Trump ally urges national emergency over election security

A longtime friend and personal attorney of President Donald Trump is urging the White House to declare a national emergency ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a move legal experts warn would trigger a constitutional crisis. Peter Ticktin, an 80-year-old Florida lawyer who describes himself as Trump’s childhood best friend, has advocated for a sweeping executive order that would assert federal control over key aspects of the election process based on unproven claims of foreign interference.

Ticktin alleges that foreign governments, including Venezuela, China, and Iran, manipulated electronic voting machines to influence the 2020 presidential election. He has claimed that evidence supporting these allegations will soon become public, particularly through the Trump administration’s prosecution of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. In a recent interview, Ticktin described the alleged interference as “a surreptitious overtaking of a country.”

However, these claims have been repeatedly rejected by federal investigations and intelligence agencies. A declassified 2021 U.S. intelligence community assessment concluded that while several nations attempted to influence public opinion, no...