Democrats will stop Donald Trump from trying to steal this year’s midterm elections, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives said on Sunday.

Jeffries comments come amid widespread concern after Trump said Republicans should “take over the voting”. The US constitution gives states the power to set election rules and says Congress can pass laws to set requirements for federal elections. The constitution gives the president no authority over how elections are run.

“What Donald Trump wants to do is try and nationalize the election – translation: steal it. And we’re not going to let it happen,” Jeffries said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. He added that Democrats so far had successfully blocked Trump’s efforts to federalize the national guard countered a nationwide push by Republicans to redraw congressional district boundaries to their advantage.

“This is going to be a free and fair election,” Jeffries said. It “is going to be conducted like every other election where states and localities have the ability to administer the laws”.

The Trump administration for months has been sowing doubt about the integrity of this year’s midterm elections by filing lawsuits against states suggesting they are improperly maintaining their voter rolls. The FBI also undertook an unprecedented raid of the election office in Fulton county, Georgia, last month, seizing ballots and other voter information related to the 2020 election. Allegations of fraud have been debunked repeatedly in Fulton county, yet Trump has continued to repeat false claims about the county.

Later in his interview on CNN, Jeffries condemned Trump’s refusal to apologize for a racist post on his Truth Social account depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House deleted the post on Friday amid widespread outcry and said a staffer was responsible for posting it.

“He definitively needs to apologize. It was a disgusting video and the president was rightly and appropriately and forcefully denounced by people all across the country,” Jeffries said. “Democrats and even a handful of Republicans who finally showed some backbone in pushing back against the president’s malignant, bottom-feeder-like behavior.”

Senator Adam Schiff of California also said it was clear Trump was trying to interfere in the election and also questioned why Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was at the Fulton county raid.

“He fully intends to try to subvert the elections. He will do everything he can to suppress the vote. And if he loses the vote, and I think the Republicans now expect they’ll get a real drubbing in the midterms, he’s prepared to try to take some kind of action to overturn the result. And we really shouldn’t question that,” Schiff said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. “I think all of this is intended to send a message. And the message is: ‘We will not tolerate or accept an election that we lose.’”