Asked about sending ICE to polling places, Trump said “Haven’t thought of it.” One outlet heard “no plans”. Another heard that he would not rule it out. The first sentence denies one thing: operations targeting polling locations. The second sentence keeps the agents. Targeted enforcement continues, and if a threat appears at a polling location, someone “may be arrested”. Read together, the two sentences say ICE will not aim at the polls and may still act at them. That is how opposite headlines stand on the same text. ABC, running the AP story, wrote “no plans for ICE at polls”. The Guardian’s live blog wrote “Trump doesn’t rule out sending ICE to polling sites”. The words “no plans” are not in the DHS statement; they appear in Gen. Caine’s letter, which is about the military. Trump’s own answer to TIME was four words: “Haven’t thought of it.” That is neither a plan nor a refusal. The Insurrection Act entered the transcript after the state-of-emergency question, not the ICE one, and Trump raised it himself: “You mean the Insurrection Act?” The Guardian blog entry joined the two answers. Federal law, as AP reports, bars “troops or armed men” from places where elections are held. The DHS statement does not say how an arresting agent fits that rule.
