President Donald Trump earlier this month revisited the idea that he may try to “nationalize elections,” a move he says is called for based on what he alleges is widespread election fraud, particularly fraud perpetrated by noncitizens voting. No reliable source has provided any information to support Trump’s election fraud allegations, while the consensus around U.S. elections is that they are safe and secure.
[NOTE: The American Bar Association, writing of American elections and the political friction surrounding them, asserts that “efforts to cast doubt on their security and accuracy pose a grave systemic threat to our form of government. This is particularly ironic given the reality that American elections are among the most reliably accurate in the world and have never been more secure than they are today.”]
Yet Trump’s threat to nationalize the elections — they are currently run by individual states, as the Constitution prescribes — is still on the front pages, with one recent Washington Post headline reading “Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency.”
[NOTE: Trump is no stranger to claiming emergency powers in situations that others don’t see as dire; the Supreme Court just reversed Trump’s tariffs determining that his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) was overreach.]
Accused by critics of impugning election security not to fix a broken entity but strictly to sow doubt in segments of the electorate — something he has been effective in doing with his MAGA base and dubious “stop the steal” campaign — Trump has reached what his late night comic antagonist Stephen Colbert recently called the “rigging elections phase of fascism.”
For many Americans, the idea of nationalized elections is accompanied by visions of ICE agents standing guard at polling places, an intimidating military-style presence that Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has supported on his podcast.
Amid concerns over armed uniformed masked federal law enforcement officers surrounding voting facilities, DHS said this week that it will not happen and Kentucky’s Harvard-educated Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams announced on social media: “DHS confirms to Secretaries of State that ICE agents will not be at voting locations this year.”
DHS confirms to Secretaries of State that ICE agents will not be at voting locations this year.
— Michael Adams, KY Secretary of State (@KYSecState) February 25, 2026
The idea of ICE at polling places, hinted at by Trump and urged by Bannon, is also illegal barring an attack by “armed enemies.”
As the Brennan Center for Justice writes: “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 U.S. 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.”
The Trump administration’s labeling of antifa, very loosely defined, as a domestic terrorist organization is, in the view of some, a method to lay the legal groundwork for necessitating the force meant to “repel armed enemies of the United States,” as contemplated above. Otherwise the polling places are off-limits for federal law enforcement agents. This designation was made despite the fact that antifa is not a group or an organization, but a decentralized movement, as even former FBI Director Christopher Wray has attested.
As a result, critics of Trump policies and administration actions can be labeled antifa without too much trouble — for the purposes of triggering an ostensibly legal use of force or intimidation. The designation aims to “criminalize opposition” writes the Brennan Center.
There are other major areas where the federal government, which conservatives are purportedly aligned to shrink, is encroaching on the independence of states and how they run their elections — even if nationalization is not achieved. If ICE isn’t there physically to influence who votes, there is federal request for voter data that cedes power to the administration.
Kentucky’s Adams, who semi-complied with the DOJ’s request for voter rolls from states, wrote: “We have provided the public file, as indisputably required by federal law, but we have not provided the additional, non-public information fields: voters’ social security numbers and driver’s license numbers.”
Adams, like many Republicans in deep red states, is not on board with federalizing elections, essentially disagreeing with Trump that any fixes need to be made.
The Secretary of State told the Lexington Herald Leader that “our election system is resilient, run by people with integrity who follow the law — and, critically, that when it comes to Kentucky elections, our voters trust their election officials — me, but more important, their county clerks and poll workers — more than they trust what they hear or see from other sources.”
VOTER REGISTRATION: Kentucky’s voter registration numbers stayed virtually unchanged in January 2026, with 6,830 new registrations recorded despite the approaching May primary election, Secretary of State Michael Adams announced Friday. https://t.co/ukQqY39YIb
— LEX 18 News (@LEX18News) February 14, 2026
[Note: In 2024, Adams was presented with The 2024 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award “for expanding voting rights and standing up for free and fair elections despite party opposition and death threats from election deniers.” In 2020, Adams worked with Democratic Governor Andy Beshear “to facilitate safe access to the ballot during the COVID-19 pandemic – despite fierce opposition from his party and threats made to him and his staff.”]
Governor Beshear responded to the Trump administration’s request for voter rolls (and the USDA’s request for data of those who receive SNAP benefits) by saying Kentuckians’ private data should be protected.
Beshear, who is ineligible to run for governor again this year due to term limits, said: “You either put the loyalty to the people of Kentucky and the promise that you made to them about how you would keep their data private, or, in this instance, a loyalty to party or a president first. You only have one choice. I’ll always choose Kentuckians. I’ll always push back when there is an unlawful request.”