{"id":447748,"date":"2026-02-04T03:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T03:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447748\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T03:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T03:07:10","slug":"trump-says-states-are-agents-of-federal-government-in-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447748\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says states are agents of federal government in elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that \u201ca state is an agent for the federal government in elections,\u201d as he defended his call for Republicans to nationalize elections<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI want to see elections be honest \u2014 and if a state can\u2019t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,\u201d Trump told CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins during an Oval Office signing ceremony with Republican lawmakers.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cA state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don\u2019t know why the federal government doesn\u2019t do them anyway,\u201d he said, adding that it\u2019s a \u201cdisgrace\u201d how \u201chorribly\u201d some states run elections.\n <\/p>\n

\n Elections are run by state and local officials, with the federal government playing only a limited role. But that hasn\u2019t stopped Trump from attempting to revamp how elections are conducted, as his administration pushes to overhaul rules ahead of the midterm elections.\n <\/p>\n

\n The president named Atlanta, where less than a week ago the FBI searched an elections office<\/a> as part of a Justice Department probe into alleged voter fraud, and other cities with Democratic strongholds as seeing \u201chorrible corruption on elections.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe federal government should not allow that,\u201d he said Tuesday. \u201cThe federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can\u2019t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Pressed by Collins on the provisions in the Constitution<\/a> that local officials administer elections, Trump said, \u201cThey can administer the election, but they have to do it honestly.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump was talking about the need for a national voter ID requirement when he called on Republicans to \u201cnationalize the voting\u201d in an interview that aired Monday.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhat the president was referring to is the SAVE Act,\u201d Leavitt told reporters, referring to legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. \u201cIt provides very commonsense measures for voting in our country, such as voter ID.\u201d Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections.\n <\/p>\n

\n On several occasions, Trump has pledged to change how the country votes, zeroing in on methods he falsely claims lead to fraudulent voting and kicking off a rare mid-decade redistricting campaign<\/a> intended to help Republicans win additional US House seats.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that \u201ca state is an agent for the federal government in elections,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447749,"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-447748","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\/447748","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=447748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}