Federal courts have already declared unconstitutional and unlawful major portions of the Trump administration’s March 2025 and March 2026 executive orders that attempted to unilaterally set new rules governing how elections are conducted. Even where the Supreme Court allowed a portion of the 2026 order to take effect, at least temporarily, its procedural-based decision did not reach the issue of constitutionality. Any attempt by the Trump administration to use a national security emergency as a basis to nationalize elections would be unconstitutional, while also making it harder for citizens to cast ballots, potentially laying a pretext to challenge election results and subvert the will of the American people to choose their leaders.
President Trump has raised national security threats as a possible pathway to control elections
In an August 10 interview on Real America’s Voice, host Wayne Allyn Root laid out a chilling scenario: If the U.S. Senate fails to pass the SAVE America Act—a bill that CAP and others warn would cause massive voter suppression and chaos—the president could declare a national security emergency to unilaterally impose voting restrictions. Instead of pushing back, Trump seemingly stoked the fire: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that.”
Less than one month earlier, in a July 16 prime-time address to the nation, Trump repeated long-discredited conspiracy theories about 2020 voter fraud linked to foreign adversaries. He claimed that the elections are vulnerable to being “rigged and stolen” by hostile nations, with China posing a unique threat, aided by untrustworthy voting machines and widespread noncitizen voting. Despite claiming in that speech that newly declassified intelligence supported his sweeping allegations, documents released by the administration have not provided evidence that China or any other foreign nation altered a single vote in the last several elections, nor do such documents make a credible case that election systems are susceptible to wide-scale foreign manipulation.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second presidential term, the administration has perpetuated the myth of widespread voter fraud and attempted to effectuate a multipronged plan to nationalize elections despite lacking constitutional authority to do so. As the Center for American Progress discussed in a recent report, the administration is attempting to cement its imperial presidency via 15 subversion tactics that, if successfully deployed, could override the will of the voters. One of those tactics involves the president potentially invoking a purported national security emergency to displace the states and Congress and unilaterally set election rules. In fact, a draft executive order, developed by far-right election deniers and given to the White House, suggests declaring a national emergency based on alleged foreign election interference to impose control over the upcoming election, prohibiting most Americans from casting mail ballots and requiring all voters to reregister in person.
Trump has declared that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” has suggested the country “shouldn’t even have an election,” and repeatedly claimed that new restrictive election rules would lock in political power for decades to come. Thus, a broader purpose to the administration’s actions may also be at work: supplying the pretext to ultimately try to invalidate unfavorable election results. This is part of a predictable sequence seen in backsliding democracies around the world: dismantle checks and balances, silence critics, and manipulate election outcomes to lock in permanent power.
Presidents lack any constitutional authority to unilaterally alter election laws
One of the most alarming threats to the upcoming midterm elections is the possibility that the president will declare a national emergency to try to postpone, cancel, or seize control of the midterms, a tactic that strongman leaders around the world have used to evade electoral accountability. Yet, any claim by the administration that a national security threat allows the president to unilaterally nationalize elections is not based in legal reality and would be an unprecedented attempt in U.S. history to interfere in elections and prevent citizens from voting.
As the Center for American Progress has detailed, no constitutional provisions, emergency powers, statutes, executive orders, Supreme Court precedents, or other sources lawfully delegate to the president any power to change election-related laws. This is true even in the face of a national security threat or an emergency—including attempted foreign interference in elections. The founders wrote the Constitution to prevent presidents from becoming kings, and they expressly gave states the power to administer federal elections, with Congress having authority to set national guidelines when needed. Exercising their clear authority, states have repeatedly demonstrated that they are able to conduct free and fair elections, even under emergencies and challenging circumstances such as the Civil War, both world wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, and—as discussed below—previous attempts at foreign interference.
Under the Supreme Court’s framework in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer and its progeny, a president’s power is at its weakest when laws—or here, the Constitution—assign the power to an entity other than the executive branch. As one of many federal judges concluded in recent months regarding Trump’s executive orders, “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections … [a]nd no statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
The Constitution’s Take Care Clause, as buttressed by Supreme Court precedent, makes clear that presidents must “faithfully execute” the laws Congress passes, not act as an independent authority to decree new rules. Moreover, declarations of national emergency merely trigger a defined set of congressionally enacted laws and do not allow unfettered emergency powers. And even though election systems are designated as critical infrastructure, “this designation does not give any authority to the federal government to take control of critical infrastructure in the event of a national emergency.”
Trump’s potential proclamation of a national emergency or security threat may be part of the administration’s long-standing argument that presidents enjoy almost unlimited powers—especially regarding national security, rooted in Article II of the Constitution—but it will not invalidate clear constitutional directives that presidents have zero authority to nationalize or otherwise interfere in the administration of elections.
Protecting elections against foreign interference
States have a proven track record of administering free and fair elections during prior instances of actual or attempted foreign interference. This occurred, for example, in the 2016 presidential election—which Trump won—even when “Russian foreign agents probed the elections systems of all 50 states, hacked into the voter rolls of some states and stole voter data, and waged a large-scale social media influence campaign intended to influence voters and the outcome of the election.” As the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in a bipartisan manner, there was no evidence that state voting systems were manipulated or votes were changed.
Of course, today, the United States is facing new and evolving threats from foreign adversaries. It is the responsibility of the president and his administration to ensure that intelligence agencies and law enforcement have the tools that they need to continue to protect American democracy from external threats, and the president must ensure that these entities can do so without political interference. The Trump administration’s many attempts to undermine national security and law enforcement agencies, however, seem aimed at politicizing those institutions to pursue its interest in discrediting unfavorable elections.
If the Trump administration believes that foreign adversaries are taking definitive steps to impede the November 2026 midterm elections, the administration can and should work collaboratively with the intelligence community, cybersecurity agencies, law enforcement, Congress, and state and local election officials in ways that improve election security, as the first Trump administration did in 2018 and 2020, but do not override state sovereignty over election administration. Instead of weakening, defunding, or politicizing the federal entities that historically have monitored or coordinated on foreign interference matters, the administration should be empowering these entities to do their jobs on behalf of the American people.
Election interference attempts are frequent, but that does not mean that they are successful. Should Trump allege foreign interference as a pretext for a national emergency, he must provide a full, declassified account of interference attempts that can be properly reviewed and vetted by congressional committees and independent experts—including with an analysis of their impact on election integrity. Otherwise the public can only assume that he is misrepresenting these concerns as actual harms. Regardless, the administration has no constitutional authority to change election rules on its own, especially given the successful track record of state election officials in dealing with election interference.
Conclusion
There is no dispute that presidents lack any power to make or change rules for federal elections, even where there is a purported national security threat or related emergency declaration. Federal courts would invalidate any attempts by a president to claim authority to nationalize elections. The Constitution clearly grants states—with Congress as a backstop—the authority to administer elections, which states have done through multiple national emergencies and tests of national sovereignty. If the Trump administration attempts to unilaterally alter election procedures, those actions would be another escalation in its anti-democratic attempts to spread disinformation about the security of elections; deny everyday Americans their right to vote; and subvert election results. Ultimately, the right to determine who governs belongs to the people—not to an administration that has dismantled the guardrails designed to protect that right.
The authors would like to acknowledge Hayley Durudogan for her contributions to this article.