2026 midterms could be impacted by ICE shooting – | Political News
Trump could use the fiery protests ignited after the killing of a girl by an ICE agent to ‘create an ambiance of concern’ before the mid-phrases, say experiences.
Newsweek has reported how President Donald Trump could use the deadly shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer to justify deploying troops to Democratic-led cities forward of the November 2026 midterm elections, consultants have warned. Good, 37, a US citizen, was shot useless by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday after brokers requested her to exit her vehicle. The officer was later recognized as Jonathan Ross. The Trump administration defended the shooting, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claiming Good had “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over” before she was killed. Critics have condemned the incident, with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey describing it as “reckless.”
Following the shooting, the administration said it would send additional federal officers to Minneapolis to respond to protests and public backlash. While officials said the move was aimed at protecting Department of Homeland Security staff, experts told Newsweek that Trump could escalate the response by deploying troops to Democratic-run cities and “create an ambiance of concern” in the run-up to the midterms. Trump has not said he intends to do so.
A post on X by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said: “President Trump stands totally behind the heroic males and ladies of ICE. Radical left-wing agitators ought to be ashamed of themselves for protesting ICE’s elimination of felony unlawful alien killers, rapists, gangbangers, and pedophiles from American communities. ICE is doing a very important job to take away unlawful felony aliens from our communities,” she added.
Al Tillery, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, said Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically ahead of the elections. The law, made up of statutes passed between 1792 and 1871, allows presidents to use active-duty military forces for law enforcement within the United States. Trump has not ruled out invoking the act in recent months as legal challenges continue over troop deployments to cities including Portland, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. He has said those deployments were necessary to tackle crime.
“Such a mission would need to be dealt with by the National Guard in a function related to the deployments in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Portland,” Tillery said. “With the State of Illinois’ latest federal court victory against deployments in Chicago, Trump would seemingly need to invoke the Insurrection Act, which is the principal legal mechanism that permits a president to federalize or deploy forces domestically to suppress unrest when state authorities are deemed unwilling or unable to do so.
“There is not a doubt in my mind that Trump wants to use ICE and the National Guard to create an atmosphere of fear in Democratic cities in advance of the midterms. Whether or not Trump will get to even test the limits in this regard will depend on the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, which at times has demonstrated that they are fully supportive of Trump’s norm-busting behavior.”
Thomas Whalen, an affiliate professor who teaches US politics at Boston University, said the chance of troop deployments ought to be handled significantly. “Trump is usually at his worst when he thinks he’s going to lose. And it looks like he or at least his party is going to lose big time at the midterms,” he said. Republicans at the moment maintain slender majorities in both chambers of Congress, and the celebration out of energy often performs strongly in midterm elections. During Trump’s first time period, Democrats gained 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms. Losing the House would weaken Republican efforts to cross laws and push celebration priorities.
Trump has beforehand voiced issues about Republican prospects in the midterms, and the celebration is pursuing methods to strengthen its place, including elevated campaigning by Trump and efforts to redraw electoral maps in Republican-leaning states. Whalen added: “He’s been talking a long time about invoking the Insurrection Act and you can imagine the chaos that would cause if implemented on Election Day with a generous gallop of federal troops and ICE personnel flooding the streets in major Democratic cities like Chicago.”
However, not all analysts agree that such a transfer is probably going. Calvin Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said the state of affairs was inconceivable. “This is largely a fever dream on the left as the federal courts have limited President Trump’s ability to deploy National Guard troops into cities, especially against the wishes of state and local officials,” he said, “so he would have only federal law enforcement officers, marshals, ICE, Border Patrol, etc., in numbers insufficient to the task. The main flaw in such a plan, however, clear from watching Minneapolis this week, is that a Trump administration show of force around the elections would be much more likely to bring Democrat voters into the streets and to the polls that it would be to intimidate them.” The midterm elections are scheduled for November 3.
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