President Donald Trump is toying with a "menacing" new strategy to meddle in the midterm elections, but as one former prosecutor wrote for New York Magazine, the idea is ultimately too "dumb" to function.
Earlier this month, Trump phoned in for an interview with right-wing commentator Wayne Allyn Root. At one point in the conversation, Root suggested that Trump ought to declare a "national security emergency for elections," supposedly allowing him to forcibly implement the voting reforms that have stalled in the Senate. Trump did not outright dismiss the idea, saying only that "stranger things have happened."
Writing for New York Magazine's Intelligencer on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Elie Honig warned that Trump is "not joking" about this plan and should be taken seriously.
"Trump is already hard at work laying a foundation of doubt about election security for 2026, and his history makes plain that he will never accept electoral defeat," Honig explained. "January 6 marked a historic nadir, of course, and the president’s 2020 election denialism continues, exasperatingly, to this day. When Trump lost the Iowa Republican primary in 2016, he alleged that his own party cheated and that a new election should be held because of 'fraud.' Even after he won the presidency in 2016, Trump claimed falsely that 'millions' voted illegally and that he won the popular vote in addition to the electoral count. The man has never lost an election, if you ask him, and never will."
Honig suggested that if Trump goes ahead with this "dubious if inventive" plan to meddle with the midterms, things will "get ugly," but ultimately, it is doomed to fail in court.
"First, it simply doesn’t work that way," Honig wrote. "The president cannot declare an emergency in a vacuum and then do whatever he wants. Rather, he must (1) point to a specific emergency-powers statute passed by Congress, (2) demonstrate that there is in fact an emergency, then (3) take the specific steps authorized by that emergency law. Here, of course, there are no facts to support a claim of a 2026 election emergency and there is no law giving the president emergency powers over elections. He can shout out 'Emergency!' all day long, but there’s no legal or governmental mechanism to actually do anything with it. Root has not discovered some magical workaround."
Honig suggested that Root, through his "jumbled" suggestion, was referring to Trump invoking the National Emergencies Act. This idea is inherently flawed, as this act does not give the president new powers when invoked; it merely allows them to expedite certain processes in the event of an emergency.
"Ultimately, any attempt by Trump to enact Root’s nuthouse plan would be resolved through litigation," Honig concluded. "Criticize the federal courts as you please — I’d likely concur in some part — but the judiciary has been a bulwark against Trump’s abuse of emergency powers. The Supreme Court has recently rejected the president’s invocations of emergency powers to impose global tariffs, to deploy the National Guard, and to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act... Trump’s mad quest to tamper with the 2026 midterms has already caused confusion and concern, and if he keeps down this road, it’ll wreak chaos and maybe worse than that. But it won’t work."
