Trump's Plan to 'Nationalize' Elections Draws Fire

President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to “nationalize” U.S. elections has sparked sharp criticism from lawmakers, including some in his own party. Democrats, meanwhile, are voicing renewed alarm that the move signals an intent to interfere with the upcoming November midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress.

In a podcast interview released Monday, Trump repeated his false claims of a stolen 2020 election and declared that his party should “take over” and “nationalize” voting in at least 15 locations, though he did not specify what that would entail.

Under the U.S. Constitution, state and local governments are responsible for administering elections, not the federal government. Democratic officials and voting rights advocates argue Trump's comments are part of a plan to undermine or manipulate this year's results.

"This is not about the 2020 election," Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia stated at a press conference. "This is frankly about what comes next."

Republican Leaders Oppose Federal Control

While Trump’s base has embraced his calls to overhaul the nation's voting systems, key Republican leaders pushed back on the idea of federalizing elections.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he was "not in favor of federalizing elections." He defended the current system, noting, "I'm a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. It's harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one."

House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that a federal takeover was unnecessary but maintained that Trump's concerns about election integrity were justified. The White House later clarified that Trump wants Congress to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would impose new voter ID and citizenship verification requirements.

"The president believes in the United States Constitution," said press secretary Karoline Leavitt. "However, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections."

A High-Stakes Midterm Election Looms

The controversy comes just months before the critical midterm elections. Historically, the president's party tends to lose seats, and Democrats need to flip just three Republican-held districts to win control of the House of Representatives.

Election experts warned against dismissing the president's rhetoric. "The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with Jan 6," wrote Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth College, referencing the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Some of Trump’s allies have suggested he could use federal funding as leverage. The government provides states with hundreds of millions of dollars annually for election administration, including cybersecurity and voting equipment. Allies believe Trump might threaten to withhold these funds from states that resist new voting measures like ID requirements or restrictions on mail-in ballots.

Scrutiny Mounts Over FBI Search in Georgia

Concerns were amplified by recent events in Fulton County, Georgia, a key battleground in Trump’s 2020 efforts to overturn the election. Last week, the FBI executed a search warrant for 2020 ballots in the county's election office.

Alarmingly for Democrats, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present during the search. The involvement of the DNI in a domestic election operation without a clear foreign threat is highly unusual and raised immediate red flags.

Senator Warner, who co-chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard’s office had not notified Congress of any foreign threats to election infrastructure. He criticized her appearance in Georgia as an act that "politicizes an institution that must remain neutral and apolitical."

In a letter to Warner and Congressman Jim Himes, Gabbard stated that Trump had requested her presence at the FBI operation. She also asserted her legal authority to coordinate and analyze election security matters. This follows her comments at an April cabinet meeting where she announced her office was investigating election integrity issues, claiming electronic voting systems are "vulnerable to exploitation."