President Donald Trump delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum on January 21, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his call for federal control over election administration across the country, undermining the Constitution’s structure that authorizes states to conduct elections.
For the second time in a few days, Trump indicated that he wanted to involve the federal government more closely in the elections. The issue renews concerns about Trump’s expansion of presidential power that critics of his second presidency have harbored described as authoritarian.
Then speak a ceremony to sign the bill In the Oval Office and surrounded by Republican leaders in Congress, he responded to a question about previous comments about “nationalizing” election administration by suggesting that lawmakers behind him should “do something about it.”
“I want the elections to be honest,” he said. “If you think about it, the state is an agent of the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do that anyway.”
Trump repeated debunked claims that he only lost the 2020 presidential election because of voter fraud, particularly in major Democratic-leaning cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit.
“The federal government shouldn’t allow this,” he said. “The federal government should get involved. These are federal government agents who are counting the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then someone else should do it.”
The comments marked the second time in as many days that Trump initiated a federal takeover of election infrastructure and came after Republican leaders in Congress and the White House press secretary downplayed his earlier comments.
In a podcast interview published Monday, Trump said his party should “nationalize” elections.
“Republicans should say, ‘We want to take power,'” he said. “We should take over the vote, the vote in at least many – 15 places. The Republicans should nationalize the vote.”
Afternoon walk
Reporters asked U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune about Trump’s initial comments during press briefings on Tuesday.
Both avoided supporting that view and tried to tie it to Republican Party legislation that would impose a statewide requirement that voters show proof of citizenship.
“We have a thoughtful debate about our electoral system every election cycle and sometimes in between,” said Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana. “We know it’s in our system: States have been responsible for administering their elections. What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration that some of the blue states, quite frankly, are not able to enforce these things and make sure that they are free and fair elections. We need to keep improving on that front.”
“I think the president made it clear what he meant by that, which was that he supports the SAVE Act,” Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said earlier Tuesday. “There are probably different views when it comes to nationalizing or federalizing elections, but I think that at least on this narrow issue that is at stake with the SAVE Act, the president has addressed that.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also supported the Republican election bill, saying states and cities that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections have created a system rife with fraud. Reports of voter fraud are extremely infrequent.
“There are millions of people who have questions about this, just like the president does,” she said. “He wants to do it right and the SAVE Act is the solution.”
But Trump appeared to hint Tuesday night, with Johnson among those standing behind him, at a broader desire for the federal government to be directly involved in election administration.
2020 election history
Trump has a long history of making claims about election integrity.
His persistent lie that he won the 2020 election, despite dozens of lawsuits showing no decisive fraud, sparked the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as his supporters attempted to overturn the election results.
He has continued to make this claim since returning to office, speaking by telephone with FBI agents who seized voting machines in Fulton County, Georgia New York Times reportingraising questions about his operate of law enforcement to bolster his political power.
Trump’s opponents, some of whom said he was sliding toward authoritarianism in his second term, quickly dismissed his recent comments.
“Donald Trump urged Republican officials to ‘take over’ voting procedures in 15 states,” Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, wrote on social media. “People from all political parties need to be able to stand up and say this can’t happen.”
Walter Olson, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in a statement that federalizing elections would be a bad idea on the merits, but Trump’s history raises additional concerns and urged Americans to “be vigilant against any repeated attempts of this kind before, during or after the upcoming midterm elections.”
“This attempt to engineer a federal power grab is not coming from an ordinary official,” Olson said. “It comes from a man who has already tried to overturn a free and fair election because it went against him, using a barrage of lies and baseless legal theories, and who has repeatedly pressured his subordinates, many of whom were willing at the time to say no to plans like sending federal troops to seize voting machines.”
