The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump says Republicans should ‘nationalize’ elections

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

President Trump suggested during an appearance on the Dan Bongino Show that Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 states and “nationalize” elections. We unpack what to make of these comments and how they fit into a bigger picture of Trump’s repeated efforts to interfere with states’ administration of elections. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Tuesday, February 3, 2026. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And we are recording this at 1.10 p.m. Eastern Time. Today on the show, elections are run by state and local governments. It's in Article 1 of the Constitution. But in an appearance on former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino's show, President Trump said something that is causing. shockwaves. He said he wants the federal government to take over running elections. These people were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many 15 places. The Republicans order to

nationalize the voting. There is a lot to unpack here. And this is just the latest movement. from president settling scores after his 2020 election loss. Let's start with this. What does nationalize the voting even mean? Do you know, Domenico? It means centralizing power and Trump wanting to continue to take any piece of American civic life and bring it under the control of the presidency. And it's not the way the system was designed. It's not what the Constitution mandates.

But that's what Trump wants. I was thinking more practical sense. I don't think anyone exactly knows what he's referencing here in terms of, is he talking about? There's been all of these rumors for months, honestly, since he signed an executive order on voting last March, that maybe there would be another executive order. He's teased it in social media posts. Is that what he's talking about? Is he talking about wanting Congress to pass a new law that changes how the election system is run?

Is he just riffing, as he often does? And is there actually not going to be any practical result to come from this? No one I've talked to since this podcast appearance knows exactly what he means. He mentions 15 places where voting should be nationalized. Do you have any idea what he's referring to there? No, not exactly. I will say that, like, there is a common theme of places that he's fixated on, really for the last six years since 2020. Generally, these are places that have easier voting access. Vote by mail has been a target forum since 2020 in the expansion of Vote by Mail that surrounded the pandemic. So I guess if I was going to guess, it might be associated with the other kind of general target that he's fixed. on has been Democratic-run cities and cities that have high minority populations. These are places like

Atlanta, like Detroit. These have generally been the epicenters for election conspiracy theories for the past half decade. Going back to when he was first in office, he has talked a lot about illegal voters or illegal voting. That seems to continue to be a theme that he was talking about on this podcast. Yeah. And it's a way that he brings immigration into it also. You know, we've heard his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, talk about this as well, about how they believe inaccurately without any basis that people who are in the country without legal status are brought here by Democrats to vote in elections and rig them, even though there's no evidence of that. And not only no evidence, it's been proved otherwise.

Well, it was really interesting, too, listening to this entire podcast appearance. I heard specific echoes to something he said actually in 2020, where he actually said on the podcast that if you don't basically fix the illegal immigrants voting problem, that Republicans like him will never win another election again, which he said in March 2020 specifically about vote by mail, that basically states are trying to make voting easier. And if they do, then you'll never have another Republican elected again. So I don't know. It was so interesting to me that in some ways this is like a very newsworthy, really interesting statement from the president yesterday. But in other ways, it's something that we've heard from him over and over again, which is

that the election system's broken and I'm the one. who should fix it. Yeah, and there's a hint when you hear Trump talk about this of continuing to focus on 2020 because he just never had an off ramp for losing. And we know that he does not believe that losers deserve a place in the spotlight in American society. He's all about winners only, killers, as he calls them in business. So him losing that election still just sticks in his craw. and he just has not been able to figure out a way to, you know, credibly say that he somehow won that election, even though he continues to beat that drum over and over again, certainly his base believes him. It is remarkable the scenarios in which he just brings it up. Miles, we mentioned this at the top. The Constitution direct states to administer elections. Why is that something that matters? Why is this part of the system? It is not something that is like, oh, 15 years ago, we decided this is how things should be done.

I mean, it is the elections clause of the Constitution says state legislature specifically should determine how elections are held. It does have a carve out that Congress can supersede that authority if they want to make nationwide rules. But there is no mention at all in this clause of the Constitution of the executive branch or the presidency, which I think is just really notable. That's not like he's trying to push the bounds a little bit. This is like trying to insert himself in a place that just has absolutely no authority there. Yeah. Congress could step in and do something about this. The Supreme Court has actually weighed in in previous cases about Congress being able to alter state regulations. But there's no votes to really change this clause in the Constitution. And Republicans in recent years obviously have been the party of states' rights. So are they going to do an about face on the sovereignty of states that they should be.

the places to administer their elections. I think it's a very tough hill to climb. I mean, specifically on the elections thing, it's so strange to me to hear this argument from a Republican president because I was talking to an election expert earlier who was saying, like, the patron saint of states' rights and elections is Mitch McConnell. Like, even after Trump signed an executive order early in his second term that sought to take some of the responsibilities from states, Mitch McConnell wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying, you really do not want to do this, because if you want to give federal power to the presidency, then a Democratic president is going to take advantage of that. Miles, you have spent a lot of time recently with state election officials.

I'm wondering what they're thinking at this moment. It's really interesting. Specifically for Republican state election officials, this sort of language and rhetoric puts them in a really tough spot. Because by saying that the federal government needs to control elections, President Trump is saying that states are not doing. their jobs, which obviously state-level officials, even Republicans, kind of take offense to. I was at a conference last week with state election officials, and a Republican there, the lieutenant governor of Utah, Deidre Henderson, talked about that dynamic in an open session where she pointed out statements that have been made by a high-ranking official at the Department

of Justice talking specifically about how states are maintaining their voter list, but she talked broadly about, you know, this sort of rhetoric and how it reflects on states. The things that have been said publicly, frankly, are quite appalling. She's pretty much slandered all of us to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and that the federal government has to do it for us. Not okay. So let's talk about Congress. Is there any chance that Republicans in Congress give the president what he wants or something similar? Well, it doesn't appear that they would have the votes to get exactly nationalizing elections through. But what Republicans have been trying to push is something called the Save Act, which would essentially require people to show proof of citizenship, not just a driver's license or photo ID, which had been the previous push when registering to vote or updating that voter registration. You'd have to show a proof of citizenship. Now, that also likely doesn't have the votes to get through both chambers. But we've also seen the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, sort of walk this line in saying that, well, Trump is focused on, quote, election integrity. And that's why Republicans in Congress want the SAVE Act to go through, which is not the same as saying they want to nationalize

elections, but certainly would make it a whole lot tighter for who would be able to vote. One of the interesting things about the second Trump term is how many resources the Trump administration has put into trying to find these non-citizens on voter lists that Trump has been promising for years. They've run tens of millions of voters through this new data system at the Department of Homeland Security that is meant to root out non-citizen voters among other things, and they have found a vanishingly small amount of people. I'm talking like it is confirmed that 99.999% of people on state voter lists that have been run so far are citizens. And so I think, you know, absence of evidence of an actual problem, it's going to be really, really hard

to convince Republican Congress people to move on this. And in terms of the SAVE Act, there is a lot of pressure being applied to Senate Republicans, but in order for legislation to get out of the Senate, they're going to need some Democrats. And it just doesn't seem like Democrats are even close to going for it, much less all Republicans. It just hasn't been crafted in a way to try to attract those Democratic votes, to be frank. I mean, that was the talk of this conference I was at last week with election officials, is that like there are ways, I think, that you could craft national legislation that would have popular support and would actually put a little bit of pressure on those, you know, Democratic swing

voters to try to support something as it's currently constructed, which is a extreme piece of legislation that would greatly alter how people vote. Democrats just don't feel, I think, any pressure at all to support it. Right. And whether it's realistic that, you know, the elections in this country could be nationalized, it seems unlikely, obviously. It does raise a lot of concerns from people who watch elections in the United States, not just because the rhetorical turns of phrase that Trump is using to sort of undermine elections in the country and trust in the elections in those states. But are there ways that the Trump administration would try to actually practically interfere, for lack of better word, in the state and local elections? We just don't

know exactly what that could mean. Whether he can take over the elections for a state or a county, I think the courts would almost certainly say no is the answer to that question. But the federal government is a big beast, right? I mean, even just thinking about DOJ, DOJ is currently suing roughly half the country trying to get access to their election data. We just saw this unprecedented raid last week in Fulton County, Georgia, where the FBI went and grabbed ballots and other election material from the 2020 election, seemingly directly connected to President Trump. I mean, he talked on the phone to the agents who were conducting the raid in Fulton County, Georgia. And so is there a legal mechanism for him to actually take over the election somewhere? No, but are there a lot of things that he can do?

Even I think one of the other things that's come up a lot in conversations I've had is the idea of deployment of federal troops, right? I mean, with everything that's happening in Minnesota, this is something that a year ago would have, I think, been considered sort of hyperbole or fear-mongering. But now I think it just doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility the idea that he's, could deploy federal troops somewhere, although federal law is very strict about federal troops not being at polling places. There's just lots of ways for him to push the boundaries if he wants to. All right. We are going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. And we're back. And we've been talking about President Trump's efforts to exert control over elections. Before the break, we were talking about an FBI raid last week at an elections office in Fulton

County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta. Miles, you have some new information about why Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was there and what she was up to. Yeah, I mean, this was one of the most interesting parts about that raid. I mean, A, the idea of federal government confiscating election materials from an election that was six years ago was pretty notable. But then also immediately after there were these photos that were circulating of Tulsi Gabbard in a baseball hat just kind of being on scene. She's the director of national intelligence. So it's a little bit unclear why she would be on the scene of a seemingly local criminal investigation. But Shikshi wrote a letter to two Democratic members of Congress kind of explaining herself, noting that as D&I, a big part of her job is investigating election security.

And, you know, that has been true in years past that the role of the DNI has looked into, you know, for an election interference, for instance. But it's becoming clearer that a big part of her job is specifically Donald Trump's desire to investigate the 2020 election. And so that was why she was on site at Fulton County, Georgia. and that was why she facilitated this phone call between Trump and the agents there. And I think over the last couple weeks, it has just become even clearer than it already was that there is this breaking down of boundaries between what's happening at the Justice Department and President Trump's personal desires, right? I mean, we still don't know exactly probable cause for what led a judge to sign off on this warrant. But the fact that the Director of National Intelligence has said openly that investigate, his election loss from years ago is a big part of her job. I think, you know, we should make light of that.

Well, and the administration just seems to not be able to keep their story straight exactly on what Gabbard was doing there in the first place. You know, but Trump always seems to kind of give away the game, even when his administration is trying to sort of thread a needle and say something kind of different. He was asked on Thursday by reporters what she was doing at the election center in Georgia. And he said, quote, she's working very hard on trying to keep the election. safe. Okay. And then the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, in the days that followed after that, was asked about what she was doing there. And he downplayed her involvement. He was saying, she happened to be present. I don't know why the director was there. She's not part of the grand jury investigation. She wasn't at the search. So they're really not able to kind of keep their story

straight. And it seems like Gabbard is there as a personal emissary of the president, while at the same time trying to shoehorn in a reason of national security for why she's there in the first place. And I just think the mere fact, it doesn't really matter what the president said. We don't know precisely what he said on that call with FBI agents. Gabbard said that he did not ask any questions and did not issue any directives. But the mere fact that the president of the United States is calling in to FBI agents working on this case really just take. down any premise that there might be a wall between investigations conducted by the Justice Department and the President of the United States. And I think it also opens up this interesting

question. Just looking ahead to midterms, not even just from an election security angle, but in terms of how voters perceive all of this, because it is interesting that, you know, the President of the United States was spending part of his day on the phone with investigators looking into something that happened many, many years ago and the Director of National Intelligence. And I guess I wonder if in the back of voters' minds are they just thinking, well, what does that mean that they're not spending their time doing, you know? Well, one thing we've seen in polling is that voters, independents, Democrats think that Trump is focused on the wrong things. You know, they think that lowering prices should be the thing that the administration focuses most of its resources on and

think that Trump is kind of himself off on the wrong track and how he's thinking about what he's focused on. So, you know, you've seen his numbers really crater in the last. couple of months, his approval ratings, his economic approval, all of that. And, you know, at some point, someone in the administration you would think would be trying to get him to a place where he's, quote, unquote, focused. But obviously, that has never been how Trump has acted. I do want to go to this bigger picture here, though, because this is an election year. And Miles, you were spending time with elections officials. How are they thinking about this midterm year? And does all of the action by the Trump administration give them pause?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is all anyone is talking about, to be clear. If you're an election official right now, it is hard to think about anything else. The level of unpredictability that these people are facing over the next nine months cannot be overstated, right? I mean, I was talking to the Secretary of State of Michigan, Jocelyn Benson, who is also a Democrat running for governor. And I asked her, like, would it surprise you if something like what just happened in Fulton County happened in your state? Here's what she said. We are always prepared for anything in Michigan, given what we.

I mean, you know, armed protesters came to my home in 2020. False electors stood out outside of our state Capitol building and demanded to be seated. So, yes, we know we continue to be locked in this ongoing battle over our democracy, over election administration. And I think, you know, when you think about how these people are preparing for this election, I do think that we've heard that a lot from a number of election officials, that this is just part of the game planning, whether it's preparing for the possibility of a hurricane, whether it's preparing for the possibility that you're, you know, you run out of ballots. I think the idea of federal interference and the President Trump, whether it's dropping an executive order three weeks before the election or whether it's, you know, the National Guard being deployed three blocks from your biggest polling place, I do think election officials are thinking a lot about preparing for a number of these scenarios. Okay, let's leave it there for today. On tomorrow's episode, we will be talking about the Epstein files. Millions more pages have been released. So make sure to hit the follow button in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss a thing. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.