Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So what can Trump actually do if he does try to go full dictator and seize control of the midterms? How far can he get? What impact might it have even if he fails? What can we do to prepare? We’re talking about all of it with election law expert Rick Hasen, who’s one of the best out there at explaining this stuff. Rick, good to have you on.
Sargent: So just to set the table here, the Senate went into recess without passing Trump’s SAVE Act, which could disenfranchise millions if it did pass. Politico reports that Republicans are now bracing for Trump’s, quote-unquote, “wrath.”
Hasen: Well, yeah, it’s been really one of the president’s priorities for months. He’s obsessed with election fraud. Whether he believes it or not, he talks about it constantly. And what the SAVE America Act, as it’s now called in its most recent iteration, would do, among other things, is require everybody to potentially re-register to vote, providing original copies of their birth certificates, maybe their marriage licenses, their naturalization certificates. It would be a hugely disenfranchising law if it passed.
Sargent: Right, this thing isn’t happening, and that’s the context for this. Trump was talking to Wayne Allyn Root, a MAGA personality. Root suggests that Trump declare a national emergency to take over our elections. Then Root says the Supreme Court has precluded Congress from overriding such declarations. And listen closely to the end, where Trump says, “stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at that.” Check this out.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Stranger things have happened, I’ll leave it at that.
Sargent: So you heard that, right? Trump says clearly, “stranger things have happened, I’ll leave it at that,” Rick. So let’s just break this up into pieces. Before we get into the details about what this would entail, Trump is letting it dangle out there that he’s really considering this, right?
And his new attorney general, Todd Blanche, won’t preclude the idea of sending ICE agents to the polls. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but they’re dangling all kinds of stuff out.
Hasen: He is. It might be for internal MAGA consumption too, but he’s certainly not excluding that possibility.
Hasen: So Trump has declared a national emergency at the border. He did it in his first term and he did it now. And that might free up some money. That might allow him to take congressional appropriations that were otherwise going to be used for some purposes and use them for other purposes. So there are—by, I think it was a count by Just Security, the great website—50 different powers that could be invoked.
Sargent: Well, the rub here is that declaring a national emergency wouldn’t unlock any presidential powers over elections specifically, right? Even though it would unlock a bunch of other powers, just nothing over elections specifically. Can you walk us through that piece of this? Why doesn’t it do that?
The Constitution, the United States Constitution, does not give the president power over elections. We have a decentralized election system. Most of our election rules come from states, from state legislatures passing statutes.
Sargent: Exactly. So before we get to the bigger picture here, Wayne Allyn Root made this claim about the Supreme Court ruling that Congress can’t override declarations of national emergencies. Can you explain just briefly what he thought he was saying there?
Sargent: Yes, that is exactly what he thought he was saying, and you really laid bare, I think, how preposterous it is. The crux of this, though, is that we shouldn’t shrug about it.
Hasen: Yeah, sure. So one thing that I think he’s trying to do is to please his MAGA base. They’ve been pushing for a long time to have Trump declare this national emergency. In fact, there was some group that sent him a draft executive order that was going to do just that and totally take over elections. That document was leaked to The Washington Post. Trump never did anything about it. So he’s trying to please the MAGA base, keep them thinking that he’s going to do something.
And the last thing I think that it does is, he’s trying to scare people. He’s trying to scare people into thinking he has more power than he has. That itself makes him powerful, because people are deterred by him. And maybe it deters people from showing up to vote in elections. Hey, are there going to be ICE agents at the polling place? Is my ballot not going to count? Why bother voting?
Sargent: Yeah, and I think that you very neatly get at what the role of ICE is in all this. ICE is very terrifying, for good reason, to a lot of people in the United States of America now.
Hasen: Yeah, I think Trump has managed to do a double whammy, right? On the one hand, he’s convincing his supporters that the elections are rigged and that they can’t be trusted. And then when Republicans try and take actions to secure the election system, like trying to pass the SAVE Act, well, then Democrats think he’s trying to rig the elections.
Sargent: I think there’s another element to this I want to get at as well. There’s a tendency of the press and a lot of liberals to look at this kind of thing and say, it’s bluster, it’s Trump using his magical distraction powers, et cetera, et cetera.
Hasen: Well, you may remember that back in 2016 and in 2020, he said he wouldn’t accept the results of the election unless he won. I mean, this is just banana republic stuff. It’s terrible stuff. And I should say, there are things that Donald Trump might try to do to try to manipulate the election outcomes that I’m very worried about. Not ICE agents at the polls, but trying to interfere with the certification of election results or the tabulation of ballots.
Sargent: And just to go back to your earlier point about sowing doubts in the legitimacy of elections—that has the ability to function later as a pretext for him doing those things that he could do, such as seize ballot boxes, right?
Whether he’s going to be able to do any of this is currently before the United States Supreme Court, in an emergency motion where Trump is trying to be able to do this before the elections. Now, I don’t think he’s going to be able to succeed, in part because it’s too late. Our election administrators are already getting ready to run our elections.
Sargent: So Rick, what can we do right now to prepare? What would you suggest to rank-and-file voters out there who are very worried about what’s about to happen, but really adamantly want to do their part to whatever degree they can right now to prevent this madman from pulling off anything like that?
But also, I think, you know, support those organizations that are fighting Trump on issues like whether he has any power over elections. There’s been a lot of litigation already, and it’s going to continue probably through the election. And because our elections are so decentralized, there’s lots of opportunity for people to get involved, as either poll workers or as observers, either for a party or with good-government groups. There’s election protection work to do. There’s a lot of things to do.
Sargent: It does appear as if civil society is fully engaged here, and I’ve got to say, I see democratic resilience in all that. Folks, if you want more of Rick Hasen, make sure to check out his blog, Election Law Blog. It’s chock-full of stuff like this. Rick, always good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Hasen: Thanks for the opportunity.
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