Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency

[demmiblue]

Source: WaPo

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order. Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

“But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin went on. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-elections-executive-order-activists/

---

“.. a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting.”

@washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T17:18:09.496Z

[dweller]

1. Russia Russia Russia

Is a hoax , tho …


wadda crock


✌🏻

[slightlv]

18. Yeah, if he wants Russian interference into elections investigated

and "boxed in"... I suggest we start with HIM and his 2016 run! We ALL know Russia interfered with that election by giving him and his buddies billions in dollars, mobs of bots, and world propaganda.

Furthemore, add in this last major election. Musk may SAY he's an American... but he should be deported as a treasonous South African immigrant for all the digital/technical election engineering he did to make trump the winner.

They just will NOT be happy until they take away women's right to vote. I realize we're not the only ones who'll come up short... any elderly citizen will have the same and different issues as women, as well as legal immigrants. It will come to the point where they actually proclaim what the originalists wanted... only white men who owned property can vote.

I know most of us are law-abiding, peaceful people. But some days, it's so hard not to lost myself in a fantasy of violence against him... by anyone... but especially by his "own" people who "finally" see the light that he's dissed and used them from the very beginning. When MAGAs get mad, they truly get violent.

[Frasier Balzov]

2. Trump can count on which SCOTUS justices for this?

SCOTUS had better be ready to act quickly if he tries this at the last minute.

[TheRickles]

6. Maybe he alienated enough of them with his recent comments that they're no longer in his back pocket.

[poli-junkie]

3. K & R!

[twodogsbarking]

4. Not unlike Jan 6 he said he would do it and he did.

[Fiendish Thingy]

14. And he failed. Nt

[angrychair]

5. One signature away

From no more elections.

Don't worry, I'm sure someone will send a sternly worded letter and all will be better.

[Fiendish Thingy]

8. Or he will be ignored

Just like all his other election related EO’s have been ignored.

[angrychair]

9. The difference here

Is he can declare an emergency and federalize the national guard or use his Gestapo ice agents or just deploy the military and station them outside every polling station to "check" IDs before they are allowed to vote.

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. Physically impossible

Even if he withdrew every service member from overseas, reassigned every fighter jet pilot, and emptied the entire US fleet, there would not be enough troops to control every polling place in the nation.

And that presumes there would be no resistance from the states, the courts, congress or the people.

[dpibel]

33. Check your math

As of 2022, there were around 89,000 polling places in the U.S.

As of March 2025, there were 1.32 million active duty members of the US miltary.

To "control every polling place in the nation" would not, by any stretch of the imagination, require the drastic measures you claim.

I'm not saying it's likely to happen.

But If you want to convince those you characterize as doomers that their concern is silly, best do it with real arguments.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

16. Ya know, even though I might agree with a lot of your posts,

it gets so tiring listening to you post nothing but negative comments, respectfully, try posting positive comments for those of us actually trying to make a difference, we can, and will, defeat this Nazi regime through people power.

[angrychair]

21. It's not negative, it's awareness

A significant portion of the people on websites like this know at least some of what is happening.

The point is about awareness. It's hard to have conversations about stuff like this if no one talks about it.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

28. I get it, but this negativity day after day is not helping at all, we need to concentrate on the positive

people power, which, at this time and place, seems to be working.
Just a friendly piece of advice my friend.

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. Declaring a national emergency won't give Trump power over elections

States have, and will continue to control their elections, just as they did following 9/11, and during every war, including the Civil War.

[angrychair]

10. He doesn't need it to be legal

He just needs the justification to put armed troops outside every polling station. He just has to do it in such a way that by the time any court gets around to making a decision that the midterm elections will already be over.

To be frank, he doesn't even have to listen to the courts. The DOJ is overtly ignoring 70+ court orders and absolutely nothing has happened.

If the court orders them to stop who, specifically, is going to enforce those orders? The DOJ? 😂

[Fiendish Thingy]

15. So sorry to hear you have succumbed to defeatist Doomerism

Despite acting with lawless impunity on a daily basis, This administration has been stalled, stymied or restrained numerous times over the past year.

No troops were deployed in Chicago or Portland

Kilmer Garcia is free on US soil

Little Liam and his father are free and back in Minnesota.

And those are just the headline grabbers.

He just needs the justification to put armed troops outside every polling station. He just has to do it in such a way that by the time any court gets around to making a decision that the midterm elections will already be over.

You don’t seem to understand the physical logistics of “putting armed troops outside every polling station”. The troops have to be transported, housed, fed etc. It’s not something that can be done quickly and quietly, in secret overnight.

It’s also a physical impossibility to do it outside every polling place, and a strategic impossibility to accurately choose which places would be the most important to disrupt, given that 2024 red Trump districts have been swinging 15-30 points towards the Dems in elections over the past year.

Trump may attempt to defy the laws of the land, but nobody can defy the laws of physics.

To the rest of the folks still in the reality-based community, never forget this one absolute truth:

Trump is not omnipotent, and the states and the people are not powerless

[MarineCombatEngineer]

17. Lately, that's all this member posts is negative,

I agree with some of the posts, but the negativity is becoming tiresome.

[Fiendish Thingy]

19. It is possible to acknowledge the daily horrors of this administration without accepting all is lost. Nt

[MarineCombatEngineer]

20. Agreed. nt

[quaint]

29. Can they separate federal offices from the states' and make their rules that way, two ballots?

[Fiendish Thingy]

30. Nope

1. Constitution say states run elections, period

2. A “national emergency” around foreign interference wouldn’t just apply to federal elections- the Chinese might care about who wins the race for dog catcher in Perryton TX.

He will fail.

[quaint]

31. Thanks, paranoia strikes deep.

[samsingh]

36. this

[tonekat]

11. I smell smoke...

...smells like right wing owned businesses being flambeed.

[Qutzupalotl]

12. Weird that China would interfere in 2020 but not 2024.

Or maybe we're all paying for Trump's insecurity and inability to accept a loss.

[AZ8theist]

24. Or his pathological lying.

[Bayard]

32. I've never heard of China being involved in U.S. elections

Where did that come from?

Of course, if I haven't heard of something, it doesn't exist!

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. That was part of the Great Arizona Ballot and Snipe Hunt - "bamboo fibers"

Arizona Republicans hunt for bamboo-laced China ballots in 2020 ‘audit’ effort

Arizona Republicans are examining whether there is bamboo fiber in ballots that were used in the 2020 election, an activist assisting with the ongoing audit of the ballots told reporters this week. The latest claim underscores how rightwing conspiracy theories continue to fuel doubt about the results of the results.

“There’s accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box and it came from the south-east part of the world, Asia, and what they’re doing is to find out whether there’s bamboo in the paper,” John Brakey, a longtime election audit advocate, told reporters.
...
The search for bamboo fibers illustrates how the latest GOP audit of all 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county, home to a majority of Arizona voters, is elevating absurd claims about the 2020 election. After election day, rightwing activists falsely claimed that China had imported ballots to tip the election for Biden and that those ballots could be identified because there was bamboo in the paper. Earlier, workers were using UV lights to examine ballots; while the purpose of doing so was never clear, there was a conspiracy theory after the election that Trump had watermarked ballots (the UV examinations have stopped).
...
One of the people who spread the lie about China dumping ballots, according to Slate, was Javon Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, who is reportedly assisting with the Maricopa county audit. Though it’s not clear in what capacity Pulitzer is assisting, Brakey told reporters on Tuesday that the machines capturing the microscopic images of the ballots were linked to Pulitzer. “This guy is nuts,” he said. “He’s a fraudster … It’s ridiculous that we’re doing some of this.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/06/arizona-republicans-bamboo-ballots-audit-2020

Yes, it had the same credibility as the Italian Satellite Election Theft, but that hasn't stopped them before, so it won't now. They need to be locked up to deter them.

[orangecrush]

22. Bring it

[samsingh]

23. i don't believe there is any statute that allows trump to take charge of elections

he may wish he did, but he does not. The States run elections.

[BComplex]

25. When are they going to report how trump/musk/silicon valley hackers

messed with the 2024 election?
Huh?

[2naSalit]

26. If he...

Wags that dog any harder shit will start flying out of his diaper in public.

[SSJVegeta]

27. Is there a clause in the constitution that overrides article 1 section 4 clause 1

...under emergency powers?

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. "Urged" by a bunch of idiot losers with no official positions who bullshitted about "stolen elections" before

Is this really "news"? The named activists are Jerome Corsi, a by-word for election bullshit, and Peter Ticktin, Tina Peters' lawyer - ie another known election bullshit artist. What they are suggesting is not "news". And before you think "but this is in the Washington Post", remember that Jeff Bezos has converted that to a propaganda rag, so that he can get government contracts. This article is a devious attempt to make a claim that Trump can take over elections look viable.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

37. The emergency is in his diapers.