Break It Down!
What goes around comes around. For centuries, American conservative ideology revolved around the principle that states’ rights are sacrosanct. That argument served them well, in part because it enabled individual states to actively participate in peddling flesh. The blood, sweat, tears, and free labor of slaves was an outsized component in fueling the rise and expansion of the America many would come to refer to as exceptional. Interestingly (and frankly, understandably), that facet of Americana has never been one that prompted America to bask in pride.
One would be hard-pressed to find many lengthy or in-depth depictions of Blacks’ contributions to building America in our standard history textbooks. Over recent decades numerous policies, and the institutions that fostered them, began to put in place measures to elevate and display evidence of the roles played and contributions made by the enslaved, and their progeny.
Enter Trump 2.0. Suddenly, what had taken centuries to put in place was being subjected to full-frontal assault, and systematic dismantling. Elements, from voting rights laws to affirmative policies, to DEI frameworks, to museum exhibits; anything not defaulting to a Euro-centric, so-called Western Civilization favorable view of the American experience was disparaged, disqualified, or otherwise dismissed.
Fast-forward to the start of year two of T-2.0 and now, voila, out of the blue, states’ rights no longer meet the moment. It’s now not, shall we say, convenient. Mr. Trump has read the room, and the prognosis that the GOP may lose the House, and or the Senate during the midterms left him wanting more. So much more, that he already ordered states to find him more GOP voting districts, similar to the way he asked Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,780 votes. The difference was, unlike the Georgia Secretary of State, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the leaders of the Texas state legislature were only too eager to comply.
Alas, with Democrats fighting back, and California taking similar action, on behalf of the Dems, Trump concluded, it was not enough. So, he decided to up the ante. In the past two weeks:
- The FBI conducted a search in a major Democratic county in a swing state, in
service of debunked theories about fraud in 2020 elections
- The Justice Department attempted to extort voter rolls from another Democratic
state under threat of armed occupation
- The president floated plans to nationalize elections
This is not Trump’s first rodeo. He has attempted to subvert elections before. This time, he has initiated his efforts earlier, in a more organized way, and—crucially—by employing the power of the federal government to help him achieve his personal political goals.
In a Monday conversation with Dan Bongino, the podcaster, turned FBI deputy director, turned podcaster, Trump called for his party to seize control of voting in states. “These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally, Trump said, reprising an oft used and incorrect claim. (Voting by noncitizens is rare and does not amount to enough to swing elections).
He added, “The Republicans should say, “We want to take over’—we should take over the voting in at least, many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn’t win.”
Because states’ rights are a thing, the federal government has no constitutional or statutory role in states’ election administration. The call for “nationalization” is an assertion of power that the federal government does not have, a hallmark of other recent White House ploys.
In addition to trying to pull out all the stops to retain control of both houses of Congress, he’s also still on a mission to prove the counterfactual; that he won in 2020. A supposition premised on a boatload of false claims but buttressed by the singular conclusion about the matter, that he reached long ago.
Now, Trump is also claiming he was cheated out of votes in Minnesota. “I feel that I won Minnesota—I think I won it all three times,” he said. “I won it all three times, in my opinion.”
On January 24, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz demanding that the state turn over its voter rolls to the Justice Department as a condition of the federal government ending its violent crackdown in Minneapolis. Since May 2025, the DOJ has ordered 44 states and the District of Columbia to hand over voter rolls, though it has no statutory right to them. Many states, including Minnesota, have resisted.
Trump has been publicly setting expectations for poor results for Republicans in the midterms. He has attempted to force gerrymanders in GOP-controlled states.
It has been theorized that an election is at greatest danger of interference when the margin of victory is narrow. Americans’ growing disapproval of the president’s handling of immigration and the economy has buoyed Democrats on the generic ballot for Congress. An old joke goes that the election administrator’s prayer is, “Lord, let this election not be close.” Despite Trump’s efforts to influence the upcoming elections, his actions in office make it more likely that the prayer is answered. “Nationalize This!”
I’m done; holla back!
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https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/02/trump-threats-american-elections/685873/
BREAK IT DOWN! 