Arizona, Iran, and the Trump plan to nationalize and control elections
When it comes to his plans to nationalize and seize control of current and future elections, Donald Trump will go to any lengths to get the job done, as we see from recent “emergency” events in Arizona and Iran.
We begin in Arizona, where Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, informed the world that he had “received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County,” adding that “The FBI has the records” (via Politico):
The move comes just six weeks after the FBI raided an elections office outside Atlanta, seizing records related to the 2020 presidential election, as Trump continues to spread debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud in that election.
Arizona’s Maricopa County — like Georgia’s Fulton County — has long been a centerpiece of those conspiracy theories, with Republicans alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election without evidence.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, accused Petersen of “using his platform as Senate President to legitimize conspiracy theories that Arizona’s own courts and law enforcement have thoroughly debunked” in a Monday statement.
“What the Trump administration appears to be pursuing now is not a legitimate law enforcement inquiry,” Mayes said. “It is the weaponization of federal law enforcement in service of crackpots and lies.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to “nationalize” elections ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in recent months despite the fact that the Constitution explicitly delegates election administration duties to the states.
The Justice Department has also sued more than two dozen states for access to their voter rolls. (Emphasis mine)
In Iran, Trump has provided many explanations for his unconstitutional war — from regime change to destroying the country’s ability to make nuclear weapons — which may or may not be true. However, could the real reason for the war be that he wants to provoke a terrorist attack on domestic soil that would allow him to nationalize and seize control of the upcoming midterms in the name of “national security?” According to historian Timothy Snyder, the answer to that question could be “yes.” (via AlterNet.com):
“A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States,” suggested Snyder. “This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or ‘federalize’ the coming Congressional elections.”
As Snyder pointed out, “Trump has already telegraphed the move.”
Trump has spoken repeatedly about his concerns that the GOP will lose badly in the midterms, and that doing so could have major repercussions not only on his agenda but for the very existence of his presidency. Because of this, he has made it no secret that he intends to manipulate the election, whether through the SAVE America Act—electoral reform legislation that Trump hopes would disenfranchise opposition while giving Republicans greater control over the process—or by declaring an emergency so he can nationalize the elections.
A terror attack within the United States, Snyder says, may be what Trump is counting on to provide that emergency. (Emphasis mine)
Make of this what you will, but Trump’s FBI warned California earlier this week that Iran might be planning a drone attack. So…
Trump confirmed his intention to nationalize elections a few days after the FBI seizure of Fulton County, Georgia, voting records. In a radio interview on The Dan Bongino Show, Trump called voting in America “corrupt,” claimed that previous elections had been stolen from him, and, using words that would make Joseph Stalin proud, concluded that Republicans should take over how ballots are cast and counted:
“These people (illegal immigrants) were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally. Amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it.
“The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” (Emphasis mine)
Trump’s mention of illegal immigrants was no coincidence for the man who has been using the illegal immigration “emergency” as an excuse to build his Project 2025-inspired police state, and this time was no exception. The day following Trump’s declaration to nationalize and control elections, Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast that ICE agents would be dispatched to select polling stations to prevent future elections from being stolen (via Democracy Docket):
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon, a former senior advisor to President Donald Trump and still a figure of influence in the administration, said on Tuesday’s episode of his War Room podcast addressing Democrats. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
Back to the Bongino interview for a moment, Trump also gave a shout out to the FBI raid in Georgia led by Director of National Intelligence (now there’s a contradiction in terms) Tulsi Gabbard, and he promised that the seizure of 2020 election ballots would reveal some “interesting things come out” of the constitutionally questionable raid. Might that mean that he will find non-existent fraud? And if he does, will he use that to rationalize using federal power to nationalize and take over elections? The possibility of such an outcome is within the realm of possibility.
Believe it or not, Donald Trump isn’t the originator of this scheme, it started with Barack Obama as one of the Founding Fathers of America’s Police State that also includes George W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.
Obama suggested using the Department of Homeland Security to “monitor” voting systems, and in August 2016, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson ran with the idea using the catch-all phrase “critical infrastructure” to justify allowing the Feds to seize control of our elections.
“We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is political infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid. There’s a vital national interest in our process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others as critical infrastructure.” (Emphasis mine)
Johnson also expressed his concern that our voting system wasn’t centralized, saying that “there’s no one federal election system.”
As we learned in the years following 9/11, so-called national emergencies have been used by the bipartisan police state to destroy liberty and establish tyranny in America (via John Whitehead op-ed featured in Eurasia Review)
The bipartisan police-state architecture that began with 9/11 has been passed from president to president and party to party, each recycling the same justifications—safety, security, patriotism—to expand its powers at the expense of the citizenry.
People who once spoke passionately about truth, freedom, and faith have now fallen silent in the face of injustice, or worse, convinced themselves that nothing is wrong. The very voices that should be warning against tyranny are instead excusing it or looking away.
This is the danger of double standards in politics: every tyranny is rationalized in the moment by its chorus of defenders. Time and again, the lies we tell ourselves make it possible. The cult of personality. The blind loyalty to party. The belief that “our side” can’t be the villain.
After 9/11, Americans were told the Patriot Act and mass surveillance were “necessary to prevent terrorism.” The result was a sprawling security state that tracks every phone call, every online search, every purchase. The justification was security. The cost was freedom. (Emphasis mine)
Recent events Arizona and Iran show us how far Trump is willing to go to nationalize and take over elections from the states and we the people. And if we allow things to continue in this direction, it will mean the end of our great Republic.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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