Trump Push For Election Power Means Power to Win
 |
| During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump suggested that “it should be my third term” and falsely declared that the “only way” that Democrats “can get elected is to cheat.” Kenny Holston/The New York Times |
New York Times
Ahead of the midterm elections, an emboldened President Trump has shown an increased eagerness to leverage the full investigative, prosecutorial and legislative powers of the federal government to bend election mechanics to his will.
With his words and deeds, the president — who pushed to overturn his 2020 defeat but declared his 2024 victory legitimate — appears to be undermining Americans’ trust that the midterms will be free and fair.
As the political environment darkens for his party, Mr. Trump is again warning Republicans that Democrats are going to rig the results. At the same time, he is taking actions that make Democrats fear that Republicans are actually going to subvert the election.
Mr. Trump has shown himself unbound by precedent in his second term, and with prominent election deniers in powerful federal posts and top cabinet officials on the hunt for evidence of voter fraud, his moves have heightened anxieties about potential interference.
He has called for Republicans to “nationalize” elections, though the Constitution leaves their administration to the states. The newly politicized Justice Department is suing states for private voter rolls. The F.B.I. has seized ballots from the 2020 election from a Georgia election center — and Mr. Trump was so personally invested that he praised some of the agents by phone.
“Beginning on his first day in office and continuing for the past year in plain view of the American people, Donald Trump has orchestrated and led a sweeping federal government effort to subvert the midterm elections,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative retired federal appeals court judge who has emerged as a Trump critic.
The election maneuvering comes as Mr. Trump has pushed the limits of his executive authority elsewhere, deploying troops to blue states against the will of Democratic governors to help carry out his immigration agenda, killing people he accuses of drug smuggling in the Caribbean without due process and directing the Justice Department to prosecute his political foes.
Mr. Trump himself has hedged his willingness to recognize the midterm results — only “if the elections are honest,” he said last month. He has insisted that he is only trying to make sure that elections are secure, pushing restrictions like voter ID — which polls in the past have shown has broad support — and seeking to limit voting by mail.
The issue is vital to Mr. Trump because it weaves together two threads that are enormously important to him — his belief that he didn’t lose in 2020 and his desire for his party to keep power this fall. On Jan. 6, 2021, his effort to force Congress to reject an unwelcome election result led to a riot at the Capitol.
Speaking from the symbolic seat of American democracy on Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested during his State of the Union address that “it should be my third term” and declared that the “only way” that Democrats “can get elected is to cheat.”
His homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, recently pointed to the administration’s zealousness to root out voter fraud.
“We’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country,” she said at an event on election security in Arizona.
 |
| F.B.I. agents searching an election center in Georgia last month. Later, Mr. Trump praised some of the agents who were involved on a phone call. Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times Mr. Trump often shouts fraud before an election that he fears losing, but this year he has intensified his drumbeat of threats, warnings and false claims about voting. |
He began the year musing about canceling the midterms altogether (just a joke, aides assured), then pivoted to the idea that Republicans should nationalize them (again, aides walked it back before the president doubled down on the notion of the federal government getting “involved”).
On social media and in public remarks, Mr. Trump has indulged, with increasing frequency, debunked theories about how the 2020 election was stolen.
Now those words are sometimes accompanied by government action.
His warning last month that there would be new prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election was followed, days later, by the F.B.I.’s search for nearly six-year-old ballots in a Democratic stronghold in Georgia.
The president has pushed Republicans in Congress to pass restrictive new voting laws, and warned of more executive orders to impose them himself, even as courts have ruled against some of his past efforts. At the direction of the White House, homeland security officials are intensifying efforts to investigate voting by noncitizens.
Control of Congress hangs in the balance this fall, and Mr. Trump has warned that he will be impeached for a third time if Democrats regain control of the House.
The White House is pushing every lever to hold power, especially in the House. Last year, that included Mr. Trump’s unusual drive for Republican-controlled states to redraw congressional maps to squeeze out more G.O.P. seats — setting off an ongoing nationwide redistricting war.
Mr. Trump’s team is also preparing a more traditional campaign: traveling, raising money and trying to address affordability.
Vance says Trump administration will withhold over $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota.
Patel ousts F.B.I. personnel tied to the inquiry into Trump’s retention of classified records.
But the active undermining of faith in the election’s outcome is playing out in parallel — and the specter of a forceful federal intervention hangs over November.
“The federal government should get involved,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office this month when asked about his suggestion that Republicans should nationalize elections. Naming three Democratic-dominated cities, he added, “If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”
He was surrounded by congressional Republicans as he spoke, including Speaker Mike Johnson, who stood just behind Mr. Trump’s left shoulder, his fingers fidgeting as they gripped a red Trump hat.
“If a state can’t run an election,” Mr. Trump said, “I think the people behind me should do something about it.”
Comments