In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
By H.G. Reza / Original to ScheerPost
In 1986, I covered the gubernatorial election in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had governed much of Mexico for decades through official corruption and had never lost a governor’s race. But that year, political observers believed that the National Action Party (PAN) was poised to end the PRI’s grip on the crucial border state.
Chihuahua is Mexico’s largest state and a major exporter to the United States. The PRI was determined to keep control of it at any cost and succeeded. In Ciudad Juarez, the state’s largest city, there were credible accusations of election fraud. On election day, I saw Mexican soldiers descend on polling places and seize ballot boxes that were burned in the street.
Later, as I reviewed my notes and prepared to file my report, I mused that this could never happen in the United States. The U.S. Armed Forces had a long and honorable tradition that separated them from politics and served no political party or ideology in its historic role as defenders of the Constitution and nation.
My faith in American democracy was reassured 34 years later when retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn urged President Donald J. Trump to invoke martial law after he lost the 2020 presidential election. Flynn, a Trump loyalist and election denier, wanted the Army to seize voting machines in four swing states that Trump lost and supervise a new election.
Luckily, there were “adults” in the room who stopped Trump from acting on Flynn’s recommendation.
Now there are no adults in Trump’s inner circle, only sycophants throughout the administration who act on his every whim and want. Most worrisome for our democracy, they fill key positions in the military establishment. Most prominent among them is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a Trump lapdog whose qualification for the job is that he was a Fox News personality. My faith in American democracy and the military, where I proudly served, is shaky. I no longer believe that what happened in Chihuahua cannot happen here.
The midterm elections are less than a year away, and the question many have is what will Trump do if voters turn against him as they did on Nov. 4. Will he order the military to interfere in a way to overturn the will of the people now that the U.S. Supreme Court has given him despotic authority and absolute immunity for any official action he takes while in office? After all, how many times has Trump said, “I can do whatever I want,” including with the military.
Remember, the U.S. Army, like the Mexican Army, is under a president’s command. Will the military remain faithful to the Constitution or to a man who demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates?
Retired Army Major General Randy Manner, who spent 15 years in the National Guard and served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, doesn’t believe that the military will follow illegal orders from Trump or Hegseth to illegally interfere in the 2026 elections.
Nothing close to what the Mexican Army did in the Chihuahua election will happen in the United States, he said in a recent interview (but) “I believe it’s extremely likely Trump will use ICE and other elements he controls to influence the 2026 election.” The “other elements” include the military.
In an interview with NPR, Manner said Trump is trying to turn the American military against the American people, but they can count on the Armed Forces “to have your back.”
“I absolutely want to reassure the American people that our military will never turn our back on them, and you can absolutely have faith and hope in us that we will never abandon you. We will always have your back. We do not pledge allegiance to follow an individual. We pledge allegiance to defend the Constitution of the United States…” he said.
I don’t share the general’s optimism. To use a military phrase, it appears that the Trump Administration is setting up the battlefield to use the military to interfere in the 2026 elections.
There are members of Congress who are also concerned about Trump’s use of the military against U.S. citizens. In an unprecedented action and without naming Trump, six Democratic members of Congress posted a video reminding service members that they are sworn to carry out legal orders and must refuse to obey unlawful ones. The duty to disobey clearly illegal orders is a basic tenet every service member learns upon entering the military.
Trump and many Republicans are still obsessed with the lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Trump campaign attorney Kurt Olsen, another election denier, was recently appointed to lead a special White House project to investigate the 2020 election.
California Sen. Alex Padilla (D) warned that Olsen’s appointment may be a ruse to fabricate findings of fraud in the 2020 election so Trump can declare an election emergency to illegally take control of elections in the United States
In another concerning move, Trump appointed Heather Honey as deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security. Supposedly, Honey’s job is to help safeguard the 2026 elections. But she also believes that Joseph R. Biden won the presidency in 2020 because of widespread voter fraud.
The New York Times reported that before assuming her new position in August, Honey told other right wing activists that Trump could declare a national emergency for the 2026 elections and force state and local government officials to follow new federal voting rules to prevent voter fraud, which courts and experts have shown is miniscule and inconsequential in U.S. elections.
The Times quoted her as saying an emergency could be triggered by findings in an “actual investigation” of the 2020 election, — which Olsen is conducting.
However, according to the Times, she added, “I don’t know if that’s really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory.”
Theory or not, the idea that Trump can declare an election emergency is gaining traction among conspiracy theorists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and those Trump listens to.
Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell was on Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call to Georgia election officials when he asked them to find 11,780 votes that he needed to overcome Biden’s victory in the state in the November 2020 General Election.
In a September appearance on Tony Perkins’ podcast (begins at the 35 minute mark) Mitchell alleged that the nation’s “porous” voting system is a threat to election integrity and national security. She claimed that Trump is “thinking” about using “emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward” However, it wasn’t clear if she was speculating or she had discussed the issue with Trump.
If Trump calls an election emergency next year, he will have a new military strike force available to react swiftly to any crisis that is real or fabricated by the White House.
The Pentagon has ordered the National Guard of each state and territory to form a “quick reaction force” by Jan. 1, 2026 that can be mobilized within hours in response to riots and civil disturbances.
Former Marine Corps Captain Janessa Goldbeck, head of the Vet Voice Foundation, didn’t respond to a request for comment, but she told The Guardian the force could also be used if Trump would declare “a state of emergency and say that elections were rigged and use allegations of voter fraud to seize the ballots of secure voting centers.”
So, what would the military’s role be in an election emergency declared by Trump? Will it remain apolitical or will it act on Trump’s political behalf?
The question is neither conspiratorial nor hyperbolic. The military brass’ flagrant violations of the Hatch Act by allowing Trump to make political speeches at military institutions make the question a material issue.
Furthermore, Trump has demonstrated that he won’t hesitate to use the military to impose his political agenda. He’s used the active military in two of the nine national emergencies he’s declared in 2025.
Active duty troops are at the Southern border to guard against what Trump said is an invasion. In the Caribbean and eastern Pacific the Navy has killed dozens of crewmen in attacks against unarmed civilian boats that Trump says are an imminent threat and allegedly transporting drugs to the U.S.
Trump elevated the boat crews from drug mules and couriers — their common role in a cartel — to “narcoterrorists” and “enemy combatants.” He made the dubious claim that the nation is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. To date, there have been no reports of cartels attacking our naval forces or exchanging fire with U.S. ships or aircraft.
He also sent National Guard troops from various states to Washington D.C. after declaring a crime emergency, and in Los Angeles he sent a battalion of Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to help quell protests against federal immigration raids. Federal courts have blocked Trump’s attempts to send Guard troops to Chicago and Portland, where Americans are protesting aggressive immigration enforcement by ICE.
Trump’s use of the military for political theater has occurred without pushback from the totally compliant civilian and military leaders of the armed forces.
He held a MAGA rally at Fort Bragg before cheering airborne troops in June where he attacked his political opponents, the media, former president Biden and called American protesters “a foreign enemy.” The soldiers sitting behind Trump were carefully selected for their appearance and loyalty to him, not the Constitution. The directive to post commanders was “no fat soldiers” behind Trump.
The military’s entire chain of command — from the unit and post commanders at Fort Bragg to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and notably the Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — had no response to the public criticism of naked display of partisanship on an Army post and took no corrective action. There were even merchants selling MAGA and Trump merchandise at the rally.
In another unconventional accommodation made by the Navy for Trump, in October the aircraft carrier USS George Washington returned to Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, twenty days after leaving port to continue with its six month patrol in the Pacific. The Navy cited security concerns for refusing to explain the ship’s unexpected return to port.
But a few days later the reason for the ship’s return became clear. The president used it as a platform to address 6,000 sailors and brag about successes he claims in the first year of his new term. “I’d love to have your job,” Trump, who used five deferments to avoid serving during the Vietnam War, told the sailors.
Perhaps Trump’s most glaring and some say illegal use of the military is the deployment of the Navy and Marines in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to attack civilian boats that are allegedly carrying drugs. Trump justifies the killings with hyped up claims that each boat carried enough drugs to kill 25,000 Americans.
Hegseth releases videos of the strikes, tying the boats to alleged South American cartels that Trump labeled “Designated Terrorist Organizations” in an executive order.
When the attacks began in September, Trump claimed the boats were carrying fentanyl, but fentanyl is produced by Mexican cartels. The drug is mostly transported in vehicles to the U.S. by American smugglers through land ports along the Southern border.
Human rights organizations have criticized the boat strikes as extrajudicial killings of civilians, which is a war crime. Extrajudicial killing is a legalese nicety to describe what is commonly called murder.
Two of our closest allies, the United Kingdom and Canada, also believe the killings are illegal. The UK is no longer sharing intelligence with the United States. about suspected drug boats. Canada has prohibited the United States from using intelligence it provides to attack drug boats.
This shooting war against drug cartels and alleged drug boats couldn’t be more one sided. The Navy is blowing away soft targets, including some that are still in the water or returning to shore. The “enemy” is unarmed and poses no hostile threat to U.S. forces. Killing them and blowing up their boats is like shooting fish in a barrel with our superior weapons technology.
Yet the generals and admirals remain silent as the world expresses outrage over the attacks.
Trump’s exploitation of the U.S. military is aided by their silence and fear of retribution by the commander-in-chief. They don’t want to face the wrath Trump has directed at retired Army General Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs in Trump’s first term. It’s the same fear that Russian and German generals had of Stalin and Hitler.
But fear is also a failure of leadership and in the Army, failure like shit, rolls downhill.
Trump knows he is feared and told them so in September when he gave a speech to about 800 generals, admirals and senior enlisted personnel at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va.
“And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future,” he told them at the outset.
Trump’s jab at the brass didn’t have the flair of Watergate felon Charles Colson’s “when you have them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow,” and it wasn’t subtle but it was effective.
It leaves one to wonder how far the generals and admirals will follow Trump. I hope that we don’t have to wait until the midterm elections to find out.
Meanwhile, a reminder to the brass: The Armed Forces Code of Conduct applies to privates and generals alike. It begins “I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life” and ends (I am) “dedicated to the principles which made my country free.”
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.
H.G. Reza
H.G. Reza worked as a print journalist for more than 40 years working, among other places, at the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, where he was a staff writer for 25 years. His assignments included covering terrorism, the military, the border and immigration. He also served with MACV Team 3 on a six-man U.S. Army advisory team in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He now writes as a free lancer.