[ExI] Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections

[Darin Sunley]

When you step back from the churn and chaos of daily headlines and look at
the medium-term longer patterns, the only recent change in the long term
dynamics is that the Republicans have now joined the Democrats in the
"let's make long term structural changes to the country that will give us a
permanent majority" game. They're actually fighting to win, for the first
time in perhaps decades. This is unprecedented in the lives of most now
living, so it's understandably novel and slightly shocking.

Democratic republics are demonstrably unstable over a period of decades to
centuries. And honestly, I'd prefer the inevitable tyrannical monarchs
/not/ be the ones who wanted me locked in my house indefinitely for
refusing an experimental injection, and who tried to fight an
airborne respiratory disease by <checks notes> oh yes, banning fresh air
and sunshine.

At this point the only real hope is our new machine overlords, whom I
welcome. But there's no guarantee on that.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 9:38 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> It's more the specific how than the general principle.  Notice that,
> unlike those other countries, he is not (currently) proposing to
> nationalize all US elections.  His intent with those "fifteen places"
> is to prevent enough Democrats from being elected to retake control of
> the House - in other words, to prevent his party from losing control
> even if that would have been the result of free and fair elections, so
> as to implement one-party rule in practice.
>
> Libertarians are against government-enforced one-party rule, last I
> heard, for reasons including that it allows governance to be decided
> privately by a few people (party officials, most of whom are never
> subject to election by the general public after one-party rule is
> established) while ignoring the will of the majority.
>
> The Republicans who are in favor of this consider the "proposed
> powers" of being in power forever with no consequences should they
> rule corruptly.  The "disaster" they refer to is from their
> perspective: if they say "national disaster" about this, it's really
> more "personal disaster".
>
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 11:17 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > The federal government manages elections in Canada, and basically every
> other country in the world.
> > "If we proposed this, it would be awesome, but he wants it, so it's
> terrible" is doing a little too much work here.
> >
> > [Also "our proposed powers and legal infrastructure would be a national
> disaster if the other party was ever elected" is not the flex they think it
> is, and is really a fully general argument for principled libertarianism.]
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 3:59 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for
> free without a subscription.
> >>
> >> Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’
> Elections
> >>
> >> The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves
> from his administration to try to exert more control over American
> elections.
> >>
> >>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/trump-nationalize-elections.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JVA.en-q.1F5B4oljkawg&smid=em-share
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