Trump's Longtime Outside Allies Are Urging Him to Take Control of the Midterms, With Martial Law Being Considered if They Deem 'Midterms Rigged'
Martial law, discussed out loud
Trump's longtime outside allies are urging him to take control of the midterms, with martial law being considered if they deem the "midterms rigged," per Axios.
The proposals surfaced on a September 30 video call of MAGA election activists, streamed on Rumble. Peter Ticktin, a childhood friend of President Donald Trump who attended military school with him, told participants "there would have to be martial law" in the event of another rigged election.
Ticktin later told Axios that authorities would probably need to commandeer ballots and voting equipment to get to the bottom of it before anything further occurs. Another speaker, Gregory Stenstrom, proposed pausing the election outright, or invoking the National Emergencies Act to force states to change how they run their elections.
There is no evidence that the elections will be rigged.
The people floating this have access
Ticktin is the attorney for Tina Peters, the former Colorado election clerk convicted in 2024 of crimes tied to a breach of election equipment. Peters was released this year after Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence. She met with Trump in October, and she and Ticktin visited him at the White House in late June.
The 2020-denial network also reaches inside the administration. Heather Honey, who denied the 2020 results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, is now the Department of Homeland Security's deputy assistant secretary for election integrity.
Legal experts told Axios that much of this goes far beyond the president's authority. Congress sets the date of federal elections, and states control voting systems and vote counts, so neither emergency powers nor martial law would let Trump seize election materials or override election law. "Emergency powers are not just a blank check," said Derek Tisler of the Brennan Center.
A White House spokesperson said Trump believes every legal vote must count. The midterms take place on November 3.
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Options market and stocks to watch
Eighteen days out from a midterm, this is a political tail-risk headline, and tail risk is priced in volatility, not direction. Expect demand for hedges to build into November 3: SPY and QQQ put flow, and the volatility complex itself through UVXY, are the cleanest tells for whether traders are paying up for election chaos protection.
A contested or disrupted count would hit the broad market first and the narrative names second. DJT trades as the purest Trump-sentiment proxy and tends to move on exactly this kind of headline. Watch whether options markets start pricing a bigger November move than the calendar alone justifies, and follow developments on the Unusual Whales news feed.
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