{"id":497367,"date":"2026-03-01T11:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T11:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/497367\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T11:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T11:08:14","slug":"trump-says-hes-never-heard-of-draft-national-emergency-order-over-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/497367\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says he\u2019s \u2018never heard\u2019 of draft national emergency order over elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pro-Trump activists are circulating a 17-page draft executive order claiming that China interfered in the 2020 election as a way to declare a national emergency and give the president extraordinary power over voting, The Washington Post<\/a> reported this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Activists say they\u2019re in coordination with the White House, The Washington Post wrote, but an official said any speculation about President Donald Trump\u2019s actions or announcements is just that.<\/p>\n

Asked by a PBS reporter on Friday about the proposed order, Trump said<\/a> he\u2019s \u201cnever heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho told you that?\u201d Trump asked<\/a> the reporter.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"QR<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDownload the SAN app today to stay up-to-date with Unbiased. Straight Facts\u2122.\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPoint phone camera here\t\t<\/p>\n

Under the draft order, Trump would be empowered to ban mail ballots and voting machines, Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for it, told the Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ticktin, who represents former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters,<\/a> said Trump is \u201caware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would the draft order be successful?<\/p>\n

Stephen Richer, a legal fellow with the Cato Institute\u2019s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, said it\u2019s already known that foreign governments have tried to interfere with past American elections, though doing so is generally challenging because the United States\u2019 election infrastructure is so disaggregated across thousands of county and municipal governments.\u00a0In addition, \u201cthere\u2019s only so much electronic interference\u201d that can be done as many vote on paper ballots, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think where it\u2019s more likely that foreign governments will get involved is in running ads on social media or trying to sow discontent on social media, as we know they have done in the past, or just trying to stir up Americans against each other,\u201d Richer told Straight Arrow News. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not specific to China, but I know that China has played in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n

While China considered efforts to influence the U.S. election, according to a 2021 review<\/a>, it ultimately did not go through with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that that would be a persuasive legal argument for taking broad authority of the administration of elections,\u201d Richer said.<\/p>\n

This is why Richer thinks an executive order of this kind would be \u201cenjoined pretty quickly in the federal district courts.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, if it were to become law, \u201cit would be like an earthquake hit election administration,\u201d Richer said.<\/p>\n

Many states have no excuse mail-in voting, he pointed out. Nearly 1-in-3<\/a> Americans chose the option in the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Should the executive order go into effect, that would mean millions of people who were going to vote by mail will vote in person, Richer said, especially in Western states.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, election administrators would have to find hundreds and thousands of more voting locations for all those millions of people to go to with respect to ballot tabulation,\u201d Richer said.<\/p>\n

Additionally, very few jurisdictions in the United States count their ballots by hand, Richer pointed out. Machines are \u201cmuch faster, much more accurate and much less costly,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To say that banning such machines would be a challenge is \u201cquite an understatement,\u201d Richer said.<\/p>\n

And Richer would know. Before joining Cato, he was the Maricopa County Recorder. He was responsible for facilitating the contentious 2020 General Election in one of the most populous counties in America. After the county went for former President Joe Biden, his party revolted. Legislative leaders ordered an extensive review of the ballots, only to find that the total votes for Biden were slightly undercounted.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s past statements<\/p>\n

Trump has long alleged fraud in the 2020 election, where he ultimately lost to Biden. However, there is no evidence<\/a> of widespread fraud so severe as to have swayed the results, and multiple studies show it is extremely rare<\/a> in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, banning mail-in ballots and requiring voter ID are both topics Trump has repeatedly brought up.<\/p>\n

On Truth Social<\/a> earlier this month, he said there will \u201cbe Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!\u201d He later said he would be presenting legal arguments for voter I.D. in an executive order \u201cshortly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives recently passed the SAVE America Act<\/a>, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to vote in federal elections. Last March, Trump signed an executive order<\/a> requiring proof of citizenship on voter registration forms and cutting funding to states that accept mail-in ballots after Election Day, both of which have been blocked by courts.<\/p>\n

The response to the draft executive order would look pretty similar, Richer said. Courts would argue, Richer said, that the President doesn\u2019t have unilateral authority to rewrite election law, and that the Constitution largely delegates lawmaking and administration authority to the states.\u00a0 If the federal government does have a role, courts would say it\u2019s explicitly through the Congress, Richer added.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is another power grab from this Administration. This possible EO is not about election security. It is about political power and attempts to make it harder for eligible Americans to register, cast a ballot, and have their voices heard,\u201d the League of Women Voters<\/a>, one of the groups suing the Trump administration over the March order, wrote in a statement. \u201cCourt after court has already affirmed what the Constitution makes clear. The President\u2019s authority over the administration of elections is minimal to nonexistent. The power to run elections rests with Congress and the states, not the White House.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.<\/a> responded to the Post\u2019s article by saying that lawmakers have been \u201craising the alarm for weeks about Trump\u2019s attacks on our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re getting details about how they might be planning to do it,\u201d Warner said on X. \u201cLet\u2019s be clear: there\u2019s no national emergency. This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pro-Trump activists are circulating a 17-page draft executive order claiming that China interfered in the 2020 election as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-497367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}