California leaders decry Trump call to ‘nationalize’ election, say they’re ready to resist

WASHINGTON— President Trump’s repeated calls to “nationalize” elections have met swift resistance from California officials, who said this week they were prepared to fight back if the federal government tried to assert control over the state’s voting system.

“We would have won this on Day One,” the California Advocate said. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times. “We would go to court and get a restraining order within hours because the U.S. Constitution says the states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

“We’re prepared to do whatever we need to do in California,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office recently opposed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking California’s voter rolls and other sensitive voter information.

Both Bonta and Weber said their offices are closely monitoring any federal action that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia, or to target the counting of mail-in ballots, which Trump has baselessly claimed are a major source of fraud.

Weber said California plays a huge role in the country and is “the place people want to beat,” including illegitimate court challenges to undermine the state’s vote after the election, but California has dealt with such challenges in the past and is poised to do so again.

“There is already a cadre of lawyers who are ready to attack the courts to defend everything we did during our elections,” he said. “Our election teams are dotting the T’s and dotting the I’s. They’re in on this, too.”

“We have attorneys ready to be deployed wherever there is a problem,” Bonta said, noting that his office is in contact with local election officials to ensure a quick response if necessary.

The standoff reflects an extraordinary breakdown in generations of electoral trust and cooperation between state and federal officials and follows Trump’s remarkable doubling down after his initial statements about taking over the election sparked alarm.

Trump has long claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, without evidence and despite multiple independent reviews concluding otherwise. He claimed, again without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes had been cast, including by noncitizen voters, and that blue states were looking the other way to gain political advantage.

Last week, the Department of Justice acted on these allegations by raiding the Fulton County, Ga., polling location and seizing 2020 ballots. The department has also sued states, including California, over voter rolls and is defending a Trump executive order aimed at ending mail-in voting and adding new proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote that California and other states have sued to block.

On Monday, Trump further escalated his pressure campaign, saying on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans “need to take over voting in at least 15 places,” claiming that voting irregularities in what he called “skewed states” were hurting his party. “Republicans should nationalize voting.”

On Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to walk back Trump’s comments, saying he was referring to the Savings Act, a measure pushed by Republicans in Congress to codify proof of citizenship requirements. But Trump doubled down on the issue later that day, telling reporters that “if states can’t count votes legally and honestly, then someone else should take over.”

Bonta said Trump’s comments were not just fuss, but a serious escalation of tension: “We always knew they were going to come after us on something, so this is just confirmation of that — and maybe they’re getting one step closer.”

Bonta said he would particularly watch races in the state’s swing congressional districts, which could play a role in determining control of Congress and thus be the target of legal challenges.

“The strategy of going after California doesn’t make sense unless you’re going after a few congressional seats that you think will make a difference in the balance of power in the House of Representatives,” Bonta said.

California Democrats in Congress have emphasized that the state’s elections are safe and secure, but they have also begun to express unease about the administration’s interference in the upcoming election.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said on Meet the Press last week that he believes the administration will try to use “every tool in the toolbox to intervene,” but that the American people will “get through this by having a battalion of lawyers at the polls.”

California Senator Adam Schiff said this week that the Trump administration’s recent actions — including the Fulton County raid in which Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard found Trump on the phone with agents — were “wrong” and set off “alarm bells about their willingness to interfere in the next election.”

Democrats have called on their Republican colleagues to help push back against such interventions.

“When he says we need to nationalize elections and Republicans need to take over, you don’t take a look? What’s going on here?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DY) said Tuesday. “This is the path that has destroyed so many democracies, and our democracy is deep and strong, but it requires and allows resistance to them. Verbal resistance, electoral resistance. Where are you?”

Some Republicans have expressed disagreement with Trump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.) said Tuesday that he “only supports citizens voting and showing identification at polling places” but “is not in favor of federalizing elections,” which he called a “constitutional issue.”

“I believe in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said.

But other Republican leaders expressed dismay at Trump over concerns about state-run elections. House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, took aim at California’s system of counting mail-in votes in the days following the election, questioning why such a count would cause the Republican frontrunners in House races to “magically dwindle until the leads disappear.”

“On its face it looks like fraud. Can I prove it? No, because it happened all the way upriver,” Johnson said. “But we need more trust from the American people in the election system,” he said.

Election experts expressed concern over Johnson’s comments, describing them as unfounded and illogical. They said it was math, not magic, that candidates ahead in votes could fall behind as more votes were counted; Democrats agree, too.

“Speaker Johnson seems confused, so let me explain. California elections are safe and secure. The purpose of an election is to make sure *every* eligible vote cast is counted, not to rush count,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote of X. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on X. “We don’t give up while we’re ahead. This is called democracy.”

Democrats also raised concerns that the administration could use the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with the counting of mail-in votes. They specifically raised questions about a rule issued by the postal service last December that held that a postmark was accepted the day it was processed by the USPS rather than the day it was received; This will affect mail-in ballots in places like California, which must be postmarked by Election Day for votes to be counted.

“Election officials are already concerned and are warning that this change could ultimately lead to higher rates of mail-in ballots being rejected,” Senate Democrats wrote to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner last month.

Some experts and state officials have said voters should make a plan to vote early and consider dropping their ballots off at state ballot drop boxes or delivering them directly to polling stations.