Mark R. Ditlevson, nominated to be assistant secretary for homeland defense and America’s security affairs, testifies during a Senate Armed Services confirmation committee hearing on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — A Department of Defense nominee for a top homeland defense policy position declined to say Thursday if it would be appropriate to station troops next to polling stations as senators raised concerns of National Guard deployments around the midterm elections.
Mark Ditlevson, the Pentagon’s nominee for assistant secretary for homeland defense and America’s security affairs, said he did not want to speculate about “what threat levels may exist during an election cycle” but told the Senate Armed Services Committee that any deployment of the National Guard would be done to ensure public safety.
“I’m aware of the statute that governs the deployment of troops next to polling stations and I want to emphasize that our focus is always to protect American citizens,” he said. “For any deployment of the National Guard, no matter what that may be, that is always going to be our No. 1 objective.”
The federal code, which prohibits troop deployments to polling locations unless necessary to “repel armed enemies” of the U.S., became a central focus of Ditlevson’s confirmation hearing as Democrats raised fears that President Donald Trump will seek to use the military to subvert elections in November.
Trump in January told The New York Times that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines after his loss in the 2020 election, though he doubted that the Guard was “sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats, and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”
He has also called for the federal government to “get involved” in elections in certain places despite the Constitution granting states primary authority over election administration.
Ditlevson, a former Navy officer, acknowledged Thursday that the legal bar for sending service members to polls is “extremely high” and said his office would work with Pentagon lawyers to provide the “most robust analysis and best advice” to the defense secretary on the issue.
He noted, however, that the National Guard is sometimes called on to provide logistics support in certain situations, such as during the mass vaccination effort during the pandemic.
“That would be a situation that wouldn’t qualify” under the code, he said.
Ditlevson currently serves as a deputy in the homeland defense office, which has overseen Pentagon policy and planning for boat strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific as well as the deployment of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and blue states over the objections of Democratic governors.
The Supreme Court ruled in December that the Trump administration did not have broad discretion to deploy the military in U.S. cities, citing a 1878 law that bans the use of the military for domestic policing.
Ditlevson, in an appearance before the Senate panel last year, defended the deployment of the National Guard to help carry out Trump’s immigration agenda and argued the mission was “not having a negative effect” on military readiness.
Several Democrats on the committee told Ditlevson on Thursday that they had concerns about his nomination, pointing to his leading role in implementing the deployments and dissatisfaction with Ditlevson’s answers about the potential stationing of troops near polling stations.
“I have to say, if you’re not willing, just to say, ‘No, it is not appropriate,’ then I have real concerns about you in this job,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
