‘Take a look at Philadelphia’: Trump threatens to nationalize elections ahead of 2026 midterms
“The federal government should get involved." Trump said as he continues to push false claims about his loss in the 2020 election.
President Donald Trump doubled-down on threats to “nationalize” elections, pushing unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, stemming from his loss in the 2020 election.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday, Trump cited Philadelphia as an example of a place the federal government should run, but offered no evidence of voter fraud or corruption to support his claims of a “rigged election.”
“Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania, take a look at Philadelphia. You go take look at Atlanta,” Trump said, pushing false claims of election corruption. “The federal government should get involved.”
The U.S. Constitution grants control of elections to state legislatures, which are then administered by county and municipal offices.
During an interview Monday with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino, the former deputy FBI director who stepped down in December, Trump said Republicans should “take over” control of elections in 15 states, though he didn’t mention any by name.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed to reporters early Tuesday the president was referring to the SAVE Act, legislation proposed by Republicans requiring citizens to show documents like a passport or drivers license to register to vote. But Trump didn’t mention the legislation during his interview or in the Oval Office Tuesday.
Leavitt also declined to name which 15 states Trump was referring to.
“The president was referring to specific states in which we have seen a high degree of fraud,” Leavitt said, citing New York and California but offering no examples of mass voter fraud.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told reporters Tuesday he disagreed with Trump on any attempt to nationalize elections, calling it “a constitutional issue.”
“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections,” Thune said.
Trump’s comments come a week after the FBI seized ballots and voting records from the 2020 election from the Fulton County election hub in Georgia. In a statement, Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. said the county said it will file motion in the Northern District of Georgia challenging “the legality of the warrant and the seizure of sensitive election records, and force the government to return the ballots taken.”
Trump has been making similar claims going all the way back to the 2020 election. During a debate with his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, Trump baselessly said, “Bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things," viewed at the time as an attempt to sow doubt about the election results and mail voting during the peak of the COVID pandemic.
Despite narrowly losing to Biden in Pennsylvania in 2020 by a little more than 80,000 votes, Trump has repeatedly claimed he actually won, lying about mail-in votes “created out of thin air” and falsely stating there were more votes than voters.
“Every single review of every single county in the Commonwealth has come back within a very small difference, if any, of the results reported back in 2020,” Kathy Boockvar, who served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of state during the 2020 election, told The Inquirer in 2024.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.