WASHINGTON, D.C. – Combat Veteran and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) pressed a top U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) leader, Mr. Mark Ditlevson, to assure the American people that the Trump Administration would not station troops near polling places in future elections, which is against the law and against our nation’s fundamental democratic values. When Mr. Ditlevson refused to provide that assurance at his nomination hearing today, Duckworth pressed further asking him what the American people should expect, including what distance troops would be stationed, whether they’d be in full gear with weapons and whether anyone would be at risk of being intimidated by military assets when exercising their fundamental right to vote. Mr. Ditlevson continued to waffle. Duckworth’s full remarks can be found on the Senator’s YouTube.
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“As Trump continues to issue extremely worrisome threats, the American people deserve to know if the Trump Administration is seriously planning to use the military in their backyards and interfere in our elections,” said Duckworth. “It is deeply troubling that Trump’s nominees refuse to provide even basic assurances that our military will not be stationed near polling places in order to intimidate Americans trying to exercise their right to vote. That is against the law. It’s un-American. And I’m not going to stand by as Trump attempts to use our servicemembers to intimidate Americans from making their voices heard in our democracy.”
Duckworth has been a leading voice pushing back against Donald Trump’s domestic deployments into American cities to serve his own political agenda. After Ditlevson acknowledged there could be circumstances in which he would advise deploying the National Guard to polling places, he declined to explain the scope of such deployments or how they would avoid intimidating voters.
Duckworth also criticized the Administration’s failure to coordinate with state leaders, noting that Trump gave Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker just two hours to respond before moving to federalize the Illinois National Guard.
Last year, Duckworth, in a hearing she successfully secured, pushed the Trump Administration’s DoD—including Ditlveson—on Trump’s unlawful and unconstitutional domestic deployments of American military troops to intimidate citizens in their own communities.
