Trump confirms his plan to ‘nationalize’ and ‘take over’ elections
In what can only be described as confirmation of his plan to steal the 2026 and future elections, Donald Trump called on Republicans last week to “nationalize” and “take over” elections by placing voting under federal his authority.
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 border security and illegal immigration as an excuse to build his Project 2025-inspired police state, and this time was no exception. The day following Trump declaring his plan to nationalize and take over 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):
Steve Bannon said that the federal government is planning to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to patrol polling stations during this year’s midterm elections.
“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 isn’t beyond 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 includes, in addition to Obama: 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 at the time his concern that our voting system wasn’t centralized, saying that “there’s no one federal election system.”
Congress didn’t address the issue in 2016, but Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan picked up where Obama and Johnson left off in 2018 when they reauthorized and “reformed” DHS. Included in their reform legislation was so-called improvement to cybersecurity. In the Senate, that included amendments co-sponsored by then-Senator Kamala Harris and Republican Senator James Lankford that would bolster cybersecurity of voting systems.
Following the 2018 midterms where Democrats won the most seats in a midterm since Watergate, Nancy Pelosi and crew used their new majority in the House to pass the first incarnation of the “For the People Act” (H.R. 1), a bill they claimed would “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and for other purposes.” (Emphasis mine)
Those “other purposes” included nationalizing elections — they used the phrase “federalizing elections” — and would have ultimately empowered Republicans and Democrats in Congress to seize full control of elections from the people, as we saw in this summary of the bill:
This bill addresses voter access, election integrity, election security, political spending, and ethics for the three branches of government.
The bill also sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence information with state election officials, protecting the security of the voter rolls, supporting states in securing their election systems, developing a national strategy to protect the security and integrity of U.S. democratic institutions, establishing in the legislative branch the National Commission to Protect United States Democratic Institutions, and other provisions to improve the cybersecurity of election systems. (Emphasis mine)
The For the People Act never became law, but the spirit behind it lives on.
Ironically, Trumpist Republicans opposed H.R. 1 — calling it one of “the biggest power grabs in history” — but now appear a bit more flexible to such a power grab if it means making our elections “free and fair” (via The Hill):
“What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters.
“We need constant improvement on that front. I don’t know what the ultimate solution is going to be.” (Emphasis mine)
One of the most notable and obvious proofs that Trump has been working to seize full control of elections can be seen in his attempt to stack the deck in his favor ahead of the 2026 election when he convinced Texas Republicans — and several other states — to redraw congressional districts to secure Republican power in Washington and deny voters from the “other side” of the aisle the right to choose their representatives.
Our Founding Fathers knew the danger of centralized power, and they took great pains to avoid creating such a system when they drafted the Constitution. In The Articles of Confederation, we see how they desired a weak central government, and it was in that spirit that they wrote the Constitution to give broad powers to the states (the people) while deliberately limiting the power of the federal government.
Donald Trump has a plan to nationalize and take over elections from we the people. And if he succeeds, it will mean the end of our Republic and liberty.
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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