked redistricting on after the official end of the legislative term.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R) gave a floor speech arguing against a redraw on both political — it might endanger Republican seats — and moral — it’s an abuse of power against the minority — grounds. He said that he’d spoken to Trump, but still opposed the effort.

Raskin: Todd Blanche Orchestrated Payouts to Problematic FBI Agents

In a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, alleged that Blanche used his “office to improperly shower government cash on Donald Trump’s political operatives and sycophants” — including a number of FBI agents who had faced discipline for improper conduct.

“The record definitively shows that the agents were not disciplined for making protected disclosures to Congress or for the imaginary offense of being a Republican,” Raskin wrote. “They were disciplined for reckless misuse of classified information or serious episodes of professional misconduct that endangered national security.”

Raskin alleges that Blanche oversaw large payouts and reinstatements to “former FBI agents who were suspended, fired, and had their clearances revoked for criminal activity, major breaches of national security, or violations of the standards of conduct and professionalism required of law enforcement agents.”

Some of the payouts and reinstatements Rasking described had a clear political valence. One agent, Raskin said, “was removed from the FBI for misconduct for failing to participate in an operation investigating a violent white nationalist group, Patriot Front, claiming falsely that the investigation was politically motivated.” Another, per his letter, “disclosed classified information regarding a criminal investigation into Project Veritas, taking screenshots of his computer and sending them to third parties.”

Raskin made it clear that should Democrats take back the House in the midterms, the alleged settlement payouts would be the topic of intense oversight from his committee.

Read the letter here.