Tag: election 2026

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who received the invite, said that what the president is “trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election.”

State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss “preparations” for this year’s midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” in violation of the Constitution.

On Tuesday, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”

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Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on February 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was “to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections.”

Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies “would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”

At the end of the email, she reiterated, “We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections.”

Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: “Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”

The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.

Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should “nationalize” elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places” led by Democrats.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he’d never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”

“I was just like, ‘What is this?’ It’s the strangest thing in the world that the FBI is reaching out to us and trying to coordinate election security,” Aguilar said. “It’s never happened in the past. The casualness which they did… it was just beyond crazy.”

A former DOJ official told Berg that while it is normal for the department to monitor elections, the email and conference call were highly unusual: “I can’t imagine why it would be coordinated in that way,” he said.

Another official who received the email told NBC News that the message was “unusual and unexpected.”

Speaking of Hardiman, the official said, “No one has heard of this person—and we’re all wondering what an ‘FBI Election Executive’ is.” NBC reported that a LinkedIn page for Hardiman showed she was appointed to the position seven months ago.

The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election “partners” is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will “have ICE surround the polls,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it’s been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.

After federal agents killed three US citizens and provoked furious protests, Trump offered to withdraw agents from the state, but only if it turned over its voting rolls to the federal government.

At Trump’s apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta last week to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.

And earlier this week, it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.

“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”

Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing” for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back.”

Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump’s coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.

“Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done,” Miller said. “It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him.”

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).