{"id":868518,"date":"2026-08-23T12:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T12:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/868518\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T12:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T12:16:10","slug":"trump-laying-groundwork-to-impose-national-emergency-by-sowing-election-distrust-us-midterm-elections-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/868518\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump laying groundwork to impose national emergency by sowing election distrust | US midterm elections 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A series of moves by Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections have intensified concern among voting experts \u2013 and sparked hope among election deniers \u2013 that it could declare a national emergency.<\/p>\n

The White House and US federal agencies have released a string of documents this summer \u2013 including disputed analyses of alleged voting by noncitzens and historical intelligence memos \u2013 stoking expectations that the US president could move to exert greater control over November\u2019s US midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Trump used a primetime television address in July<\/a> to claim \u2013 again \u2013 that US elections were vulnerable to foreign manipulation, and repeat the lie that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s speech prompted Steve Bannon, his former political strategist, to predict the US president will declare a state of emergency on national security grounds to \u201cprotect\u201d elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake your No 2 pencil out,\u201d Bannon, a rightwing commentator, said<\/a> on his War Room video podcast on 29 July. \u201cIt\u2019s coming. It\u2019s coming. Just block the last week of August out. It\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Trump and his allies could try to use a national emergency declaration to delegitimize results of November\u2019s results, experts say such a declaration would not supersede the constitutional restrictions on executive power on election administration. No president has ever attempted to invoke an emergency to assert control over voting.<\/p>\n

Asked earlier this month by Wayne Allyn Root, a rightwing broadcaster, if he would \u201cdeclare a national security emergency for elections\u201d, Trump notably did not shoot down the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?\u201d the president told Real America\u2019s Voice, a rightwing cable channel. \u201cI\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration is \u201ctrying to lay the groundwork to declare some sort of emergency to nationalize elections\u201d, said Aria Branch, a partner at the Elias Law Group, who led a lawsuit blocking Trump\u2019s previous executive orders on election administration. \u201cI think the president is looking for any opportunity to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We need to be prepared for everything\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, listen, I think it is quite obvious that the man is losing his grip in reality, so I think we need to be prepared for everything,\u201d said Santiago Mayer, president of Voters of Tomorrow, a gen Z-led voter advocacy organization. \u201cWe have spent a long time thinking and preparing for any eventuality and anything that he might attempt. I think our focus at the end of the day is to turn out enough voters where, no matter what he pulls, it won\u2019t succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic members of US congress have been wargaming strategies<\/a> to respond to executive provocations in recent months, considering scenarios such as AI-generated disinformation videos and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents being dispatched to polls. Progressive organizations in the democracy space have also been preparing for something to happen before the election.<\/p>\n

The presence of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump\u2019s former director of national intelligence, at an FBI raid in Fulton county, Georgia, raised questions earlier this year<\/a>. Gabbard later testified before Congress that she had been leading an investigation into claims of foreign interference in US elections. Gabbard\u2019s team was involved in the seizure and examination of voting equipment in Puerto Rico, and spent months scrutinizing potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference.<\/p>\n

When Gabbard resigned on 30 June<\/a>, Trump named his longstanding ally Bill Pulte as her acting replacement, a widely criticized move by members of both parties, who pointed to Pulte\u2019s lack of intelligence experience. While Jay Clayton later took up the post permanently, Pulte is said to have pushed the election interference narrative in a less-visible role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why Pulte is so important,\u201d Bannon said in July. \u201cSo, ah, Jay has got to \u2013 Clayton \u2013 has big shoes to fill. Every day we\u2019re going to be dogging him on, like, where\u2019s the next release on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the night of Trump\u2019s July address, Bannon texted<\/a> CNN: \u201cWe need a National Security Emergency about the midterm elections immediately \u2013 this is a powerful predicate for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ty Cobb, a former White House attorney, now a sharp Trump critic, warned of the same while speaking<\/a> to PBS following the president\u2019s July TV address. \u201cWell, I think tonight\u2019s speech is intended to add the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency at or about the time of the elections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

ICE agents at polls is \u201ca virtual certainty\u201d, said Cobb, who questioned whether National Guard officers would also be presented. \u201cAnything to intimidate minority voters, particularly immigrant voters, and also I think anything that allows them to try to seize voting machines, as Trump wanted to do in 2020, but [then-attorney general] Bill Barr explained to him there was just no basis for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Noncitizen voting \u2026 is just not a widespread problem\u2019<\/p>\n

After Trump\u2019s TV address, a White House \u201cGovernment Transparency Task Force\u201d \u2013 composed of members of the office of the director of national intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) \u2013 began releasing declassified \u201celection integrity\u201d documents on the White House website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first tranche included declassified intelligence memos which described electronic voting machine vulnerabilities, foreign access to state voter registration data and foreign digital manipulation strategies. Much of the material was already known to the public and amounted to a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote, which Trump lost.<\/p>\n

A week later, Trump and his allies quickly seized on an announcement from Mikie Sherrill, the New Jersey governor, that 6,600 non-citizens had registered to vote because of a software error. While fewer than 400 of them voted, the disclosure was used to escalate false claims that there are scores of noncitizens on the voter rolls.<\/p>\n

On 31 July, DHS released a public notice arguing that New Jersey\u2019s administrative errors demonstrated a need for standardized federal oversight.<\/p>\n

The taskforce also declassified documents in a Michigan case where the FBI investigated suspected fraudulent voter registrations by a get-out-the-vote organization, in which no criminal charges were filed, and investigative material related to a data scrape of voter information in Maricopa county, Arizona.<\/p>\n

The pace of releases has been accelerating.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the taskforce declassified and released investigative files related to an investigation into Chinese intelligence, which disclosed how disgraced former Democratic US representative Eric Swalwell had told FBI agents how he had \u201coccasionally hooked up\u201d with Christine Fang, a Chinese national allegedly engaged in a political influence campaign.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the US Census Bureau released a brief claiming it had identified 24,000 noncitizens voting in the 2020 election in a preliminary match of 128m records. It did not reveal its methodology and was sharply criticized by democracy advocates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis alleged analysis based on census data fails the laugh test,\u201d said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. \u201cThe administration does not provide a sufficient explanation of how it arrived at these numbers \u2013 and for good reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Branch, of Elias Law Group, suggested the Trump administration<\/a> is \u201csearching for\u201d the legal basis for an executive order. \u201cI think they believe there may be one. I think such a document just doesn\u2019t exist, because the fact is our elections are secure,\u201d she said. \u201cNoncitizen voting in our elections is just not a widespread problem \u2026 All of the fear and narrative around that issue is just completely unfounded, and it\u2019s really just to stoke fear and lay the groundwork for future action.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, DHS also released an analysis arguing that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in federal elections. It did not reveal its methodology for identifying the noncitizens, either, or disclose how confident its officials were in their assessment. The tool it used to flag noncitizens on voter rolls is known<\/a> to be inaccurate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018The founders recognized the risk of centralizing power\u2019<\/p>\n

Asked about the possibility of an executive order declaring a national emergency on elections, the White House did not rule it out, refusing to comment on hypotheticals.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtreme liberal Democrats are keeping Americans from having full confidence in their elections by refusing to vote for the Save America Act,\u201d said Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, referring to legislation that would enforce a crackdown on voting. \u201cThe American people overwhelmingly support this commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections. President Trump is absolutely right: we fix this now, or we lose our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Save America Act would require states to submit their voter rolls to federal inspection, effectively give DHS the power to de-register anyone it deemed ineligible to vote. The act would also sharply curtail mail-in voting \u2013 a practice Trump repeatedly criticized, but has reportedly done himself as recently as in this week\u2019s Florida Republican primary<\/a> \u2013 and require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and a narrow set of photo IDs to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, we\u2019ve been closely monitoring what the administration is saying,\u201d said Branch, who sees the rhetoric itself as an act of intimidation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe constitution is extremely clear on this, and the founders recognized the risk of centralizing power over elections in the executive branch,\u201d she added. \u201cVery helpful, in terms of litigation to push back on these types of efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A series of moves by Donald Trump\u2019s administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-868518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}