President Donald Trump gives a speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 21, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump restated a call Tuesday for federal control over election administration across the country, undermining the structure outlined in the Constitution that empowers states to run elections.

For the second time in as many days, Trump indicated he wanted the federal government more involved in elections. The issue renews concerns over Trump’s expansion of presidential power, which critics of his second presidency have labeled authoritarian.

Speaking after a bill signing ceremony in the Oval Office and surrounded by Republican leaders in Congress, he responded to a question about earlier comments on “nationalizing” election administration by indicating the lawmakers standing behind him should “do something about it.” 

“I want to see elections be honest,” he said. “If you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.”

Trump repeated debunked claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election only because of election fraud, especially in large Democrat-leaning cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit.

“The federal government should not allow that,” he said. “The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

The comments marked the second time in as many days that Trump has floated a federal takeover of election infrastructure and came after Republican leaders in Congress and the White House press secretary had downplayed his earlier remarks.

In a podcast interview released Monday, Trump said his party should “nationalize” elections.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Afternoon walkback

Reporters asked U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at press availabilities Tuesday about Trump’s initial comments. 

Both avoided endorsing the view and sought to tie them to GOP legislation that would create a nationwide requirement that voters show proof of citizenship.

“We have thoughtful debate about our election system every election cycle and sometimes in between,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said. “We know it’s in our system: The states have been in charge of administering their elections. What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections. We need constant improvement on that front.”

“I think the president has clarified what he meant by that, and that is that he supports the SAVE Act,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said earlier Tuesday. “There are other views, probably, when it comes to nationalizing or federalizing elections, but I think at least on that narrow issue, which is what the SAVE Act gets at, I think that’s what the president was addressing.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also endorsed the GOP elections bill and said states and cities that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections created a system that was rife with fraud. Reports of election fraud are exceedingly rare.

“There are millions of people who have questions about that, as does the president,” she said. “He wants to make it right and the SAVE Act is the solution.”

But Trump on Tuesday evening, with Johnson among those standing behind him, seemed to indicate a broader desire for the federal government to be directly involved with election administration.

2020 election history

Trump has a charged history with claims around election integrity.

His persistent lie that he won the 2020 election, despite dozens of court cases that showed no determinative fraud, sparked the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as his supporters sought to reverse the election results.

He has continued to make the claim since returning to office and spoke by phone with FBI agents who seized voting machines in Fulton County, Georgia, according to New York Times reporting, raising questions about his use of law enforcement to reinforce his political power.

Trump’s opponents, some of whom have said he is sliding toward authoritarianism in his second term, quickly rebuked his recent comments.

“Donald Trump called for Republican officials to ‘take over’ voting procedures in 15 states,” Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, wrote on social media. “People of all political parties need to be able to stand up and say this can’t happen.”

Walter Olson, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, said in a statement that federalization of elections would be a bad idea on the merits, but Trump’s history raised additional concern and called for Americans to be “vigilant against any repeated such attempt before, during or after the approaching midterms.”

“This trial balloon for a federal takeover is not coming from any ordinary official,” Olson said. “It is coming from a man who already once tried to overturn a free and fair election because it went against him, employing a firehose of lies and meritless legal theories, and who repeatedly pressed his underlings, many of whom in those days were willing to say ‘no’ about schemes such as sending in federal troops to seize voting machines.”

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents carried out a raid Wednesday at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center is located in Union City, Georgia. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

ATLANTA — Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Fulton County elections warehouse Wednesday. 

A court order signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, all ballot images and Fulton County’s 2020 voter rolls. A copy of the order was given to the Recorder by a House lawmaker.

“We are aware of the ongoing law enforcement activity involving the FBI at the Fulton County warehouse,” said Cae’Lenthya Moore, the executive assistant to Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander. “At this time, we are only aware of activities involving the warehouse location.”

Officials at the FBI’s field office in Atlanta did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

The Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center is located in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The county, which is home to much of the city of Atlanta, was also at the center of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia and other swing states.

Fulton County was also where Trump was indicted in 2023 following his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Fulton County Elections Board Chair Sherri Allen told reporters that “Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections has always, and will continue to maintain fair, transparent and accurate elections.” 

“We have fully complied,” she added. “We will always comply with law enforcement and with the rule of law.”

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said he has not been told where the ballots will be taken upon leaving the warehouse, and that he can no longer guarantee they will remain safe and secure. Audits of the 2020 election in Fulton County, he added, have repeatedly been found to be accurate.

“That election has been reviewed, it’s been audited, and in every case, every instance, we get a clean bill of health,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly blamed his 2020 loss on unfounded accusations of rampant voting fraud, even though two recounts affirmed former President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia. Last week, in a speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump once again claimed that the 2020 election was rigged and said that the individuals involved “will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

State Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat and voting rights attorney who showed up to the scene of the raid, said the raid was “an assault on our democracy,” and an attempt to target a Democratic stronghold in Georgia.

“This is certainly an attempt to sow chaos, it is an attempt to undermine confidence in our elections,” she said. “It’s focused on Fulton County, because this is where the Democratic voters are.”

The Carter Center, which helps monitor elections across the U.S. as well as in countries like Venezuela, Sierra Leone and Nepal, said the raid “appears to be yet another attempt to sow doubt in election integrity and undermine voter confidence during a consequential election year.”

In December, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Fulton County for refusing to turn over voter records from the 2020 election. Alexander, the county clerk, previously denied Justice Department officials’ request for the data according to the lawsuit, stating that the records were under seal and could not be released without a court order. She later filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.

The Justice Department has also filed its most recent lawsuit seeking Georgia’s unredacted voter data against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last week. Officials from the secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid.

Georgia’s political ecosystem, however, was quick to react. In a statement, Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon celebrated the FBI’s raid, saying that it was “long overdue.”

“Georgians have waited years for real answers about what happened in 2020,” McKoon said. “Getting every detail out, especially around ballot handling and processes in Fulton, is absolutely critical.”

But Charlie Bailey, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, criticized the move.

“Every Georgian should be alarmed that Donald Trump is wielding federal law enforcement to push his baseless, dangerous lies about winning the 2020 election,” Bailey said in a statement, adding that “we will not be intimidated by a fragile bully who has been proven wrong by independent reviews time and time again.”

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is up for re-election in November, also criticized the raid, calling it a “sore loser’s crusade.”

“From Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world is a President spiraling out of control, wielding federal law enforcement as an unaccountable instrument of personal power and revenge,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, who is running for Senate on the Republican side, put out a statement on social media, saying “Georgians are about to get some long-overdue answers and learn just how right President Trump was in 2020.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, another Republican Senate candidate, also issued a succinct statement directed at FBI Director Kash Patel.

“Go get ‘em, Kash,” he wrote.

Wisconsin State Flag | Getty Images Creative

This week marked the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, demanding that then-Vice President Pence overturn the will of the people. Efforts to impose accountability for those responsible and those involved have largely ended — except in Wisconsin. This means that Wisconsin has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to re-assert the rule of law, to ensure justice, and to bolster the foundations on which American democracy has been built over the past 250 years.

As we assess the state of our democracy in light of this somber anniversary, let’s start with the bad news: 

• The U.S. Supreme Court derailed efforts by states to enforce the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against insurrectionists serving in federal office, and then it invented an ahistorical and jaw-droppingly broad doctrine of presidential immunity to derail criminal prosecutions of Trump in state and federal courts alike. 
• Federal prosecutions of the violent mob in the Capitol were upended by Trump’s Department of Justice, and Trump issued sweeping federal pardons to every individual connected with Jan. 6, effectively encouraging them to keep it up. 
• State prosecutions of the fraudulent electors — those who executed an unprecedented effort to overturn the 2020 election by submitting to Congress (and other officials) paperwork that falsely declared Trump to have won seven key states that he in fact lost and thereby laying the groundwork for the Jan. 6 rioters to violently demand Pence validate their efforts — have faltered, often for reasons unrelated to the merits of those actions. 

But here in Wisconsin there are still grounds for hope. Hope that bad actors who deliberately took aim at our democracy will be held accountable. Hope that our institutions will stand up and protect our democracy from further meddling by those most directly responsible. And hope that those institutions will act promptly to prevent further damage. Every Wisconsinite should be watching the following accountability efforts — and urging our elected officials to use their authority to advance the rule of law and protect our democracy. 

First, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will soon determine the appropriate sanction for Michael Gableman’s ethical transgressions as he spearheaded a sham “investigation” of the 2020 election. Gableman, who once served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, accepted this job despite his own assessment that he did not understand how elections work in Wisconsin. He wasted taxpayer funds, undermined government transparency laws, dealt dishonestly with his clients and the public, lied to and insulted courts, and tried to jail the elected mayors of Green Bay and Madison. In March 2023, Law Forward filed an omnibus ethics grievance, documenting Gableman’s myriad breaches of the ethics rules that bind all Wisconsin attorneys. Last summer, Gableman stipulated that he had no viable defense of his conduct and agreed with the Office of Lawyer Regulation to jointly recommend his law license be suspended for three years. (He is now trying to wriggle out of accountability by serially pushing justice after justice to recuse.) 

Wisconsin precedent is clear that, where a lawyer is charged with multiple ethical breaches, the proper sanction is determined by adding the sanctions for each breach together. The Court should apply established law, which demands revoking Gableman’s law license. Then the Office of Lawyer Regulation and the Court should act on our requests to hold Andrew Hitt (chairman of the Wisconsin fraudulent electors) and Jim Troupis (chief Wisconsin counsel to Trump’s 2020 campaign and ringleader of the fraudulent-elector scheme) accountable as well.

Second, the primary architects of the fraudulent-elector scheme, detailed in records  obtained through Law Forward’s groundbreaking civil suit, are also facing criminal prosecution in Dane County. Attorney General Josh Kaul’s case is narrowly focused only on three lawyers — two who were based here in Wisconsin, and one working for the Trump campaign in DC — who conceived and designed the scheme to overturn Wisconsin’s results and then convinced six other states to follow suit. Troupis, who himself was appointed to the Wisconsin bench by former-Gov. Scott Walker as a reward for his key role in the 2011 partisan gerrymander, has gone to great lengths to slow down this prosecution, which Kaul initiated in June 2024. He filed nine separate motions to dismiss the case. He accused the judge hearing preliminary motions of misconduct and insisted that the entire Dane County bench should be recused. And now he has appealed the denial of his misconduct allegations. This case, since assigned to a different Dane County judge, will proceed, and it is the best hope anywhere in the country to achieve accountability for the fraudulent-elector scheme. 

Third, on behalf of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and two individual voters, Law Forward is suing Elon Musk and two advocacy organizations he controls for their brazen scheme of million-dollar giveaways to influence the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. This case is about ensuring that Wisconsin elections are decided by Wisconsin voters, not by out-of-state efforts to buy the results they want for us. We’re waiting for the trial court to decide preliminary motions, but, with another Wisconsin Supreme Court election imminently approaching, there is urgency to clarify that Wisconsin law forbids the shenanigans we saw last year, which contributed to the most expensive judicial race in American history. 

Beginning in 2011, Wisconsin became the country’s primary testing ground for the most radical anti-democratic ideas. From Act 10 to one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, from subverting the separation of powers and steamrolling local control over local issues to hobbling the regulatory state and starving our public schools, Wisconsin’s gerrymandered Legislature adopted idea after idea hostile to democracy. With the end of the nation’s most extreme and durable partisan gerrymander in 2023 and a change in the makeup of the state Supreme Court, however, the tide in Wisconsin has ebbed somewhat. 

Now, improbably, Wisconsin is the place that democracy can best hold the line. We can create accountability for those who have abused power, have undermined elections, and have diminished the ideals and institutions of our self-government. That, in conjunction with Law Forward’s broad docket of work to defend free elections and to strengthen our democracy, sustains my hope.

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A small crowd of far-right activists marched on the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026 in a nonviolent protest. They followed the path of the march five years ago, when rioters attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden's presidential election win. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Five years after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the struggle to define the event and assign blame carried on in events across the city Tuesday that remained nonviolent, though still disturbing.

A crowd of no more than a few hundred of President Donald Trump’s supporters commemorated the deadly attack with a somewhat subdued march from the Ellipse to the Capitol that was in stark contrast to the riot five years ago.

Inside the Capitol, U.S. House Democrats gathered in a small meeting room, apparently unable to secure larger accommodations for an unofficial hearing that largely rehashed the findings of a House committee that spent 2022 investigating the attack.

Trump, meanwhile, addressed House Republicans three miles west at the Kennedy Center. In an hour-plus address, he blamed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence on Jan. 6, 2021 and recommended the GOP lawmakers pass laws to make election fraud more difficult. Trump’s claim that his 2020 election loss was due to fraud sparked the 2021 attack.

“Our elections are crooked as hell,” he said, without citing evidence.

House Dems blast pardons 

Inside the Capitol, at a morning event that U.S. House Democrats organized and in which Republicans didn’t take part, lawmakers and experts criticized Trump’s pardons of people involved in the 2021 attack, one of his first acts after returning to office last year.

They also decried his continued recasting of the events of the day.

White House officials launched a webpage Tuesday that blamed the attack on Democrats, again including Pelosi, and restated the lie that initiated the attack: The 2020 election that Trump lost was marred by fraud and should not have been certified.

“Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6,” the page reads. “…In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” 

Pelosi at the hearing on Tuesday condemned Trump’s version of the attack. 

“Today, that president who incited that insurrection continues to lie about what happened that day,” the California Democrat said.

Other Democrats and their invited witnesses also described the pardons as signaling that the president accepted — and even encouraged — his supporters to pursue illegal means of keeping him in power. 

Brendan Ballou, a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor who resigned shortly after Trump’s 2025 pardons, told the panel the executive action sent Trump supporters the “clear message” they were above the law.

“The January 6 pardons also fit into a broader narrative of what’s going on with this administration, that if people are sufficiently loyal and willing to support the president, either in words or financially, they will be put beyond the reach of the law,” he added. “It means that quite literally for a certain group of people right now in America, the law does not apply to them.”

Former ‘MAGA granny’ testifies

Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi led the panel discussion, with Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland and several others also sitting in on it.

The first panel of witnesses included Ballou, other experts and Pamela Hemphill, a former Trump supporter from Idaho who traveled to the nation’s capital five years ago to “be part of the mob” in support of the president before becoming an advocate for reckoning with the day’s violence.

An emotional Hemphill, 72 and once known as “MAGA granny,” apologized to U.S. Capitol police officers.

“Once I got away from the MAGA cult and started educating myself about January the 6th, I knew what I did was wrong,” Hemphill told the panel. “I pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime. I received due process and the DOJ was not weaponized against me. 

“Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the 6th,” she added.

She explained her decision to decline Trump’s blanket pardon of offenders convicted of crimes related to the attack, saying it papered over the misdeeds of people involved in the riot. She implored others not to accept revisions of the narrative about what happened in the attack.

Subsequent panels included current and former House members, including two, Republican Adam Kitzinger of Illinois and Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia, who sat on the committee tasked with investigating the attack.

Flowers for Ashli Babbitt

The crowd of marchers, which included pardoned Jan. 6 attack participants, gathered in the late morning to retrace their path to the U.S. Capitol five years ago.

Organizers billed the march as a memorial event to honor Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by U.S. Capitol Police during the riot in 2021 as she attempted to break into the House Speaker’s lobby.

Far-right activists celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol marched in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Rioters in 2021 attempted to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The crowd of roughly a couple hundred walked from the Ellipse, where Trump spoke to rallygoers in 2021, to just outside the Capitol grounds, where police contained the small crowd on the lawn north of the Reflecting Pool. 

Law enforcement officers permitted Babbitt’s mother, Michelle Witthoeft, and a few others to walk closer to the Capitol to lay flowers at roughly 2:44 p.m. Eastern, the time they say Babbitt died.

A group of counterprotesters briefly approached the demonstration, yelling “traitors.” Police quickly formed two lines between the groups, heading off any clashes.

Proud Boys former leader on-site 

Among the crowd was former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Trump commuted Tarrio’s sentence upon taking office for his second term.

While looking on at marchers, Tarrio told States Newsroom he was “just supporting.”

“It’s not my event. I’m just trying to help them with organizing and marching people down the street, I guess. But we’re here for one purpose, and that’s to honor the lives of Ashli Babbitt and those who passed away that day.”

When asked if marchers were also honoring the police officers who died in the days and months after the attack, Tarrio said he mourned “any loss of life” but added “I heard some suicides happened. I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into that. I’ve been in prison.”

U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered injuries during the riot, according to the Capitol Police. He died the following day from natural causes, according to the District of Columbia Office of the Medical Examiner.

Four responding police officers died by suicide in the following days and months.

As the march continued, a group of Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers on bicycles stopped Tarrio and asked him to confirm the march route to avoid any “confusion.”

When counterprotesters began to heckle the Jan. 6 attack supporters, Tarrio waved the marchers forward, “C’mon, c’mon, keep moving.”

Jan. 6 rioter Rasha Abual-Ragheb, 45, of New Jersey, addressed the crowd earlier and thanked “Daddy Trump” for her pardon. Abual-Ragheb, who pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating and picketing in the U.S. Capitol, showed off a tattoo on her arm reading “MAGA 1776.”

Willie Connors, 57, of Bayonne, New Jersey, stood on the edge of the crowd with a yellow “J6” flag tied around his neck. Connors said he didn’t enter the Capitol during the 2021 attack, but said he was in the district that day to protest the 2020 presidential election, which he falsely claimed was “robbed” from Trump.

“Donald Trump, I’ll take the bullet for that man. He’s my president,” Connors said.