Prominent figures within the political orbit of Donald Trump are pressing the U.S. president to declare martial law if the Republican Party suffers a defeat in the upcoming congressional midterm elections, according to a report published by The Atlantic. The discussions took place during a gathering in Las Vegas earlier this month, where conservative activists and legal allies met to devise strategies to contest expected electoral losses and challenge electronic voting infrastructure.
Las Vegas Strategy Meeting Targets Midterms
The strategy sessions in Las Vegas involved figures including former Colorado county official Tina Peters, attorney Peter Ticktin, and media personality Wayne Allyn Root. According to reporting by The Atlantic, the participants discussed scenarios in which the Republican Party loses control of the House of Representatives or the Senate in the midterm elections, which determine the distribution of the 435 seats in the House and roughly one-third of the 100 seats in the Senate.
Peter Ticktin, a defense attorney who attended school with Donald Trump and later represented him legally, told The Atlantic that the administration faces a stark choice following a potential midterm defeat. “Either martial law or resign,” Ticktin said. He suggested that martial law could be justified by claiming electronic voting systems are vulnerable to foreign interference. Wayne Allyn Root similarly argued at the meeting that a national emergency must be declared to prevent what he alleged would be a stolen election.
Tina Peters and the Legal Precedent of 2020 Election Claims
The push for extraordinary executive action draws on ongoing, unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud from the 2020 presidential election. Tina Peters, one of the participants at the Las Vegas meeting, was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting equipment in Mesa County, Colorado, to subvert the victory of Joe Biden. Peters was released following a commutation associated with Donald Trump in 2025.
Reflecting on the mood within the movement, Peters told The Atlantic that supporters “can’t trust the elections — they’ve seen too much.” While the White House has repeatedly asserted that evidence of voter fraud and non-citizen voting is accumulating, administration officials have denied that Peters, Ticktin, or Root hold formal advisory roles or influence official electoral policy. Meanwhile, cabinet members have reportedly spent months attempting to steer the president away from theories regarding election rigging.