Take Control of Elections From States, Trump Tells Congress

President Trump on Monday called on Republicans in Congress to seize control of elections, which would conflict with how the Constitution assigns that authority. In an interview Monday with podcaster Dan Bongino, Trump again asserted without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and said the GOP should "take over" elections and "nationalize the voting." He suggested Republicans should control elections in "at least 15 places" but did not specify which states, the Washington Post reports. "We have states that are so crooked, and they're counting votes," Trump said, per NBC News.

Under the Constitution, state governments set the "Times, Places and Manner" of elections, with Congress able to regulate some aspects. The president is given no role in the process. Trump's position is a dramatic escalation of his efforts that have included advocating for stricter voting rules and for investigations into what he maintains was election fraud, per NBC News. The FBI searched a Fulton County, Georgia, warehouse containing 2020 ballots and related materials last week, a site central to 2020 election conspiracy theories. A warrant allowed agents to collect paper ballots, machine tapes, digital images from the count, and voter rolls. On Bongino's program, Trump said he actually won "in a landslide" and predicted "some interesting things" would emerge from Georgia.

The Justice Department under Trump has sued nearly two dozen states, per Politico, for access to their voter registration lists. And he said last month that he regrets not having the National Guard seize voting machines after the 2020 election; courts across the country rejected fraud claims about that vote. During the interview, Trump alleged, again without evidence, that undocumented immigrants voted illegally in 2020. "If Republicans don't get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican," he said. The New York Times points out that an audit by Georgia's secretary of state in 2024, for instance, found that 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in the state were not citizens. Just nine of them had ever cast a ballot.