Trump keeps teasing a federal election takeover
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. |
| 0:11.5 | On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:18.2 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:27.2 | And today on the show, President Trump continues to suggest the federal government should take more or maybe complete ownership of how elections are run. Just last night, he wrote on social media, quote, America's elections are rigged, stolen, and a laughing stock all over the world. We are either |
| 0:41.7 | going to fix them or we won't have a country any longer, end quote. So I want to talk about this. |
| 0:46.4 | Miles, I want to start with you. Trump has teased steps that he could potentially take to give the |
| 0:52.8 | federal government more control over elections. |
| 0:55.7 | That includes an executive order. |
| 0:57.9 | He's been sort of teasing for a while or declaring a national emergency. |
| 1:01.5 | Can you explain some of the possibilities here? |
| 1:04.5 | Sure. |
| 1:04.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:05.0 | I feel like this is really the last couple weeks. |
| 1:06.9 | It's really heated up. |
| 1:08.0 | We have the sense that it's coming. |
| 1:10.8 | In early February, he posted on |
| 1:13.6 | truth social that he had come across some sort of novel legal argument that would allow more |
| 1:20.4 | federal government involvement in elections than currently exists. The Constitution's pretty clear. |
| 1:25.5 | We can get into this that states and local governments run |
| 1:28.4 | elections. But that post a couple weeks ago kind of implying that he had some novel legal theory |
| 1:33.4 | as part of this. And then last week, the Washington Post also reported that there is this draft |
| 1:39.2 | emergency executive order on elections that's floating around election denial circles being circulated by a guy |
... |
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