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The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.
Earlier this week the US president called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating his false claims that elections are plagued by widespread fraud.
On Thursday Gallego, a senator for Arizona and an Iraq war veteran, warned that Trump could seek to interfere with the November midterms that will determine control of Congress – and urged citizens to fight fire with fire.
“We have to prepare for the outmost scenario, the worst scenario, which is they try to either capture the ballot box as ballots are being counted, they try to stop the count, they try to surround polling places, whatever it is,” he told the Court of History podcast with political historians Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz.
“We need to make sure that we have an ultimate response to that which, I believe, has to be a true national strike in the sense that, if they do this, if they try to overthrow our democracy, if you are allied with democracy, do not go to work. If you’re a pilot, do not show up. If you drive a train, do not show up. If you’re a teacher, do not show up. We grind the country to a halt.”
Gallego, who defeated Trump loyalist Kari Lake in 2024, has gained a reputation as a blunt speaker who sometimes uses profane language to take the fight to Republicans. He continued: “We’re not going to keep going to work and boosting the world’s greatest economy in exchange for us to give up on democracy.
“If we have to destroy the stock market to save democracy, we need to accept that and, more importantly, the richest and the most powerful people in the world and in this country need to understand that that is a real possibility. There is no economic stability without democratic stability. If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away the economic stability.”
Trump’s push to expand federal control over elections comes as his administration has stepped up pressure on many Democratic-led states to turn over voter data, with the justice department suing nearly two dozen states over their voter rolls. Last week the FBI searched an election office in Georgia’s Fulton County for records related to the 2020 election.
On Monday Trump floated the idea of nationalising elections in a podcast interview with the former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and, a day later, told reporters: “The state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.”
His remarks were echoed by Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and influential rightwing commentator, who repeated false claims that people living in the US illegally are voting in big numbers and said on his War Room podcast on Tuesday: “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.”
Federal law prohibits the president from deploying military troops at any location holding a general or special election, and several states criminalise carrying firearms at or near polling places. Immigration enforcement could cause both US citizens and legal residents to stay at home out of fear of detention or racial profiling.
Asked about Bannon’s comments on Thursday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters: “I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November – but what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.”
Democrats, long criticised for failing to rise to the challenge of Trump’s threat to democracy, have condemned the president’s latest remarks. But none went as far as Gallego, tipped as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.
He told the Court of History: “We need to show that this is not acceptable. You cannot go to the levels that we used to invade other countries for, basically, for doing such autocratic shit. Like, they can’t. It’s not gonna stand. The American public won’t stand for it.
“They won’t even stand right now the fact that you have ICE agents roaming in our neighbourhoods without warrants. Now, imagine what’s going to happen to the American public when you have a bunch of ICE agents trying to go to different ballot boxes and trying to stop the count. The reaction is going to be very, very strong.”
