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Trump Allies Are Pushing a Draft Order to Take Over Elections. Its China Premise Is False.

Resist Now Updated July 14, 2026 4 min read
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Pro-Trump activists who say they are coordinating with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would declare a national emergency over a claim that China interfered in the 2020 election, then use that emergency to give the president sweeping control over how Americans vote. The Washington Post first reported the draft, and Trump allies have kept pushing it since. The White House declined to elaborate, and Trump has publicly said he is not mulling it.

The emergency rests on something that did not happen. A 2021 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that China considered trying to influence the 2020 election and chose not to act. There was no Chinese interference to declare an emergency over.

What the Draft Order Would Do

The order treats voting itself as a national-security threat. It would let the president ban mail ballots and, in the words of Trump associate Peter Ticktin, “ban … voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Nearly 46 million Americans voted by mail in 2024.

It would also deputize four federal agencies that have never run elections. The draft names the Justice Department, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Postal Service to identify voters it deems ineligible. To justify it, the draft reaches for emergency statutes written for real crises, including the National Emergencies Act of 1976 and the Defense Production Act of 1950.

Why a Fake Emergency Is the Danger

Elections in this country are run by states, not the president. The Constitution’s Elections Clause gives that authority to state legislatures and to Congress, not the White House. An emergency declaration is the tool being used to route around that.

Legal analysts across the spectrum say it would not survive court review. The Cato Institute called it a sea change in how Americans vote, and Democracy Docket called the draft blatantly illegal. Courts already blocked Trump’s March 2025 executive order on election administration on similar grounds. The point of a manufactured emergency is to act first and force opponents to spend months in court undoing it, which is how emergency powers get abused.

What You Can Do Now

  1. Use the letter below to tell your senators and representative to reject any attempt to run the 2026 election through emergency powers, and to pass legislation reining in the National Emergencies Act so a president cannot invent a foreign threat to seize control of voting.

  2. Call your members of Congress at (202) 224-3121. Ask them to state on the record that they oppose banning mail ballots by executive order. Nearly 46 million people voted by mail in 2024, and a ban would hit rural voters, military families, and older voters first.

  3. Track it. The draft is not signed. If an emergency declaration on elections appears, that is the moment to flood congressional offices and support the legal challenges that will follow, the same challenges that stopped the 2025 election order.

Update, July 14, 2026: Trump has dismantled the Election Assistance Commission, the independent agency responsible for certifying voting systems, less than four months before the 2026 midterm elections. The White House fired Democratic commissioners Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, pressured Republican Christy McCormick into resigning, and Republican Donald Palmer had already left in April to join the Heritage Foundation. The removals followed a Supreme Court ruling that expanded presidential authority to fire members of independent agencies.

A federal judge in Atlanta quashed a Department of Justice subpoena seeking the names and personal information of Fulton County election workers from the 2020 election. The FBI previously raided the Fulton County election office, seizing 700 boxes of ballots, and later fired two of its own officials who raised concerns that the probe was politically motivated, according to CBS News. Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, told Democracy Now that the Fulton County operation is “a preview of the type of suppression and intimidation the Trump administration wants to do everywhere in 2026.”

Trump is scheduled to deliver a primetime address alleging foreign interference in the 2020 election, a claim Berman says has been extensively studied with no supporting evidence found. Berman described the administration’s moves as an attempt to build a narrative justifying federal intervention in how votes are cast and how elections are certified in the midterms. Courts have blocked multiple Trump executive orders on elections, and states retain constitutional authority to administer their own elections.

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