President Donald Trump said he’s not considering declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections, as a draft executive order circulating among his allies suggests.
Watch the president’s remarks to PBS News on Friday in the player above.
The 17-page proposal, a working document reviewed in full by PBS News, would give him extraordinary power over the 2026 midterm elections. It claims to address election integrity issues caused by foreign interference. By declaring a national emergency, the document hypothesizes, the president could take control over some voting mechanisms in the country, including requiring hand-counting of ballots and voter identification at the polls.
“Who told you that?” the president said in response to a question from PBS News about the proposal.
The U.S. Constitution makes clear that states administer elections, while Congress has a limited oversight role in regulating how states run federal elections. This proposal would expand federal control over elections and almost immediately be challenged in court. Since the draft was first reported by the Washington Post, experts have shared concerns that such a proposal would be unconstitutional and not within the president’s authority.
“The president cannot seize control of state-run elections by declaring an ’emergency,'” Max Flugrath, spokesperson for the left-leaning voting rights group Fair Fight Action, said in a statement Thursday. “There’s no statute that permits it.”
The proposed executive order also requires that voters nationwide must hand-mark paper ballots for them to be counted and that the hand-counting process occur in public. It also proposes that voters re-register for the 2026 election through their county, listing proof of citizenship as a requirement.
Peter Ticktin, an attorney who has known Trump since he was 15 years old, confirmed the draft executive order has been circulating “for a while now” among some of the president’s supporters. Ticktin said that if the president believes there is foreign interference in U.S. elections, he can take steps to secure the election by declaring a national emergency, adding “for anyone who has examined the evidence, we know that this emergency exists.”
“The President has power to take charge in an emergency. Frankly, no government could work with no one in charge in times when a foreign country is invading surreptitiously or with a bold attack,” he told PBS News. “Either way, our presidents have all had the power to step up and resist foreign intrusion. This is why Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA), to make sure that the President is so empowered. There is no question that President Trump can invoke the NEA.”
Ticktin said he had communicated with the president about this issue. He also said he’s spoken with people at the White House and Department of Justice about the executive order but declined to say whom.
The president declared a national emergency in 2018 during his first administration to deal with the threat of foreign powers accessing critical infrastructure or interfering with elections. That was extended by former President Joe Biden for each year of his presidency. As he departed the presidency at the end of 2024, Biden pointed to this executive order as a basis for sanctions levied against Iranian and Russian actors that “aimed to stoke socio-political tensions” and influence the US elections.
A White House official told PBS News that the White House staff is regularly in communication with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas with the president but cautioned that speculation about what the president may announce is just that — speculation.
Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 that would add proof of citizenship to voter registration forms, prompting multiple lawsuits that are working their way through the courts.
The SAVE America Act, an elections bill, recently passed in the Republican-led House but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The legislation requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and imposes stricter voter ID requirements, among other provisions.
READ MORE: What to know about how the SAVE America Act could change voting
The president hinted earlier this month that he may take unilateral action to ensure voter ID is in place ahead of the midterm elections, writing in a post on Truth Social: “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel.”
Thirty-six states have existing laws requiring some form of ID at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
News of the draft order garnered swift pushback from some Democrats, including Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who called Trump “one of the greatest threats to American elections” in a statement Thursday.
“Regardless of whether this suggested executive order ultimately materializes, every American — regardless of party or ideology — should be extremely concerned by Trump’s continued use of lies and conspiracy to justify attempts to seize the reins of election administration and hold on to power. That is not democracy, it is attempted authoritarianism. We will fight back,” she wrote.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration spoke with more than 100 top election officials from around the country, including secretaries of state, about election preparation for the November midterms.
Three people on Wednesday’s call, who discussed the meeting on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details, told PBS News that the Election Assistance Commission routinely offers resources to states to prepare both physical and cybersecurity infrastructure for elections. The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice joined the call, as well as officials from the U.S. Postal Service and the FBI.
Presenting on behalf of DHS in that meeting was Heather Honey, a conservative election activist who was hired by the Trump administration to be the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity.
One person on the call told PBS News that Honey pitched the group on using the SAVE program, or Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, which is a database run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that government officials use to check the citizenship status of applicants seeking benefits. The Trump administration is pushing election officials to run voter files through the SAVE system, which could check for a voter’s citizenship.
Two people on the call said that Honey also raised hand-counting ballots, which election experts say is an inaccurate way to count ballots as it is rife with human error. Hand-counting ballots is also a vastly slower process, while using machines is faster and more accurate when tabulating election results.
Officials on the call assured participants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will not be stationed outside of voting locations, according to the people on the call. PBS News recently asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt if ICE would be outside of polling locations.
Watch the clip in the player above.
“That’s not something I’ve ever heard the president consider,” Leavitt said. “No.”
She then added that she couldn’t guarantee that ICE will not be around polling locations or in November, describing our inquiry as a “very silly hypothetical question.”
“But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations,” she said.
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