In an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a host for Real America's Voice and longtime supporter of the president, Donald Trump appeared to give credence to the emerging far-right notion that he could declare a national emergency regarding elections. Trump previously distanced himself from the notion. Media Matters has been documenting this for months.

Media figures who've pushed claims of widespread election fraud — some of whom say they have been involved with drafting such an order that is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk” — have urged Trump to give himself “king-like powers” by implementing the proposal, as it would supposedly empower Trump to “be able to make the rules” and use the National Guard to oversee midterm elections.

John Solomon, Steve Bannon, Cleta Mitchell, and others have appeared to signal that Trump could attempt to severely curtail voting rights under the pretext of declaring a national security emergency posed by China.

Media Matters has been covering the right-wing media personalities converging on the idea of an executive order for Trump to sign regarding elections for nearly a year. In fact, Wayne Allyn Root laid out the same plan to Steve Bannon weeks ago.

Update (8/11/26, 3:30 pm ET): At Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen lays out a case for vigilance but against panic:

This is ridiculous and people should not panic over it. The President has no role to play in running elections, a points courts have repeatedly raised in challenges to his two executive orders on elections. Calling it a “national emergency” doesn’t change things. There’s no part of the Constitution or federal law that would give the President power to say how states run their mail ballot programs, voter id, etc.

Now Trump could do a lot of things bad by declaring an emergency (Just Security has a good primer). Perhaps under the Insurrection Act he could try to mess with posting by sending troops into the streets. For many reasons that I’ve talked about elsewhere, it’s very unlikely he’s going to do that for political reasons. But even that is not a power over elections. (I’m also much more worried he will try to illegally mess with the tabulation and certification of votes if there is a close election for control of the House or Senate.)

This CAP report does a good job showing that a president’s declaration of a national emergency would not give him power over elections. But this has been the fever dream of the conspiratorial right for quite some time, going back to Cleta Mitchell floating this idea a couple of years ago.