{"id":4622,"date":"2026-08-12T12:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4622"},"modified":"2026-08-12T12:10:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T12:10:22","slug":"the-legal-flaw-in-trumps-plan-to-take-over-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4622","title":{"rendered":"The legal flaw in Trump\u2019s plan to take over the election"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump is once again musing about a plot to upend the midterm elections, but as one political scholar revealed to The New Republic, the legal logic behind the idea has a major flaw that means it is likely to be a dud.<\/p>\n

Read more Medical expert unveils what the public isn\u2019t being told about Trump\u2019s health<\/a><\/p>\n

During a recent interview, right-wing media personality Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to declare a national emergency as a means to implement the voter ID requirements and other reforms proposed in the SAVE America Act, which has stalled out in the Senate. In response, Trump did not outright dismiss the idea and, in fact, sounded as if he was considering it.<\/p>\n

“Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that,” the president said.<\/p>\n

During the Wednesday edition of The New Republic’s Daily Blast podcast, host Greg Sargent talked with Rick Hasen, a legal and political scholar who specializes in election law, and pressed him about the viability of the idea that Trump could implement sweeping election reforms via national emergency. Hasen explained that, for all the presidential powers that such a declaration could unlock, it would give Trump no specific powers over elections. Elections, more generally, are also explicitly left for states to manage by the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Read more DOJ memo decried as effort to shield inner circle: \u2018Trump is scared\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

“So there are two reasons why declaring a national emergency doesn’t make Donald Trump the election czar in this country,” Hasen explained. “The first is, there’s no federal statute. Of all those 50 statutes that deal with national emergencies, none prescribe any powers to the president over elections. The other reason is even more fundamental. The Constitution, the United States Constitution, does not give the president power over elections. We have a decentralized election system.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: “Most of our election rules come from states, from state legislatures passing statutes. There’s a part of the Constitution \u2014 it’s in Article 1, Section 4 \u2014 it says that Congress can override state rules on elections. That’s when Congress, for example, requires ‘motor voter’; people can register to vote at motor vehicle departments. But Congress has to do that with legislation. The president has no role to play. All that the president can do is take care to assure that the laws that Congress passes are being faithfully executed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hasen also touched on Root’s suggestion that this national emergency idea could work if implemented next month, as it would require both chambers of Congress to vote to undo it, and there would not be enough time before the midterms to do so. The analyst explained that, again, this notion is inherently flawed, as no such declaration can give Trump such election powers in the first place.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s scheme to steal the midterms will lose in court. That\u2019s \u2018by design\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump is once again musing about a plot to upend the midterm elections, but as one political scholar revealed to, the legal logic behind the idea has a major flaw that means it is likely to be a dud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe legal flaw in Trump\u2019s plan to take over the election - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4622\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The legal flaw in Trump\u2019s plan to take over the election - 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