Trump says he is not considering a draft executive order to control the election. Here’s what we know

President Donald Trump said he is not considering declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections, as a draft executive order circulating among his allies indicates.

Watch the president’s remarks to PBS News on Friday in the player above.

The 17-page proposal, a working document fully reviewed by PBS News, would give him extraordinary authority over the 2026 midterm elections. It claims to address election integrity issues caused by foreign interference. By declaring a national emergency, the document posits that the president could control some of the country’s voting mechanisms, including requiring the manual counting of ballots and identification of voters at the ballot box.

“Who told you that?” The president said in response to a question from PBS News about the proposal.

The US Constitution clearly states that states administer elections, while Congress has a limited oversight role in regulating how states administer federal elections. The proposal would expand federal control over elections and would almost immediately be challenged in court. Since The Washington Post first reported on the draft, experts have expressed concerns that such a proposal would be unconstitutional and not within the president’s authority.

“The president cannot control state-run elections by declaring a state of emergency,” Max Pflugrath, spokesman for the left-leaning voting rights group Fair Fight Action, said in a statement Thursday. “There is no law that allows this.”

The proposed executive order would also require that voters across the country manually mark ballots so they are counted and that the hand counting process be done publicly. It also proposes that voters re-register for the 2026 election through their county, with proof of citizenship included as a requirement.

Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has known Trump since he was 15, confirmed that a draft of the executive order had been circulating “for some time” among some of the president’s supporters. Ticktin said that if the president believed there was foreign interference in the US election, he could take steps to secure the election by declaring a national emergency, adding, “For anyone who has examined the evidence, we know that this emergency exists.”

“The president has the authority to take charge in emergency situations,” he told PBS News. “Frankly, no government can function with no person in charge in times when a foreign nation makes a stealth invasion or a bold attack.” “In both cases, our presidents all had the ability to escalate and resist foreign interference. That’s why Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA), to make sure the president has the necessary powers. There is no doubt that President Trump can invoke the NEA.”

Ticktin said he had contacted the president about this issue. He also said he had spoken with people at the White House and the Justice Department about the executive order but declined to say who.

The president declared a national emergency in 2018 during his first administration to deal with the threat of foreign powers accessing critical infrastructure or interfering in elections. Former President Joe Biden extended this for every year of his presidency. As he departs the presidency at the end of 2024, Biden has cited this executive order as the basis for sanctions on Iranian and Russian actors that are “aimed at inflaming social and political tensions” and influencing U.S. elections.

A White House official told PBS News that White House staff is in regular contact with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas with the president, but cautioned that speculation about what the president might announce is just that, speculation.

Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 that would add proof of citizenship to voter registration forms, triggering multiple lawsuits that are still making their way through the courts.

The Save America Act, an election bill, recently passed the Republican-led House, but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The legislation requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and imposes stricter voter ID requirements, among other provisions.

Read more: What to know about how the Save America Act could change voting

The president hinted earlier this month that he might take unilateral action to ensure voter ID exists before the midterms, writing in a post on Truth Social: “There will be voter ID for the midterms, whether Congress approves it or not! The people of our country also insist on citizenship, and no mail-in ballots, with exceptions for military, disability, illness, or travel.”

Thirty-six states have current laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

News of the draft order drew swift pushback from some Democrats, including Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who called Trump “one of the biggest threats to America’s elections” in a statement Thursday.

“Regardless of whether this proposed executive order ultimately comes to fruition, every American — regardless of party or ideology — should be deeply concerned about Trump’s continued use of lies and conspiracy to justify attempts to seize the reins of elections and hold on to power,” she wrote. “This is not democracy. This is an attempt at tyranny. We will resist.”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration spoke with more than 100 senior election officials from across the country, including secretaries of state, about preparing for the November midterm elections.

Three people on Wednesday’s call, who discussed the meeting on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details, told PBS News that the Election Assistance Commission routinely provides resources to states to prepare physical infrastructure and cybersecurity for elections. The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice joined the call, as well as officials from the US Postal Service and the FBI.

Attending on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security at that meeting was Heather Honey, a conservative election activist appointed by the Trump administration to serve as deputy assistant secretary of state for election integrity.

One person on the call told PBS News that Haney urged the group to use SAVE, or Systematic Alien Verification for Benefits, a database run by USCIS that government officials use to verify the citizenship status of applicants seeking benefits. The Trump administration is pressing election officials to run voter files through the SAVE system, which can verify a voter’s citizenship.

Haney also brought up the hand counting of ballots, which election experts say is an inaccurate way to count votes because it is rife with human error, two people on the call said. Manual counting of ballots is also a considerably slower process, while using machines is faster and more accurate when tabulating election results.

Officials on the call assured participants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would not be stationed outside voting locations, according to people on the call. PBS News recently asked White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt if ICE was out of the polls.

Watch the clip in the player above.

“This is something I’ve never heard the president think about before,” Leavitt said. “no.”

She then added that she couldn’t guarantee that ICE wouldn’t be at polling sites or in November, calling our investigation “an absolutely ridiculous hypothetical question.”

“But what I can say is that I have not heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside the polls,” she added.