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Trump Station? Nationalizing Elections? The Imperial Presidency Must Be Smashed
We are entering uncharted waters.
Feb 09, 2026
News broke this week that President Donald Trump was conditioning approval of an infrastructure spending bill on renaming New York City’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles Airport in his honor. It was unsurprising because there’s a disturbing pattern in Mr. Trump’s approach to governing that includes the glorification of the leader, the erasure of norms, the use of threats of retribution to stifle critics, and a reliance on “alternate facts” to keep the faithful in tow.
Because I am once again writing about President Trump, I know that some will accuse me of having what the president calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I confess to being obsessed with his incendiary speech, his behavior, and the movement he has inspired, precisely because of the danger they pose to American democracy.
During Mr. Trump’s first term we dreaded turning on the news each morning and learning about the threatening tweets he had posted overnight. But because there were guardrails in place—senior staff who would slow walk his demands or simply refuse to act on them, or Congress or the courts that served as a check on his behavior—most often the threats turned out to be hollow.
As has been noted, in his second term, because the guardrails are gone, the president has become emboldened to move beyond empty words to actions which his minions faithfully attempt to execute. As a result, we are entering uncharted waters in which an imperial presidency is testing the resilience of our system of “checks and balances.”
Entering the second year of his second term in office, the pattern is clear. He employs bullying tactics to get his way—with other individuals, institutions, or countries. He “floods the zone,” disorienting opponents by daily confronting them with a barrage of new challenges. And following lessons learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn, he always attacks, never admits mistakes, and always claims victory.
In just the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has undertaken several deeply disturbing initiatives. Individually, each pose a problem, but when viewed collectively they suggest something far more ominous.
He ordered the FBI to seize the 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, presumably because he still believes he was cheated out of victory—even though the official who controlled the Georgia balloting in 2020 was a Republican. It is unprecedented for a president to take an action of this sort and to accompany it with a statement saying:
"Remember, the states are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes…They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
In this one statement, the president calls for violating the Constitution and the prerogative it gives states in running elections. And by equating himself with the federal government and saying that when he speaks, he does so on behalf of and for the good of the country, he is laying the groundwork for an imperial presidency.
The president also made what appears to be a spur of the moment decision to shutter the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He said that the reason for closing the Center was that the building was in such disrepair that it was a danger to patrons. However, given that just a few days before the announced closure, the White House had used this very same venue to host the premiere of the documentary about his wife “Melania,” insiders suggest another reason behind the abrupt decision to shutter the Center.
Unilaterally changing the name of the Center, removing its board, and adding his supporters as board members with himself as chair has made the once-revered institution partisan and toxic. It was losing members and donors, performers were cancelling, and it was bleeding money. Rather than admit defeat, the president shut it down.
One of the president’s earliest actions was to try to bring the nation’s most prestigious universities to heel. He did so by charging them with chronic antisemitism and using “diversity quotas” in hiring and admissions. Because these two issues resonate with his base, he was determined to win. He began by withholding federal grants until universities complied with his demands to rid their campuses of antisemitism (which meant ending protests against Israel) and make admissions and hiring blind. A number of smaller schools submitted to the threats, but Harvard held out. Finally, after a year or fruitless negotiations and threats, the story came out that the White House was backing down on its threat to fine Harvard. This suggestion of defeat so enraged the president that he both denied it and announced that instead of penalizing Harvard $200 million if they didn’t agree to his demands, he was raising Harvard’s penalty to $1 billion, an example of personal peeve becoming policy.
These recent actions by the president are part of a pattern that grows more pronounced each day. He makes decisions unilaterally without regard to the Constitution or established procedure. He acts to punish those who do not submit to his dictates. And he governs as if “L’État, c’est moi.” With the support of a compliant Congress and a base of true believers, right now this president appears to be untouchable. But should he push too far or should Republicans lose control of Congress in November, the tide could turn, leaving Mr. Trump’s effort to create an “Imperial Presidency” to die on the vine.
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'Beyond Crazy': FBI Summons State Election Officials to Secretive Meeting After Trump Threat to ‘Nationalize’ Midterms
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who received the invite, said that what the president is "trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election.”
Feb 06, 2026
State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss "preparations" for this year's midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to "nationalize" in violation of the Constitution.
On Tuesday, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”
Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on February 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was "to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections."
Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies "would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”
At the end of the email, she reiterated, "We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections."
Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: "Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.
Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should "nationalize" elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places" led by Democrats.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he'd never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”
“I was just like, ‘What is this?’ It’s the strangest thing in the world that the FBI is reaching out to us and trying to coordinate election security,” Aguilar said. "It's never happened in the past. The casualness which they did… it was just beyond crazy.”
A former DOJ official told Berg that while it is normal for the department to monitor elections, the email and conference call were highly unusual: “I can’t imagine why it would be coordinated in that way," he said.
Another official who received the email told NBC News that the message was “unusual and unexpected."
Speaking of Hardiman, the official said, “No one has heard of this person—and we’re all wondering what an 'FBI Election Executive' is." NBC reported that a LinkedIn page for Hardiman showed she was appointed to the position seven months ago.
The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election "partners" is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will "have ICE surround the polls," referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it's been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.
After federal agents killed three US citizens and provoked furious protests, Trump offered to withdraw agents from the state, but only if it turned over its voting rolls to the federal government.
At Trump's apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta last week to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
And earlier this week, it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.
“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”
Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing" for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back."
Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump's coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.
"Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done," Miller said. "It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him."
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Escalating Threats to Midterm Elections, Bannon Says Trump Will ‘Have ICE Surround the Polls’
"This is a red alert moment," said Sen. Ed Markey. "We have to start working to protect polling places from Trump's paramilitary ICE goons before it's too late."
Feb 04, 2026
Days after President Donald Trump suggested that Republicans should “nationalize the voting” in Democratic districts, his former White House adviser telegraphed another way Trump may seek to prevent a free and fair election later this year: illegally flooding polling places with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
"You're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November," Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Tuesday.
"We're not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again," he continued. "And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen."
What Bannon proposed would be in direct violation of state and federal law. As Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program, explained back in October:
The law is crystal clear: It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place. In fact, it is a federal crime for anyone in the US military to interfere in elections in any way. More specifically, it is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to deploy federal “troops or armed men” to any location where voting is taking place or elections are being held, unless “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” ...
It is also a federal crime for anyone, including federal agents, to intimidate voters. Anyone who does so may be liable for a number of different federal criminal offenses.
While Trump has not explicitly said ICE should be deployed in 2026, he has said he regrets not deploying the National Guard to seize voting machines during the 2020 election, which he attempted to overturn with a litany of disproven fraud allegations.
He has since followed through somewhat on this desire, sending the FBI to seize 2020 election materials from a voting hub in Fulton County, Georgia, as part of what the FBI said was an "investigation" into election fraud, which he said caused him to lose the election to former President Joe Biden.
It's unclear how, if at all, ICE may figure into his goal, stated earlier this week, to have Republicans "take control of the voting in at least 15 places," which would violate the constitutional right for states and localities to administer their own elections.
He has, however, used ICE to demand that Minnesota—a key swing state in 2026—turn over its voter rolls to the federal government in exchange for a withdrawal of agents who have killed three US citizens over the past month and unleashed a wave of violence and civil rights violations.
Expressing fear that Republicans will be trounced in November’s midterm elections—which polls currently indicate is likely—Trump has also recently suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should simply be “canceled” outright.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) said all of this adds up to a frightening picture.
"Donald Trump can't win the 2026 election, so he's putting in place a plan to steal it," he said in a video posted to social media. "That is not hyperbole. That is not conspiracy. He is literally doing it, and telling you he's going to do it every single day."
Murphy said, “He wants the federal government, meaning Donald Trump’s MAGA loyalists, to run elections in places like Georgia and Minnesota, and probably Pennsylvania and Texas and Maine—anywhere that there’s a race that might determine control of the House or the Senate.”
Trump's threats come amid negotiations in Congress over whether to provide additional funding to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Democrats have said they will not provide the necessary votes to fund DHS unless certain reforms are put in place to rein in the agency's abuses—such as requiring agents to wear body cameras, carry identification, and obtain judicial warrants before making arrests.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who voted against the bill Tuesday to extend DHS funding for two weeks while negotiations continue, has said Democrats must also pursue guarantees that ICE will not be used to interfere with elections.
"We must not agree to another dollar for ICE until we add my amendment blocking the federal government from seizing voter rolls, ballots, or voting machines," he said on Tuesday. "If the House GOP is serious about election integrity, they will agree that elections must remain run by states, not rigged by a wannabe dictator."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) agreed: "This is a red alert moment... We have to start working to protect polling places from Trump's paramilitary ICE goons before it's too late."
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