Trump’s elaborate deception has an end goal

President Donald Trump is drawing vehement criticism from legal and constitutional scholars on both the left and right for his proposal to "nationalize" elections in at least 15 states and transfer administration of them to the federal government. That proposal, critics say, is blatantly unconstitutional, as the U.S. Constitution specifically states that elections must be handled by individual states.

But Salon's Chauncey DeVega, in an article published on February 12, warns that Trump's "nationalize" rhetoric has an end goal: destroying faith in U.S. democracy.

"'Nationalize' has become part of a much larger vocabulary used by the Trumpists and the larger right-wing to advance and legitimize their goal of replacing American democracy with a form of white Christian nationalist authoritarian plutocracy," DeVega explains. "Terms like 'fraud,' 'election security,' 'ballot integrity,' 'drop boxes' and 'mail-in ballots' operate as racialized code for Black and brown people. By focusing his rhetoric and actions on cities with large populations of color, the president's implication is clear: such votes are presumptively illegitimate and need to be thrown out. In MAGA rhetoric, 'high-quality votes' has come to stand for 'real Americans,' or white people who support Trump and the Republican Party."

DeVega argues that an FBI search of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia "was less about relitigating 2020 than about obtaining voter data that could facilitate a purge of Black and other likely Democratic voters ahead of the midterms and the 2028 presidential election."

Trump and his allies, according to DeVega, are "making Georgia a template for a nationwide voter purge and voter nullification campaign."

MAGA Republicans, DeVega observes, are using a variety of tactics in the hope of discouraging Democratic voter turnout in the 2026 midterms.

"Republicans in Congress have also taken action by advancing the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, which would require a passport or birth certificate to register to vote in federal elections," the Salon journalist notes. "An estimated 9 million Americans lack ready access to proof of citizenship…. Steve Bannon, the right-wing thought leader who formerly served as Trump's chief strategist during his first administration, recently called for ICE agents to be stationed at polling places in Democratic-led cities and battleground states to stop 'fraud' and to arrest immigrants."

Joshua Douglas, an election law expert at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, told DeVega, "One of the biggest threats to the 2026 election is people's belief that Trump can do whatever he wants to control how the election will be run…. But the Constitution is very clear: the president does not have the authority to administer elections. That is up to the states, though Congress can also step in. So, instead of worrying every time Trump says he might do something, we should clearly explain how his plans are unconstitutional, and we should expect the courts to rule accordingly — as they did regarding his previous executive order on elections."