A rising Democratic star is predicting a startling move that President Donald Trump will attempt during the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans are expected to lose control of the House and, potentially, the Senate, come November. Democratic New York state Assemblyman Alex Bores, a candidate for Congress in New York’s 12th District, told The Daily Beast Podcast that reports of a Trump plan to send ICE agents to polling stations is just part of an attempt to scare voters.
“We’re looking at everything that the Trump administration is saying and realizing that these are all related, right? So sending ICE to the polling places to intimidate people, which is all they would be doing, right?” Bores told Daily Beast political reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice.
“You have to be a citizen to vote. There’s no reason for—in any world where ICE should be there. It is just to intimidate voters,” Bores, 35, added.
“We also want to make sure that the polling places are safe and done with state resources and do all we can to be preventing ICE from coming there,” he continued.
Some Trump allies, including Steven Bannon, have been urging the president to put ICE agents at polling locations for the upcoming midterm elections.
Despite having voted by mail himself just last week, the president is also attempting to outlaw mail-in voting, which he claims is ripe with fraud but has provided no evidence.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump said earlier this month.
When asked by Ewall-Wice about his thoughts on Trump’s mail-in ballot habit, Bores called him a “hypocrite.”
“Trump is a hypocrite, newsflash. He’s a hypocrite on almost everything he’s ever done. Of course, when it’s convenient to him, when it helps him, then it’s a good thing that expands democracy. But if it helps a normal American, well then he’s gonna spit on it,” he said.
Bores expressed concern that ICE could be at polling stations, while at the same time, mail-in ballots were not allowed.
“So they’re saying, we’re going to intimidate you at the polling place, and if your response is, well, I’m going to get a mail-in ballot, so I’m not interacting with agents, no, we’re going to crack down on that too,” Bores explained.
“It is a coordinated plan to rig the elections because they can see the same polls we can,” he continued.
Some of those polls include a March poll from NBC, which put the president at a 54 percent disapproval rating, and another from Fox News, which showed 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump. Even pro-MAGA analysts have rung alarm bells over the Republican prospects for the midterms.
Bores asserted that the Trump administration knows “that what they’re doing is deeply, deeply deeply unpopular,” so “their only chance is to rig the elections.”
Bores, a candidate for Congress in New York’s 12th District, also called upon lawmakers in Congress to “step up and do everything” to call out Trump’s power grab.
“Democrats in Congress need to step up and do everything we can to call this out, point it out,” he said. “And make sure there are the resources to run free and fair elections because there is no chance that this administration wins if there’s actually a real vote.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
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