The Trump administration is reportedly considering a plan for the president to issue an executive order (EO) that would declare a national emergency based on alleged election interference from a foreign government in order to exert sweeping control over the 2026 midterm elections. President Donald Trump denied that he is considering such a plan. But make no mistake: Neither this president, nor any other federal executive branch official, has authority under the U.S. Constitution, statutes, or other means to unilaterally make or alter rules for federal elections. That power lies strictly with the states and Congress under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution.
Just as importantly, media outlets have reported that the Trump administration has been working on this EO in consultation with outside, far-right, election-denying allies for nearly a year, belying the nature of any so-called emergency. A true emergency is just that: an unforeseeable event the country is underprepared to respond to and something that requires immediate action. And an emergency response is not something that percolates for almost one year and then is sprung on the nation to achieve explicitly political outcomes.
Rather, a leaked draft of the alleged prospective EO tracks directly with the Trump administration’s pattern of escalating attempts to seize powers outside its constitutional ambit. Federal courts have already declared unconstitutional the Trump administration’s March 2025 EO attempting to control election procedures. Declaring a specious national emergency is the next escalatory step that would throw the midterm elections into chaos, make it harder for citizens to cast ballots, and lock in the Trump administration’s political power.
The Trump administration lacks any constitutional authority to unilaterally alter election laws
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second presidential term, the Trump administration has been on a multipronged quest to nationalize elections despite lacking any authority to do so. In fact, President Trump publicly declared that he wants to “take over” elections in multiple states. In a page lifted from authoritarian playbooks around the world, the administration has stacked the U.S. Department of Justice with loyalists and election deniers; tried to force states to turn over sensitive voter information despite laws that prohibit them from doing so; seized 2020 election ballots and voting materials in Fulton County, Georgia; pressured Congress to prohibit mail-in voting; and demanded that Republican-controlled states engage in mid-decade redistricting to ensure a Republican victory in the midterm elections, among multiple other anti-voter actions. Now claiming that a national emergency 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.
Now claiming that a national emergency 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.
The leaked 17-page draft of the potential EO cites multiple legal authorities for rewriting virtually every aspect of how elections are administered, how Americans cast a ballot, and how states report and certify election results. The leaked draft is so detailed it attempts to set new rules even for how ballots are printed and how election officials check in voters at polling places. Its sweeping scope would prohibit most Americans from casting a mail ballot and would require all 211 million Americans already registered to vote to re-register in person at an election office for the 2026 midterm elections by proving their citizenship using only their birth certificate, passport, or naturalization certificate—similar to requirements in the SAVE Act and the SAVE America Act. President Trump recently stated that if the SAVE Act were enacted, Republicans would “never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.” The fact that the president would try to unilaterally and unconstitutionally put in place policies he has explicitly stated would benefit a particular party is a clear sign to all Americans that any EO including such a policy is not about election integrity, but rather election manipulation.
The draft EO cites legal authorities including the National Emergencies Act, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, the Defense Production Act, two prior Trump administration EOs related to elections, two provisions in the U.S. Constitution, and a law related to federal holidays. None of the cited authorities delegates the president any power to change voting laws, let alone the wholesale takeover of federal and local elections that the draft EO attempts to enact, even in the face of national emergency—including attempted foreign interference.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that when a law—in this case the Constitution—specifically grants power to an entity other than the executive branch of government, the president’s power is at its weakest. In examining the March 2025 EO on elections, a federal judge stated, “[T]his Court’s task is to decide whether the President can dictate those policies [affecting election administration] unilaterally, or whether that power is reserved to Congress and the States alone.” In doing so, the court emphatically found, “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections,” and “[N]o statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.” Proclaiming a national emergency may be part of President Trump’s longstanding argument that presidents enjoy almost unlimited powers—especially regarding national security—rooted in Article II of the Constitution, but it does not obviate clear constitutional dictates that the president has no authority to nationalize or otherwise interfere in the administration of elections. If and when the purported executive order is challenged in court, federal judges would have no choice but to quickly enjoin it.
As noted above, the founders wrote the Constitution to expressly give states the power to administer federal elections, with Congress retaining authority to set national guidelines. Using this clear authority, states have proved to be capable of running free and fair elections, even under emergency circumstances. Federal elections ran unimpeded by presidential intervention during the Civil War, both world wars, and throughout recent military operations in the Middle East. Most recently in 2020, when the nation was under a national state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the states—not the federal government—used their authority to adjust election dates and take other measures to help boost public safety, ultimately administering safe and secure elections.
Appropriate and legal federal response to foreign election interference
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 and state and local election officials in ways that improve election security but do not override state sovereignty of election administration.
Unlike with truly unexpected emergencies, the United States is prepared to detect and respond to foreign election interference efforts. Such attempted interference is not unprecedented: In the 2016 presidential election, 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. Following this interference, the intelligence community enacted large-scale reforms to improve the monitoring, intelligence sharing, response, and public communication strategies to specifically tackle foreign interference in elections. This included establishing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2018 and designating election infrastructure as critical infrastructure. This designation ensures that 16 sectors of infrastructure—such as the chemical sector, dams sector, and financial services sector, much of which is privately owned—receive additional security protections and resources from the federal government to improve the safety of the nation. Counter to previous statements from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, this designation does not give any authority to the federal government to take control of critical infrastructure in the event of a national emergency. For example, the government was prohibited from taking over domestic steel production during wartime. Likewise, the government provided additional assistance to hospitals and the health care system—one of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors—during the COVID-19 pandemic but did not take control of the sector.
In addition to CISA, numerous intelligence agencies and departments have an office to monitor or coordinate on foreign interference, including the Department of Defense’s Cyber Command and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Foreign Malign Influence Center. These organizations have successfully worked in coordination with each other and the states to detect and prevent foreign election interference efforts, proving that these new assertions constitute neither an emergency nor anything that warrants the extreme efforts to subjugate the election infrastructure of 50 states.
Any attempt by the president or the executive branch to rewrite election administration and voting laws for the more than 10,000 election jurisdictions across the nation in response to purported foreign interference would be unprecedented, illegal, and a clear attempt to create chaos and prevent American citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
Conclusion
It is indisputable that presidents have no power to make or alter rules for federal elections, even in the face of alleged national security threats. Federal judges should invalidate any attempts by the Trump administration to claim authority to nationalize elections. The Constitution clearly gives states—with Congress as a backstop—the power to administer elections, and they have done so through multiple true national emergencies and tests of national sovereignty, including wars and pandemics.
President Trump’s reported executive order would be nothing but another escalation in his anti-democratic attempts to spread disinformation about the security of American elections, deny people their right to vote, and sabotage election results to lock in his political power. The American people cannot stand for this type of authoritarian power grab. Instead, free and fair elections will continue to chart the nation’s course.