National

In 2020, 2022, and 2024, our nation held federal elections. Despite the pandemic, threats of violence, denial of results, and extraordinary pressure, these were secure and accurate. Election officials worked together across party lines. The system held. This year, however, a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself. The Trump administration has launched a concerted drive to undermine American elections. These moves are unprecedented and in some cases illegal. They began with the pardon of the January 6 defendants who sought to overturn the 2020 results. They include affirmative attacks on democratic institutions, the repeal and withdrawal of voter protections, and symbolic or demonstrative moves. A clear pattern suggests a growing effort. As the 2026 midterms approach, that effort will likely gather momentum. Read Article

National: Less staff, even less trust: Some states say they can’t rely on Trump’s DHS for election security | Kevin Collier/NBC

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), created in 2018 in the first Trump administration as part of the Department of Homeland Security to protect crucial services from hackers, has emerged in recent years as the clearinghouse for election officials to share cybersecurity information. But things have changed in the second Trump administration, which has cut most of CISA’s election security services and has sought to punish its first director for openly defying the president, particularly around election fraud claims. Three state election heads and a former CISA official who spoke to NBC News said it’s clear the agency is no longer as effective in protecting U.S. elections. “You’re hanging states out to dry, basically, to let them fend for themselves,” said Pam Smith, the president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to providing election officials with resources for their jobs. “If you do that, I don’t think you can expect that people will share,” she said. “That sort of trusted relationship is essentially broken. That’s not to say that it couldn’t be rebuilt, but it would require some evidence that they’ve got your back.” Read Article

National: Voting Rights Act of 1965 faces new threats to survival | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

At a time when the Justice Department under the Trump administration has backed off from voting rights lawsuits the department had brought when former President Joe Biden was in office, the prospect of voters of color no longer being allowed to bring their own cases has supporters of the Voting Rights Act concerned about the law’s survival. While the Voting Rights Act is widely considered one of the most effective civil rights laws in U.S. history, the exact scope of Section 2 lawsuits is difficult to quantify, largely because many historical court records have yet to be digitized and fully catalogued. Still, estimates back up what has long been known in the legal world: Private individuals and groups, not the Justice Department, have brought the overwhelming majority of Section 2 cases. Read Article

National: Trump and his allies mount a pressure campaign against US elections ahead of the midterms | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Next year’s midterms hold enormous stakes for Trump and his opposition. Democrats need to net just three seats in the US House in 2026 to flip control of the chamber from Republicans. A Democratic-led House could block Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations of the president in the second half of his second term. Samantha Tarazi, CEO of the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab, which has closely tracked state developments, said she believes Trump is gearing up “to use the power of his office to interfere in the 2026 election. What started as an unconstitutional executive order — marching orders for state action regardless of its fate in court — has grown into a full federal mobilization to seize power over our elections,” she said. Read Article

National: New state, local cyber grant rules prohibit spending on Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center | Colin Wood/StateScoop

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday published the notice of funding opportunity for the fourth and final year of the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Among the details explaining the latest round of funding for the $1 billion program is a stipulation that grantees may not spend their funds on services provided by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a group that for more than 20 years has shared critical cybersecurity intelligence across state lines and provided software and other resources at free or heavily discounted rates. The notice outlines numerous other items states and their local government are not permitted to spend cyber grant funding on, a list with obvious inclusions like “recreational and social purposes,” along with perhaps less obvious prohibitions, like covering ransoms in ransomware attacks, paying cybersecurity insurance premiums or paying for land or other construction costs associated with building new facilities. Read Article

National: Gabbard overrode CIA officials’ concerns in push to release classified Russia report | Warren P. Strobel/The Washington Post

The Trump administration pushed to unveil a highly classified document on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election after an intense behind-the-scenes struggle over secrecy, which ended in late July when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a minimally redacted version of the report, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Gabbard, with the blessing of President Donald Trump, overrode arguments from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that more of the document should remain classified to obscure U.S. spy agencies’ sources and methods, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others interviewed for this report, because of the matter’s sensitivity. Read Article

National: DOJ plans to ask all states for detailed voting info | Jonathan Shorman/Stateline

U.S. Department of Justice officials say the department will seek voting and election information from all 50 states, according to a national group that includes many top state election officials. The department has sent letters to at least nine states in recent months asking for information related to voter list maintenance in the states under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. Several letters also request state voter registration lists, prompting concern among some Democrats and voting rights activists about how the department, under the control of President Donald Trump, plans to use the data. Read Article

National: Why defunding the Election Assistance Commission may hurt election integrity | Jonathan Madison, Matt Germer and Chris McIsaac/R Street Institute

Americans want secure, trustworthy elections. Unfortunately, the president’s proposed budget envisions a substantial cut—nearly 40 percent—to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a small agency focused on certifying voting technology. In an era of justifiable concern over rampant government spending, it’s tempting to see every budget cut as a win for fiscal responsibility. But some cuts risk doing more harm than good. At a time when public trust in elections is fragile and threats to voting systems are growing more sophisticated, gutting the very agency responsible for shoring up election infrastructure sends the wrong message and creates real vulnerabilities. The EAC plays a vital role that few people know much about. Created under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, it coordinates testing and certification of voting systems, accredits laboratories, distributes grants, and publishes guidance to bolster election administration. It’s a bipartisan commission with a rare track record of productivity. While it’s right to ensure every agency delivers value for taxpayers, these cuts risk impairing the EAC’s ability to carry out core election security functions—just as the Trump administration looks to increase its workload. Read Article

Democrats try again to revive and expand the 1965 Voting Rights Act | Matt Brown/Associated Press

Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Tuesday to restore and expand protections enshrined in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, their latest long-shot attempt to revive the landmark law just days before its 60th anniversary and at a time of renewed debate over the future administration of American elections. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia unveiled the measure, titled the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, with the backing of Democratic leaders. The bill stands little chance of passage in the Republican-led Congress, but it provides the clearest articulation of Democrats’ agenda on voting rights and election reform. The legislation would reestablish and expand the requirement that states and localities with a history of discrimination get federal approval before changing their voting laws. It would also require states to allow same-day voter registration, prevent voters from being purged from voter rolls if they miss elections and allow people who may have been disenfranchised at the ballot box to seek a legal remedy in the courts. Read Article

National: Cybersecurity tips for state election offices, as federal support dwindles | Colin Wood/StateScoop

A report published last week by the Brennan Center for Justice and the R Street Institute provides states recommendations on how to secure their elections using a “whole of government” strategy, as federal support dwindles. Researchers pointed to the smooth process they observed during the 2024 election that included a decisive victory by President Donald Trump and a prompt concession by Kamala Harris. The numerous bomb threats, cyberattacks and other attempted disruptions were deftly repelled in part thanks to federal support, the report’s authors claim. “That these incidents failed to have a major impact is a testament to the planning, preparation, and response of election officials and law enforcement,” the report read. “Still, these incidents highlight the need for policymakers to double down on their commitment to the election resiliency policies and practices that made 2024 such a success.” Read Article

National: Understanding SAVE immigration database as a tool for election officials | Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

Last week, officials gathered at an Oklahoma City hotel for the annual National Association of State Election Directors conference. Since President Donald Trump took office again, his Justice Department has been sending out letters to states with sweeping requests for information about how they maintain their voter rolls and ensure that only eligible people are registered. Meanwhile, the administration is urging election officials around the country to use an existing federal immigration database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program for a new purpose: to verify voters’ eligibility. The Department of Homeland Security recently overhauled SAVE to make it easier to search, and free for states to use. Experts have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, given how quickly the system changes to SAVE were made this year. They’ve also raised concerns about how the federal government is using data uploaded by states, and whether using the tool outside its intended purpose could put people’ privacy or voting rights at risk. Read Article

National: Federal appeals court restricts who can bring voting rights challenges | Gary Fields/Associated Press

A federal appeals court panel on Monday ruled that private individuals and organizations cannot bring voting rights cases under a section of the law that allows others to assist voters who are blind, have disabilities or are unable to read. It’s the latest ruling from the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying only the government can bring lawsuits alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. The findings upend decades of precedent and will likely be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case centered on whether an Arkansas law that limits how many voters can be assisted by one person conflicts with Section 208 of the landmark federal law. The opinion from the three-judge panel followed the reasoning of another 8th Circuit panel in a previous case from 2023. That opinion held that the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Conference could not bring cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Read Article

National: Department of Justice Is Said to Plan to Contact All 50 States on Voting Systems | Matt Cohen and Zachary Roth/Democracy Docket

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has said it intends to contact all 50 states about their compliance with federal voting law, a national association of state election officials told Democracy Docket. “As states recently began to receive letters on the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and Help America Vote Act (HAVA) from the U.S.…

National: As Federal Support for Elections Evolves, States Adapt to Close Emerging Gaps | Brenna Nelson/NCSL

The decentralization of U.S. election administration leaves many decisions regarding how elections are run to states and localities, which also foot most of the bill. The federal government does support elections, though, even if most ongoing costs fall to states and localities. “We have seen over the last 25 years, more and more federal support for state and local elections officials,” says Lindsey Forson, deputy executive director at the National Association of Secretaries of State and a panelist in a recent NCSL webinar. That could be changing as the Trump administration enacts its election priorities and shifts resources. Read Article

National: Noncitizen voting remains exceedingly rare, new review finds | Miles Parks/NPR

After President Trump and many other Republicans warned that vast numbers of non-U.S. citizens would influence last year’s election, states and law enforcement have devoted more resources than ever before to root out those ineligible voters. More than six months into Trump’s second term, they haven’t found much. New research out Wednesday tracking state government efforts across the country confirms what election experts have said all along: Noncitizen voting occasionally happens but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way. “Noncitizens are not a large threat to our election system currently,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which conducted the research. “Even states that are looking everywhere to try to amplify the numbers of noncitizens … when they actually look, they find a surprisingly, shockingly small number.” Read Article

National: Trump pick moves closer to leading agency that protects election systems | Ali Swenson/Associated Press

A U.S. Senate committee voted Wednesday to advance President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency that secures the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election systems. Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 9-6 to recommend Sean Plankey ’s nomination for director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, which sits under the Department of Homeland Security. The agency has been dealing with workforce and funding cuts, as well as criticism from Republicans over some of its election-related activities. Read Article

Opinion: The Fact Checker rose in an era of false claims. Falsehoods are now winning. | Glenn Kessler/The Washington Post

When 400 fact-checkers from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro in June for an annual conference, the mood was tense. After years of exponential growth, political fact-checking was in retreat and under fire. And somehow, even as fact-checking surged in the past decade, so had the wave of false claims and narratives swamping the world. Meta, which after 2016 spent more than $100 million to fund 100 fact-checking organizations, ended a partnership with U.S. fact-checkers to highlight false claims and signaled it would cut back across the world. Google announced it would end its ClaimReview program — which I helped foster — that elevated fact checks in search results. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development cut off additional funding for fact-checkers in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. The state of the fact-checking field is on my mind as I write my last column for The Washington Post. I am taking a voluntary buyout, ending almost 28 years at the newspaper, including more than 14 as The Fact Checker. Read Article

National: The Supreme Court Is Writing a Slow-Motion Eulogy for One of America’s Greatest Achievements | Maureen Edobor/Slate

Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the passing of the Voting Rights Act—a law often celebrated as the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Movement. Signed in 1965 after years of organizing and unimaginable sacrifice, it was meant to realize the constitutional promise that the right to vote would not be denied or abridged on account of race. Yet, as we approach this milestone, we find ourselves not in a moment of reflection or rededication but in a state of legal free fall. The Supreme Court has scheduled arguments next term on Louisiana’s racially gerrymandered congressional map, and the court as early as next week may put on hold and set for argument a case in which the 8th Circuit held that private plaintiffs have no right to sue to enforce Section 2 of the act. These pending decisions threaten to gut what remains of this once powerful statute, which has already been largely hollowed out by the Roberts court over the past decade-plus. Read Article

National: Gabbard claim of anti-Trump conspiracy not backed by declassified documents | Byron Tau and Eric Tucker/Associated Press

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month declassified material she claimed proved a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S. intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. As evidence, Gabbard cited newly declassified emails from Obama officials and a 5-year-old classified House report in hopes of undermining the intelligence community’s conclusion Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Trump and denigrate his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Russia’s activities during the 2016 election remain some of the most examined events in recent history. The Kremlin’s campaign and the subsequent U.S. government response were the subject of at least five major investigations by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committee; two Justice Department special counsels; and the department’s inspector general. Read Article

National: Judge limits a small part of a court order blocking Trump’s election overhaul as lawsuits continue | Ali Swenson and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

A federal judge on Friday modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the U.S. The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary injunction that U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper granted on June 13 in a case filed by Democratic state attorneys general. The judge said Friday that the part of Trump’s order directing certain federal agencies to assess people’s U.S. citizenship when they ask for voter registration forms will now only be blocked in the 19 states that filed the lawsuit. Election law experts said the modification will have little, if any, practical effect because a judge in a different lawsuit filed against the executive order also blocked the federal agencies from obeying the mandate in all 50 states. Read Article

National: House Republicans endorse stricter state and federal-led voter roll purges despite dearth of evidence on fraud | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

In a congressional hearing on state voter registration practices Tuesday, Republicans on the House Administration Committee were united around common sentiments: It is too easy for citizens to register to vote and too easy for them to stay on voter rolls, states aren’t doing enough to remove ineligible voters, and it’s all led to the country’s elections being vulnerable to mass voter fraud and noncitizen voting. There was little evidence presented to back up most of those claims. Yet, the hearing focused on how states and the federal government could better review voter registration databases, with lawmakers hearing from two conservative nonprofit representatives and a North Carolina voter who was wrongly removed from the state’s voter rolls last year. Read Article

National: Administration Defying Court By Stonewalling on Anti-Voting Order, Plaintiffs Say | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Trump administration is defying a court order by refusing to say how federal agencies may be implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order, pro-voting groups and Democrats alleged in a filing Friday. Among the order’s directives that lawyers for the administration have failed to provide answers about: How is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allowing its databases to be used to purge voters? How will the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) punish states for continuing to offer a grace period for mail ballots that arrive after Election Day? And how will the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — an independent agency — withhold funds from states that don’t comply with aspects of the order? Read Article

National: U.S. to Curtail Practice of Assessing Fairness of Foreign Elections | Robbie Gramer and Alexander Ward/Wall Street Journal

The U.S. plans to stop commenting on the fairness, integrity and legitimacy of foreign elections, a major shift away from a decadeslong practice of promoting democratic elections abroad. A new instruction, delivered in a Thursday memorandum signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, orders statements on foreign elections to focus on congratulating the winning candidate and “avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question.” The State Department should only make public statements about foreign elections if “there is a clear and compelling U.S. foreign policy interest to do so,” according to the memo, which cited the “the administration’s emphasis on national sovereignty.” Read Article

National: A State Agenda for Election Security and Resiliency | Derek Tisler and Chris McIsaac/Brennan Center for Justice

The 2024 election was widely regarded as an administrative success. It went off largely without a hitch, with only minor disruptions to voting. And a decisive victory by Donald Trump in the presidential campaign, paired with a prompt concession by Kamala Harris, helped avoid a long and contentious process of determining the winner, which might have eroded the perception of a well-run election. Yet there were serious attempts at disruption, including bomb threats at polling places, cyberattacks on election systems, and destruction of ballot drop boxes. That these incidents failed to have a major impact is a testament to the planning, preparation, and response of election officials and law enforcement. Still, these incidents highlight the need for policymakers to double down on their commitment to the election resiliency policies and practices that made 2024 such a success. Read Article

National: Jan. 6 Rioters Are the New Hot Event in Town for Republicans | James Fanelli/The Wall Street Journal

Former Jan. 6 defendants are the new draw at local Republican fundraisers, helping to fill seats at normally sleepy events while getting a platform to tell their version of the Capitol riot. The Davis County Republican Party in the Salt Lake City suburbs held its annual Abraham Lincoln Day Dinner in March at $75 a plate. One marquee speaker was a pardoned defendant who federal prosecutors said knocked back a shot of Fireball whiskey in the conference room of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “This was not an insurrection,” the speaker, Treniss Evans, told the crowd. “This was Kent State. This was Tiananmen Square.” It has been nearly six months since President Trump granted pardons and commutations to the roughly 1,500 people criminally charged in the attack on the Capitol. The pardons initially unsettled some Republicans who thought Trump was showing leniency to defendants who attacked law-enforcement officers, but the GOP is increasingly willing to reintegrate these former defendants into the fold. Read Article

National: Justice Department requests voter rolls and election data from states | Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

The Trump administration and its allies have launched a multipronged effort to gather data on voters and inspect voting equipment, sparking concern among local and state election officials about federal interference ahead of the 2026 midterms. The most unusual activity is happening in Colorado — a state that then-candidate Donald Trump lost by 11 points — where a well-connected consultant who says he is working with the White House is asking county clerks whether they will allow the federal government or a third party to physically examine their election equipment. Federal agencies have long offered technical assistance and cybersecurity advice to election officials but have not examined their equipment because election laws tightly limit who has access. Read ArticleRead Article

National: Election Officials Have Been Under Attack For Years. Now The DOJ Wants to Criminally Charge Them | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent letters to states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Colorado, pressing for information about voter roll management, demanding to see state voter rolls, and threatening to sue over alleged voting law violations. But the department’s campaign has gone much further. Criminal prosecutors at DOJ sent separate broad requests for information to election officials in at least two states, people who have seen the requests told Democracy Docket. Those letters were first reported by the New York Times, which added that they’re part of a broader initiative at DOJ, still in its early stages, to look into whether it can bring criminal charges against election officials for not doing enough to protect their voting systems against fraud and illegal voting. Read Article

National: GOP lawmakers try again to change who’s counted in key census numbers | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Republicans in Congress are reviving a controversial push to alter a key set of census numbers that are used to determine how presidents and members of the U.S. House of Representatives are elected. Ratified after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says the “whole number of persons in each state” must be included in what are called apportionment counts, the population numbers based on census results that determine each state’s share of House seats and Electoral College votes for a decade. But GOP lawmakers have now released three bills this year that would use the 2030 census to tally residents without U.S. citizenship, and then subtract some or all of them from the apportionment counts. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee unveiled the latest bill Monday. Read Article

National: Republicans target voting rights of U.S. citizens who have never lived in the country | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

The Republican Party is challenging the voting eligibility of some U.S. citizens who have always lived abroad, in what they’re calling a broader strategy ahead of next year’s midterms to clean up voter rolls and improve voter confidence. But Democrats see the effort as a blatant attempt to disenfranchise eligible Democrats in key swing states. The GOP terms the voters they are targeting as “never residents” because they are U.S. citizens but haven’t lived in the United States. Most frequently, they are children of U.S. citizens who have been in the military, or lived overseas for other reasons. Three-quarters of states have laws on the books allowing such citizens to vote by absentee or mail ballot in the same state where their parents or other relatives last lived or are registered. Read Article

National: Emil Bove declines to rule out 3rd Trump term or denounce Jan. 6 rioters in Senate questionnaire | Scott MacFarlane/CBS