When President Donald Trump said this week that he wants Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and take over election administration in 15 unnamed states, Scott McDonell knew better than to dismiss it as bluster.
McDonell, the Democratic clerk of Dane County, Wisconsin, was among Trump’s targets in the wake of the 2020 election. Trump demanded a recount in Wisconsin’s Dane and Milwaukee counties and paid $3 million to facilitate it. He still lost both counties, with the recounts turning up even larger margins of victories for Joe Biden, who carried the state and defeated Trump nationally. Trump subsequently filed a lawsuit contesting the recounts that named McDonell as a defendant. That lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, but Trump’s lawyers appealed the ruling all the way up to the Supreme Court, which declined to review that case and a handful of similar ones.
“It used to be ironclad: You lost, you accepted it, you move on — get a better message, raise more money, win next time,” McDonell told MS NOW. “Now, we get: Storm the Capitol.”
But there is a critical difference between Trump’s position then and now. As a lame-duck president in 2020, his efforts to challenge his election loss were unsuccessful, and tempered by other administration officials who kept Trump in check. Now, he is exerting the full weight of federal power on election offices nationwide — and deploying other parts of the government to aid in his efforts.
Last week, the FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, searching for ballots that would prove fraud in the 2020 election. On hand was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who reportedly called Trump to speak to the agents by phone. Separately, Gabbard has seized voting machines in Puerto Rico to examine them for foreign interference in the 2020 election; her office told Reuters that it “found extremely concerning cyber security and operational deployment practices that pose a significant risk to U.S. elections.”
The Department of Justice is suing states that refuse to turn over voter data — ostensibly part of an effort to create a national voter roll that could be used to allege fraud and undermine election results. And mass firings at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, have dismantled part of the federal infrastructure that once helped local officials defend against election interference — meaning the very agencies that rebuffed Trump’s 2020 efforts are now at his disposal as he heads into another election he has suggested he may contest.
“We’ve been saying for months this administration is engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine our elections and attempt a federal takeover of elections,” Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, told MS NOW. Now — after Trump’s comments on Dan Bongino’s podcast this week — “we have it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
In response to questions from MS NOW, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson insisted federal law gives the Department of Justice the authority to collect data on voter rolls.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” Jackson said, adding that Trump also supports the SAVE Act, which would force states to require voters to provide proof of citizenship. (Many civil liberties groups, including the Brennan Center and the ACLU, oppose the legislation, contending that it would prevent citizens from voting by requiring documents — such as passports or birth certificates — that millions lack.)
“The media should not uncritically amplify these Blue Anon conspiracies,” Jackson added of the experts’ concerns.
In recent weeks, Trump has expressed regret about not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his 2020 loss, reiterated his call for nationalized control of elections in several major Democratic cities in swing states, praised the federal agents who raided election offices in Georgia, and reiterated his false claim that the 2020 election was “rigged,” adding, “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” The White House did not respond to an inquiry about the president’s threat of prosecution.
There’s also mounting concern that Trump could deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the polls after Steve Bannon called for Trump to do just that on his podcast this week. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that she can’t guarantee that that wouldn’t happen — though she also added she has not heard the president discuss that possibility.
Last week’s raid in Fulton County — where FBI agents seized physical ballots and voter rolls from 2020 election — was “unheard of,” said Rich Hasen, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and director of its Safeguarding Democracy Project. He said he fears it could be “a test run” for similar efforts the administration could make in other states leading up to November.
The administration has also quietly dismantled parts of the federal election security infrastructure. Over the past year, about 1,000 employees have left, been fired, or transferred out of CISA, a Department of Homeland Security unit that helped local officials protect their voting systems from hacking, Cybersecurity Drive reported, citing an internal agency report provided by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
McDonell said the agency conducted penetration tests on election servers and provided security guidance. Without that support, he said, local systems will be more susceptible to foreign interference.
“In the past, we’ve really relied on the federal government to help us defend against foreign threats,” McDonell said. “They’ve been an ally of ours.”
The agency has been in Trump’s and his allies’ crosshairs ever since its former director, Chris Krebs, countered the claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Trump subsequently fired him. At her confirmation hearing last year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency’s work on mis- and disinformation should be restricted. In April 2025, Trump signed an executive order demanding an investigation into Krebs. The current status of that investigation is unclear, and the White House did not respond to a question about it.
At a hearing last month before the committee, CISA’s acting leader, Madhu Gottumukkala, insisted the agency remained properly staffed.
In addition to Homeland Security, the Justice Department has also proved willing to support Trump’s election crackdown. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order demanding states give their voter rolls to federal officials. While courts have struck down some provisions of that executive order, the Justice Department continued pressing states to comply and hand over their complete voter registration lists, including voters’ drivers’ licenses and Social Security numbers. At least 11 states have agreed to provide that data, according to the Brennan Center, and the Justice Department has sued more than 20 states that have refused to comply. “He has vast power, and he can use that power to try to accomplish things that he doesn’t have the legal authority over,” said Morales-Doyle from the Brennan Center. Any unlawful actions by the administration “should be stopped by courts,” he added, “but that doesn’t mean there’s not harm that can be done along the way.” That harm is already visible in the ranks of election workers themselves. A report published Tuesday by Issue One, a crosspartisan political reform group, found that half of the top local election officials in Western states have left their jobs since November 2020, with several citing mounting stress and threats. Their departures come amid an increase in harassment of election workers, including by Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay two Georgia election workers nearly $150 million for defaming them. “They’re often under attack verbally; some of them have been doxxed,” said Hasen. “There have been all kinds of problems with keeping the public respectful of the difficult job these people have.” McDonell said he’s experienced this firsthand. “We’ve had some turnover. I think there’s some low morale. There have been threats here,” he said of his office in Wisconsin. After a deluge of threats in 2020, McDonell asked the Department of Homeland Security to assess his office’s physical security. “They were kind of appalled,” he said. He added panic buttons, bulletproof glass and cameras — “some easy, cheap fixes” — but is still waiting for a new election center with gated parking and a secure recount facility, which he hopes will be ready before the 2028 election. In the meantime, he has been talking with colleagues in Wisconsin and across the country about how to prepare for scenarios such as Trump deploying federal troops to polling places. “My job has become emergency management and dealing with one potential crisis after another,” he said. “I won’t be able to focus on just the regular, boring details of an election on Election Day.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky. Recommended
