{"id":447278,"date":"2026-02-03T21:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447278\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:37:11","slug":"senate-gop-leader-john-thune-says-he-disagrees-with-trump-that-congress-should-nationalize-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447278\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate GOP Leader John Thune says he disagrees with Trump that Congress should ‘nationalize’ elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he was “not in favor” of federalizing elections a day after President Donald Trump said on a podcast <\/a>that Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not in favor of federalizing elections,” Thune told a reporter who asked him about Trump’s remarks. “That\u2019s a constitutional issue,” he added.<\/p>\n

Elections for members of Congress<\/a> are run by the states, in accordance with the Constitution’s Article 1, which also allows for Congress to pass federal regulations. States run voter registration, counting ballots and fraud prevention, among other election responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Thune, the top Republican in the Senate, emphasized that he is “a big believer in decentralized and distributed power.” <\/p>\n

“It\u2019s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he added. “So it, in my view, at least, that\u2019s always a system that\u2019s worked pretty well.”<\/p>\n

Reached for comment on Thune’s remarks, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson reiterated a statement from Monday, saying Trump “cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections.” She pointed to his support for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act and “other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”<\/p>\n

Asked separately about Trump’s stance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that “it\u2019s always been the responsibility of the states to administer elections and it\u2019s a system that works well, so long as the states make it a priority to ensure the integrity of our elections. And we have real concerns about some of the blue states, frankly, that have not been doing that well.”<\/p>\n

He said that Trump was “expressing that frustration” and added, “We’re looking for solutions.”<\/p>\n

Later Tuesday, Johnson alleged that voter fraud appeared to have occurred in recent congressional elections, though he acknowledged he could not prove it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt looks, on its face, to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream. But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system, and it\u2019s essential. And everybody, no matter what party you\u2019re in, should agree with that.”<\/p>\n

Johnson touted the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require<\/a> that states obtain proof of citizenship during voter registration. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote. Election experts <\/a>and advocates<\/a> have said <\/a>that voter ID laws can make it harder<\/a> for citizens to cast ballots because not everyone has the required documents equally accessible.<\/p>\n

Trump said in a Monday interview on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s <\/a>podcast that his party should push to nationalize elections. Trump’s comments came in the middle of an extended rant about election fraud. Trump has for years falsely <\/a>claimed the 2020 election was rigged, though there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the U.S.<\/p>\n

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least \u2014 many, 15 places,'” Trump said during the interview. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”<\/p>\n

Trump then repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 election in Georgia, referencing the FBI search at a Fulton County election office last month.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have states that are so crooked, and they\u2019re counting votes \u2014 we have states that I won that show I didn\u2019t win. Now you\u2019re going see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order, the ballots, you\u2019re going to see some interesting things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The FBI told NBC News last month that it was \u201cconducting court-authorized law enforcement activity\u201d at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center. The county said that the FBI was looking for records related to the 2020 election. Georgia and Fulton County specifically have been a focus of Trump’s since his 2020 loss.<\/a><\/p>\n

Democrats denounced Trump’s comments as “autocratic” and “authoritarian.”<\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced Trump\u2019s remarks as \u201cdangerous autocratic poison.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does Donald Trump think he ran for? A dictatorship?\u201d he asked in a Senate floor speech on Tuesday. \u201cPresident for life in a single-party state where one party runs the elections, like in every other tin-pot dictatorship. This president clearly doesn\u2019t believe in democracy at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., the only House member in a swing district in Georgia, also criticized Trump\u2019s recent comments and the FBI search.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s just a blatant attempt to intimidate and to try to take over the electoral system in the country,\u201d Bishop told NBC News on Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the administration, and the president has said openly, that he wants to nationalize \u2014 he wants Republicans to nationalize on our elections. And of course, our elections are not Republican or Democrat. They\u2019re American elections. And I think that this is another indication of authoritarian trends that this administration is taking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NAACP said in a statement Tuesday that the organization “condemns in the strongest possible terms” Trump’s remarks.<\/p>\n

“This is a desperate attempt to continue to weaken and ultimately destroy the very foundations of our democracy,” the statement said, going on to call it “a blatant assault on the Constitution.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he was “not in favor” of federalizing elections a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-447278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}