Democracy & Elections Executive Branch

Lawfare Daily: Can the President Declare an Elections Emergency?

Benjamin Wittes, Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Jen Patja
Friday, March 20, 2026, 7:00 AM
Discussing the drafted executive order which purports to give President Trump power over elections in a national emergency. 

A draft executive order has been floating around that would assert presidential control over elections all over the country. Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sits down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower and Molly Roberts, authors of the recent Lawfare article, “In Case of Emergency: The Dubious Legality of Trump Allies' Draft EO,” to talk through what it would do, who was behind it, and how seriously we should take it.

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Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Anna Bower is a senior editor at Lawfare. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey. A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Molly Roberts is a senior editor at Lawfare. She was previously a member of the editorial board at The Washington Post, where she covered technology, legal affairs and more, as well as wrote columns about everything from cryptocurrency grift and graft to panda diplomacy at the National Zoo.
Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
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