Do Republicans Want To Control Elections?

On this special episode of The Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch are live from Washington, D.C., to discuss growing concerns about the Trump administration’s rhetoric around elections. They dig into President Donald Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections, the administration’s pressure on states over voter data, and how those moves fit alongside January 6 and earlier efforts to overturn election results. The group debates how worried Americans should be about centralized election control and what it would mean for democratic legitimacy if one party gained greater authority over the voting process.

The discussion then moves on to assess Trump’s first year back in office, with each panelist reflecting on what concerns them most and what, if anything, they’ve liked from this administration. Suderman then turns the federal budget into a live guessing game of “How Much Did That Cost?” From there, the editors discuss Washington, D.C., itself, and the state of city governance, before analyzing the Super Bowl and the culture-war expectations around the halftime show.

0:00—Trump wants to nationalize elections

6:10—Reviewing the first year of Trump’s second term

14:47—How much did that cost?

18:54—Governance in Washington, D.C.

27:24—Culture wars and the Super Bowl

36:44—Cultural recommendations

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser