\n<\/p>\n
Two prominent Democrats \u2014 one in the House and one in the Senate \u2014 spoke out on Sunday against a move suggested by President Donald Trump even though both championed a similar move five years earlier when their party was in control.<\/p>\n
For those who don\u2019t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television \u2014 and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week\u2019s worth of network and cable news media spin \u2014 The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.<\/p>\n
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) both responded to President Trump\u2019s wild suggestion that Republicans should \u201cnationalize\u201d voting, saying that laws dictating election procedures, constitutionally speaking, belonged to the individual states.<\/p>\n
Trump sparked the debate with an apparently off-the-cuff comment during an interview with former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, when he said of the illegal aliens who\u2019d flooded into the United States through former President Joe Biden\u2019s open border, \u201cIf we don\u2019t get them out, Republicans will never win another election.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Republicans should say, \u2018We want to take over.\u2019 We should take over the voting, in at least, many, 15 places,\u201d Trump added then. \u201cThe Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House later explained that Trump had been referring to states where he believed election fraud was a real problem, and the president has not previously pushed the notion of \u201cnationalizing\u201d voting \u2014 but that did not stop Jeffries and Schiff from running with the idea as if he had.<\/p>\n
The House Minority Leader joined CNN anchor Dana Bash to discuss the situation on \u201cState of the Union,\u201d and she began by noting that Republicans had argued that passing the SAVE Act \u2014 which would require all voters in the United States to show proof of citizenship at the polls \u2014 was the best way to prevent voter fraud in any state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that you don\u2019t support things like a passport, for example,\u201d Bash began. \u201cBut requiring basic ID in order to vote is really popular. A Pew poll from a few months ago showed 83% of Americans, including 71% of your fellow Democrats, support requiring an ID to vote. Why are they wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t said that they\u2019re wrong,\u201d Jeffries insisted before explaining why he was still opposed to the measure. \u201cWe know that states are the ones that are empowered to conduct elections, and every state should be allowed to decide the best way to proceed to ensure that there\u2019s a free and fair election.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is that \u2014 what Republicans are trying to do is to engage in clear and blatant voter suppression,\u201d he added. \u201cThey know that if there\u2019s a free and fair election in November, they\u2019re going to lose! In fact, Republicans have been losing every single election since Donald Trump was sworn in in January of last year, including most recently, decisively, in Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bash pressed again, asking whether it would be worth it, since Democrats favor voter ID laws as well, to \u201ctake that off the table\u201d as a point of contention: \u201cMaybe not a passport or a birth certificate, but show ID.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery state is empowered to be able to make the decision on their own,\u201d Jeffries protested. \u201cWhat Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it. And we\u2019re not going to let it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Trump\u2019s call for Republicans to \u201ctake over\u201d running elections: \u201cWhat Donald Trump wants to do is try to nationalize the election. Translation: steal it. And we\u2019re not going to let it happen.\u201d pic.twitter.com\/jGflGaguAn<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Schiff took a similar tone with \u201cThis Week\u201d host Jonathan Karl, who asked the California Senator to explain what the president meant when he\u2019d told Bongino he wanted to \u201cnationalize\u201d voting in certain places.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenator, what does he mean? What do you think he means?\u201d Karl asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he fully intends to subvert the elections,\u201d Schiff declared. \u201cHe will do everything he can to suppress the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schiff, who still has not provided the evidence he claimed to have regarding President Trump and Russian collusion, went on to insist that Trump would take action if he did not like how the elections played out: \u201cHe\u2019s prepared to try to take some kind of action to overturn the result, and we really shouldn\u2019t question that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nSen. Adam Schiff on President Trump\u2019s call to \u201cnationalize\u201d state elections: \u201cHe\u2019s prepared to try to take some kind of action to overturn the result, and we really shouldn\u2019t question that.\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/mPgqzgikhs<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/qKxEiiUyuh<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And yet both Jeffries and Schiff were all in when their own party pushed for national control over elections via 2021\u2019s H.R. 1 \u2014 laughably nicknamed the \u201cFor the People Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill\u2019s purpose, according to the Democrats who wrote it, sounded reasonable enough: \u201cTo expand American\u2019s access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy and for other purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as former Manager of Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation Hans Von Spakovsky explained, what the bill would actually<\/a> have done was pretty much the exact opposite of what its stated \u201cpurpose\u201d suggested.<\/p>\n
\u201cA better description of it is that this bill would be a federal takeover and nationalization of the running and administration of elections, basically taking it away from the states,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would change election rules to make it easier to cheat and easier to manipulate election results. And on the ethics and campaign finance rule changes, it\u2019s designed to restrict and chill speech, political speech and political activity. So it\u2019s just \u2026 this is one of the worst bills I\u2019ve ever seen in my years in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n