The National Guard's presence has become routine in D.C., but there's nothing routine about questions over the role the troops could play in the upcoming midterms.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

When you live in Washington, as I do, you get used to all sorts of extraordinary things - presidential motorcades tying up the streets, military helicopters buzzing up and down the Potomac and, over this last year, members of the National Guard patrolling our neighborhoods. About 800 service members were deployed last August. Since then, their numbers have swelled to nearly 5,000. And their assignment has been extended until January 2029. As I said, their presence has become routine. But there is nothing routine about questions over the role the National Guard could play in the upcoming midterms. That was one of the topics we discussed on NPR's weekly national security podcast, Sources & Methods. Joining me were correspondents Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon.

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TOM BOWMAN: I was talking to a senior Democratic strategist, and he said - I was asking about the midterms, you know, and what are your concerns? And I thought he would say, well, hopefully, the Democrats will pull it off. But what he said was, I'm worried about ICE agents going to the polls, National Guard showing up at the polls and maybe suppressing the vote or scaring people and so forth. And then beyond that, there's talk if the midterms don't go the way the president wants, strategist said, I could see, you know, the military maybe going to some states and seizing ballot boxes. I know that sounds outlandish, but there is that concern that these people are talking about because of this military presence.

KAT LONSDORF: Yeah, I've been hearing similar concerns for months now. You know, I've been talking to people for a year about this deployment, and increasingly in those conversations I've been having with constitutional law experts, former military officials, it goes very quickly to the midterms. You know, this...

KELLY: Like before you bring up the midterms?

LONSDORF: Absolutely before I bring it up.

KELLY: This is where their head is?

LONSDORF: Yes.

KELLY: OK.

LONSDORF: And I called up retired General Randy Manner. He was once a top official for the National Guard, and he's really against this deployment in D.C. And I called him the other day to talk about the extension and this one-year mark we're hitting. And he really quickly raised his concerns about the midterms.

RANDY MANNER: I think what we are about to see in the United States is going to be the deployment either at the federal level or at the state level of National Guard soldiers to, quote-unquote, "protect" the security of the vote in November. Since we are less than 100 days away, I think that is the greatest threat. I hope I'm proven wrong. I really do.

KELLY: But just spell out specifically, what does that look like? Like, how do we get from presence patrols walking the streets to some kind of threat to election integrity?

LONSDORF: Yeah, I mean, I want to be clear. There are very strict federal laws...

KELLY: Right.

LONSDORF: ...Against military presence around polls. But when I talk to people about this, there's a couple different ways it can play out. Largely, it involves invoking the Insurrection Act, which I know we've been kind of talking about for a year now. President Trump likes to talk about the Insurrection Act, especially when he's talking about the National Guard. And if you invoke the Insurrection Act because, you know, there was unrest after elections or because he saw that there was some kind of threat to elections, something like that - right? - that would mean that he could seize control of the National Guard in various states. So the president would then control the National Guard, and NORTHCOM would then control the National Guard.

BOWMAN: But the bar is pretty high for that. Presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act in the past - during the Eisenhower Kennedy administration because the states weren't enforcing desegregation laws. But again, it's a high bar. There has to be some specific reason. You can't just say, well, I'm worried about the vote. We're going to send the guard in.

LONSDORF: Yeah. There's also the concern that, you know, governors who are maybe Republican agree with this administration, could willingly deploy their National Guard to various cities and their states. And maybe you wouldn't have troops at the polling places, but you could have troops patrolling the streets, and that creates a kind of chilling effect when people are trying to vote or going to vote or going to protest, something like that, right? You know, like I said, there are a lot of people that are paying attention to this and trying to kind of start ringing the alarm bells in case this is a situation we are heading toward as the midterm elections come up soon. I talked with retired Major General Steven Lepper. He's a former JAG, a military lawyer, and he's part of a group of former military lawyers who have written a report to Congress about these very concerns.

STEVEN LEPPER: When you start down this road where it becomes more and more acceptable for the military to be used domestically, you start encountering these situations like midterm elections that will essentially impose the will of the people commanding those forces on our fellow citizens.

LONSDORF: And you know, some members of Congress have also been talking about this. You know, back in March, General Guillot - he is the commander of NORTHCOM who would potentially be in charge of the troops if President Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act or something like that. And he was asked about this exact scenario in front of Congress. Here's one exchange with Senator Elissa Slotkin. She's a Democrat from Michigan.

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ELISSA SLOTKIN: And if you were asked to move uniform military into polling locations without any credible threat reporting of an armed force countering the United States, would you send those forces in?

GREGORY GUILLOT: Ma'am, I recognize that that's against the law, and I would not follow an unlawful order.

LONSDORF: So you hear him pretty clearly there say that he doesn't think that - that he would not follow that order. You know, Senator Tammy Duckworth also pushed him on that in that same congressional hearing, and he said very clearly, I don't think they should be anywhere near there, when talking about the polls, that if given the order, I would look at it very closely. But, you know, as we've talked about on this podcast before, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has shown he has no problem firing military leaders who don't agree with the administration.

KELLY: Just to inject one other point, which is National Guard troops are wherever they are because they're following orders and trying to serve their country. Do we have any sense of what the conversation is among any of these National Guard troops who are actually out patrolling and who are caught up in this whole discussion we're having?

LONSDORF: Yeah. You know, I have been talking to some of them. You can stop them on the street and talk to them. Maybe some of you have. You know, they're all not authorized to speak to the press. They're active duty, so I don't grab...

KELLY: Right.

LONSDORF: ...My microphone and put it in their face, but, you know, a lot of them will tell me, we're here because we were following orders. We're not doing anything illegal. We're just walking around, that kind of thing. A lot of the guard who are here right now in D.C. volunteered for this deployment. I think that's kind of an important note. They raised their hands for it. That can be for a variety of reasons. They make extra money by taking these deployments, for example.

But I have been talking to some members who have served in this mission who aren't part of it anymore who have been talking to me anonymously because, again, they're still active duty. They're not allowed to speak to the press. And, you know, there are some real moral quandaries that they're having about this deployment and about the extended presence of the military here in the city.

KELLY: That was NPR's Kat Lonsdorf and Tom Bowman on our weekly national security podcast Sources & Methods. You can hear our full episode, where we also discuss the elaborate ruse to hide President Trump's return trip from Ankara, Turkey. Find Sources & Methods wherever you get your podcasts.

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