(CNN) — President Donald Trump in a new interview declined to rule out declaring a national security emergency as a means to try to assert more control over the 2026 midterm elections.
It’s merely the latest warning sign that Trump could try to mess with the election not just by baselessly claiming voter fraud and challenging the results afterward — as he did in 2020, leading to a violent riot at the US Capitol — but by trying to unilaterally take control before votes are cast.
In the interview, Wayne Allyn Root of Real America’s Voice pitched such a scenario to Trump. He suggested it as an alternative, given the Senate has failed to pass Trump’s coveted elections bill, known as the “SAVE America Act.”
“If they never get the SAVE America Act done, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections,” Root said. He added that “if you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can’t challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship (for voter registration) and a limit to mail-in ballots.”
It’s at this point that Trump cut Root off and coyly suggested such an option was indeed in play.
“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Despite Root’s comments, it’s far from clear such a gambit would even work. And CNN has asked the White House for more detail on what the president meant.
Trump often responds to hypotheticals by declining to rule them out — no matter how extreme the proposal might be. So it’s possible to read too much into this.
But as CNN’s Jake Tapper has noted, there are plenty of signals that Trump at least aspires to try to exert more control over elections. And these methods often appear transparently geared toward helping Republicans.
A major one is the administration’s threat to have the US Postal Service not deliver mail ballots for states that don’t comply with its demand that they hand over their voter lists. This is a request that even many red states have rejected, citing privacy concerns.
Democrats are much more likely to use mail ballots, which Trump has baselessly connected to widespread fraud. So curtailing them could greatly help Republicans.
(Federal courts have blocked this Trump executive order, and the administration recently appealed to the Supreme Court.)
Trump has also gone to great lengths to try to substantiate his still-baseless claims of widespread fraud. That includes the administration seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and Trump’s recent primetime address about election security that some read as a statement of intent — a pretext for more direct federal involvement in elections, which are run by states.
Ty Cobb, who served as White House counsel in Trump’s first term, said he interpreted the speech last month as a “predicate that he needs to declare an emergency.”
And Trump has occasionally said things, like he did in the new interview, suggesting he would like to take control of US elections.
Back in February, he urged his party to “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” adding: “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
The Washington Post also reported in March that pro-Trump activists were circulating a potential executive order that claimed Chinese interference in the 2020 election gave Trump emergency authorities over the 2026 election. And Trump’s primetime address focused on China, despite the tenuous evidence.
Trump’s intense focus on the “SAVE America Act,” which has never appeared to have a chance to pass but Trump has said is vital, could also be read as part of building the case for more drastic action.
But whether Trump could take over elections himself, as Root posits, is far from certain.
As CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Michael Williams reported in February, the Constitution makes it difficult for Trump to truly “nationalize” elections. Courts have overwhelmingly upheld the principle that states are in charge of elections.
Presidents generally have more authority to act unilaterally when national security is involved — hence the significance of invoking China — but some experts are skeptical that Trump’s effort would pass legal muster.
The-CNN-Wire
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