National

State and local election officials from around the country on Thursday questioned the leaders of a federal agency directed by President Donald Trump to implement parts of his sweeping election overhaul executive order, with some expressing concerns about the consequences for voters and the people in charge of voting. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent and bipartisan federal agency, is at the center of Trump’s March 25 order that directs the commission to update the national voter registration form to include a proof-of-citizenship requirement and revise guidelines for voting systems. Trump also wants it to withhold federal money from any state that continues to accept ballots after Election Day even if they are postmarked by then. Whether the Republican president can order an independent agency to act and whether the commission has the authority to do what Trump wants will likely be settled in court. Read Article

National: NSF cancels over 400 grants covering disinformation, deepfakes and STEM education | Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Around 430 federally-funded research grants covering topics like deepfake detection, artificial intelligence advancement and the empowerment of marginalized groups in scientific fields were among several projects terminated in recent days following a major realignment in research priorities at the National Science Foundation. Other cancelled grants included nearly two dozen projects devoted to disinformation research, election security, cyber-physical systems protection and the CyberCorps scholarship program. In total, around $328 million worth of grants, many of them issued to major American universities, were canceled. The mass cancellation and realignment of NSF’s grant priorities coincided with the arrival of officials from the Department of Government Efficiency, who have been present at the agency since April 14, according to six people familiar with the matter. Read Article

National: Trump upends DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sparking ‘bloodbath’ in senior ranks | Ken Dilanian/NBC

The Trump administration has quietly transformed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, forcing out a majority of career managers and implementing new priorities that current and former officials say abandon a decadeslong mission of enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing and voting rights. More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say. Some have resigned in frustration after they were moved to less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise, according to the sources. “It’s been a complete bloodbath,” said a senior Justice Department lawyer in the division who is not authorized to speak publicly. Read Article

National: Multiple top CISA officials behind ‘Secure by Design’ resign | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

Two top officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who worked with the private sector to manufacture secure products and technology are leaving the agency. Bob Lord, senior technical adviser and Lauren Zabierek, senior advisor at CISA, were two of the chief architects behind CISA’s Secure by Design initiative, which garnered voluntary commitments from major vendors and manufacturers to build cybersecurity protections into their products at the design stage. On Monday in dueling posts on LinkedIn, Lord and Zabierek both said they are departing the agency. Neither offered a rationale or motivation for the decision, with Lord simply calling it a “difficult decision” and Zabierek saying it was “not an easy choice.” Read Article

National: Judge hears challenges to Trump’s executive order on regulating elections | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

A federal judge said she planned to rule by April 24 on a request to stop parts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order on elections from being enforced or implemented. What’s the dispute? Multiple nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees sued Trump, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and other federal agencies over the order he signed in March calling for broad changes in how elections are administered. The plaintiffs argue that the Constitution does not grant the president authority to set rules for elections. The lawsuits challenge multiple provisions of the executive order, including one that directs the EAC to add a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form; another requiring the agency to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply with its requirements; and one prohibiting states from accepting mail ballots postmarked before Election Day, but received afterwards. Read Article

National: SAVE Act would create ‘chaos’ for election offices | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

Advancing legislation that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote could create chaos for state and local election offices, a state election official and a voting expert told StateScoop. The House of Representatives last Thursday passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, a bill that has received strong support from congressional Republicans who’ve deemed the measure necessary to ensure that only citizens vote in U.S. elections. The concern arrives amid mostly unfounded fears that large swaths of immigrants and undocumented individuals are participating in and influencing elections. Introduced this year by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, following a failed attempt last year, the legislation would require state and local election offices to conduct additional audits of their voter databases to weed out noncitizens. Read Article

National: Trump Is Already Undermining the Next Election | Paul Rosenzweig/The Atlantic

An unfortunate reality now confronts Americans who value the rule of law: The court system has limited capability to act as a guardrail against Trumpist authoritarianism. And so elections matter—vitally. The final and most powerful check on Donald Trump has always been, and will always be, the ballot box. The president knows this, and that is why he has now turned his attention to the election system. His recent executive order on election “integrity” is nothing less than an attempt to disenfranchise his opponents and forestall electoral defeat. Some of that effort is rather technical in nature, but the fundamentals of Trump’s challenge to free and fair elections are easy to understand. This is an attempt to completely rework the constitutional rules that structure the American election system. Read Article

National: State Department eliminates key office tasked with fighting foreign disinformation | Maggie Miller/Politico

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the agency’s hub for fighting foreign disinformation campaigns — the final nail in a yearslong effort to shut down the office accused by GOP lawmakers of censoring conservative voices. The center came under fire from leading Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year for allegedly silencing conservative voices through its efforts to clear up disinformation and misinformation online. Elon Musk, who now heads up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, described the office in 2023 as “the worst offender in U.S. government censorship.” But the center’s supporters, including Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), have asserted that it plays a critical role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation. Read Article

National: Former cyber official targeted by Trump quits company over move | Kevin Collier/NBC

Chris Krebs, the former senior cybersecurity official whom President Donald Trump fired for affirming the 2020 presidential election was secure, is leaving his private sector cybersecurity job after he and the company were targeted by Trump last week. Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during Trump’s first term, is a popular figure at his former agency and in the cybersecurity industry, and the target of ire for proponents of Trump’s false claims that fraud cost him the 2020 election. On April 9, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate Krebs and to strip his security clearance and the clearances held by any other SentinelOne employees. In his resignation email, which SentinelOne has published on its blog, Krebs said: “I don’t shy away from tough fights. But I also know this is one I need to take on fully — outside of SentinelOne. This will require my complete focus and energy. It’s a fight for democracy, for freedom of speech, and for the rule of law.” “Never forget what’s right, and what you stand for,” he said. Read Article

National: How the Federal Government Is Undermining Election Security | Lawrence Norden and LaTasha Hill/Brennan Center for Justice

President Donald Trump’s March executive order on elections has made headlines and drawn legal challenges, including from the Brennan Center. But the order is only part of his administration’s harmful election-related actions, and most of them are flying under the radar. Since taking office, the president has made a concerted, far-reaching effort to dismantle much of the federal support, funding, and infrastructure that has been built over the last decade to help states protect our elections from attack. Just last week, the president ordered the Department of Justice to review the actions of Christopher Krebs, who Trump appointed to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) in 2018. Krebs successfully oversaw the agency’s work to secure the 2020 election, but the president’s new memorandum now accuses him of misconduct for denying the false claims that the election was rigged. This targeting of an individual for criminal investigation sets a dangerous precedent for government officials who seek to do their jobs free from partisan considerations and who may need to push back against false election denial claims in the future. Read Article

‘The Most Extraordinary Attack on Voting Rights in American History’: How the SAVE Act Upends Over a Century and a Half of Protecting Voting | Matt Cohen, and Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The 15th Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act, a century later, finally made the amendment’s promise a reality for Black and Brown voters across the South. The 1993 Motor Voter law helped get millions of Americans onto the rolls and established the government’s responsibility to make registration accessible to all. For over a century and a half, the U.S. government has largely acted as a force to protect and expand voting rights — often in opposition to efforts by state or local officials to limit them. Until now, neither house of Congress had ever passed legislation to significantly restrict access to the ballot — except for rare symbolic measures, as when the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last year despite Democratic control of the Senate and then-President Joe Biden’s pledge that he would veto it. But with the House’s approval of the same measure Thursday, that’s changed. Read Article

National: Challenges to Trump’s order on elections rest on a simple premise: the Constitution | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

I have been reading federal lawsuits about voting for the better part of a decade, and I am used to being buried in references to things like 52 U.S. Code § 20507(b)(2) or parsing whatever the Supreme Court recently decided Purcell v. Gonzalez means in practice for this election cycle. This week was different. Within days of President Donald Trump’s executive order to overhaul election administration, three lawsuits were filed in federal court to challenge it (a multistate coalition filed a fourth lawsuit on Thursday). And unlike the usual dense filings packed with obscure statutory citations, these complaints are startlingly simple. Think “Constitution 101” simple. These lawsuits quote the Constitution directly — no bells, no whistles. We’re talking Article I and II, with a heavy assist from the 10th Amendment. These are the kind of things that I used to teach high school debate students, who could argue them with more clarity than some members of Congress. No offense. (Some offense.) Read Article

National: House passes bill to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections | Rebecca Shabad and Kyle Stewart/NBC

The House passed a bill Thursday that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections in an effort to codify one of President Donald Trump’s executive actions in his second term. Lawmakers approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in a 220-208 vote, with four Democrats — Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — joining every Republican present in support of the measure. Election officials, voting rights advocates and Democrats have warned that the SAVE Act could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who don’t have easy access to identification documents, in addition to women who changed their last names after marriage. Read Article

National: Trump targets Dominion lawyers on same day judge finds Newsmax defamed voting software company | Justin Baragona/The Independent

On the same day a Delaware judge ruled that MAGA cable channel Newsmax had made false and defamatory statements about Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm representing the voting software company. Having already helped Dominion grab a landmark $787.5m settlement from Fox News over its election lies, Susman Godfrey is just the latest firm singled out for punishment by the president for assisting or employing Trump’s political rivals. In an executive order Trump signed at the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president is seeking to revoke the security clearances of the firm’s attorneys, slash federal contracts and limit their access to government buildings, making it extremely difficult for the agency to represent clients with any claims or business with the federal government. Read Article

National: Trump is dismantling election security networks. State officials are alarmed | Bob Ortega/CNN

Misha Pride, then the mayor of South Portland, Maine, was greeting voters early on Election Day when police cars suddenly swarmed outside the city’s community center with lights flashing. “Possible shooting,” the city manager texted Pride. Officers locked down the center. Authorities quickly determined the call to police was a hoax, one of hundreds of threats and cyberattacks last November aimed at disrupting the presidential election – some pushed by partisan zealots, others perpetrated by foreign state actors including Russia and China. Voting at the community center was delayed by only ten minutes. The attacks in Maine, and elsewhere across the US, had minimal impact because of strong preparation and quick work by an information-sharing and analysis network of hundreds of federal, state and local election, cybersecurity and law-enforcement officials. But now key parts of this network, much of it built over the past eight years, are being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a CNN investigation has found – leaving election offices across the country scrambling to protect against future threats. Read Article

‘Hands Off!’ protesters rally against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk | Alaa Elassar, Shania Shelton and Mina Allen/CNN

Over 1,400 “Hands Off!” mass-action protests were held at state capitols, federal buildings, congressional offices, Social Security’s headquarters, parks and city halls throughout the entire country – anywhere “we can make sure they hear us,” organizers said. “Hands Off!” demands “an end to this billionaire power grab.” “Whether you are mobilized by the attacks on our democracy, the slashing of jobs, the invasion of privacy, or the assault on our services – this moment is for you,” the event flyers state. “We are setting out to build a massive, visible, national rejection of this crisis.” Read Article

National: Election officials alarmed as Trump orders probe of former cybersecurity chief | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Trump issued a presidential memorandum Wednesday demanding an investigation by the Justice and Homeland Security departments into his former top cybersecurity official, escalating a campaign of retribution aimed at those who contradicted his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The memo directly names Christopher Krebs, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director; a second memo named Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official during Trump’s first term. Trump’s move shocked many who work in elections. While some current and former officials brushed off the order as political theater, others are taking it far more seriously — for example, hiring an attorney, scrubbing social media, and warning their spouse. The range of reactions reflects both the extraordinary nature of Trump’s use of executive authority to target individuals and a deep uncertainty about how far it might go. Read Article

National: New Trump order targets barcodes on ballots. Why? And what will that mean? | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on regulating elections is striking for the way it asserts broad powers for the executive branch that go far beyond what’s prescribed in the Constitution or sanctioned by courts. Experts expect the order to face legal challenges for that reason. But what’s also striking about the order is how it seeks to dictate some arcane details of the way voting systems work in some of America: Specifically, it bans the machine-readable barcodes or QR codes that are sometimes printed on ballots to help speed up vote counting. According to Verified Voting, an organization focused on election technology, there are 1,954 counties spread across 40 states that use voting machines that print QR or barcodes. Some have only a small number for use only by voters with disabilities (and would therefore not have to get rid of them), while other jurisdictions use them for all voters. Read Article

Trump’s election order creates much confusion before the next federal election in 2026 | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to change how U.S. elections are run is creating uncertainty for state and local election officials and worries about voter confusion before the next federal election, the 2026 midterms. Trump’s order also targets voting systems in a way that could require some counties to change machines without offering additional money to help them pay for it. It directs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent and bipartisan agency created by Congress, to amend voluntary standards for voting systems to prohibit devices that use a barcode or QR code on ballots, with an exception for ones designated for voters with disabilities. While there are voting systems that do not use barcodes, the process for states to replace equipment takes time, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director with Verified Voting. Election offices must get approval to spend for new voting systems, go through a procurement process, wait for manufacturers to deliver the equipment and eventually train workers on how to use it. “It’s hard for any state to procure and obtain and test new voting systems, and if there was some mad rush for many states to replace their voting systems at once, we don’t know how many systems manufacturers could supply,” Lindeman said. Read Article

National: Democratic attorneys general from 19 states sue Trump over his executive order on elections | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Democratic attorneys general in 19 states are together suing Trump over his sweeping executive order on elections, saying that it is an illegal attempt to usurp state control of elections that “would cause imminent and irreparable harm” if the courts don’t intervene. The March 25 order, which Trump wrote would protect the integrity of elections, would require people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote. It would also set a national mail ballot receipt deadline of Election Day, require the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to rewrite voting machine certification standards, withhold federal funds from states that don’t use compliant machines, and require states to share their voter rolls with federal agencies. The order “sows confusion and sets the stage for chaos in Plaintiff States’ election systems, together with the threat of disenfranchisement,” the states wrote in the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Thursday. The attorneys general emphasized that Congress has never required proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and that states have the authority to dictate the deadline for mail ballots. Read Article

National: Democrats Sue to Block Trump Bid to Control Elections | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Democratic Party is suing President Donald Trump over his sweeping executive order last week that attempted to wrest control of elections from the states. Filed Monday by Elias Law Group on behalf of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and four national Democratic committees – the DNC, DGA, DSCC and DCCC – the lawsuit alleges Trump’s order is an illegal attempt to control how elections are administered, a power the Constitution grants to the states and Congress. “In the United States of America, the President does not get to dictate the rules of our elections,” the lawsuit reads. “Although the Order extensively reflects the President’s personal grievances, conspiratorial beliefs, and election denialism, nowhere does it (nor could it) identify any legal authority he possesses to impose such sweeping changes upon how Americans vote.” Read Article

National: Lawmakers to vote on bill targeting noncitizen voting: ‘There would be extensive uncertainty’ | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

The myth that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in US elections wasn’t quashed with Donald Trump’s victory last year. Instead, a Republican bill that would make voting more difficult for millions of eligible US voters based on this false premise is expected to come up for a vote in the coming weeks. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility act, or Save act, is aimed at eliminating rare instances of noncitizens voting in US elections. It could disenfranchise swaths of eligible voters – including people who changed their names in marriage, young voters, naturalized citizens and tribal residents – by requiring onerous identification to vote. The bill comes after the US president signed an executive order on 25 March calling for requiring documentary proof of citizenship to be added to federal voter registration forms. If states don’t comply, they face federal funding cuts. Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, called the order “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the country’s history. Lawsuits are expected – several states have said the order is an unconstitutional federal overreach. Read Article

19 states sue over Trump’s voting executive order | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

Nineteen states are suing over President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order on voting that he signed last week, saying it is “an unconstitutional attempt to seize control of elections” that will create barriers to voting that could disenfranchise millions. The lawsuit, which is the fourth legal challenge so far against the executive order, calls on a federal district court in Massachusetts to block several provisions of the executive order, which the attorneys general argue “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” “We are a democracy — not a monarchy — and this Executive Order is an authoritarian power grab,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “With this Order, this President is prioritizing his own quest for unchecked power above the rights and will of the public.” Read Article

National: Experts urge Congress to reauthorize state and local cyber grant program | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

Cyber experts urged lawmakers on the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection to reauthorize funding for the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program during a Tuesday hearing, calling it an “essential part of the country’s national security strategy.” In recent months, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has questioned the efficacy of the grant program, especially as the Trump administration looks for ways to curb government spending. During her tenure as governor of North Dakota, Noem was one of only two governors in the country to refuse funding for state cybersecurity grants in 2022 and 2023, calling it “wasteful spending.” With the grants on the chopping block, four cybersecurity experts, including Alan Fuller, chief information officer of Utah, argued before the subcommittee that the program allows municipalities with limited resources to implement a whole-of-state cybersecurity policy, strengthens relationships between state and local governments through information-sharing, and is a cost-effective prevention measure against the growing landscape of cybersecurity threats. Read Article

National: The Trump admin cut election security funds. Now officials fear future elections may be ‘less secure.’ | Maggie Miller/POLITICO

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to gut funding and personnel that support state and local election security efforts have left officials deeply concerned about their ability to guarantee physical and cyber security during the voting process. This swift overhauling of funds means that states could lose access to information on emerging threats and election officials may be left without funding for key security services, which could leave certain states and localities more vulnerable to interference efforts than others. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s programs for securing elections — everything from scanning election system networks for safety to sharing data with the public on potential threats — have been put on hold pending a review by the Department of Homeland Security, with no guarantee they will start up again. Read Article

Trump orders an overhaul of how elections are run, inviting a likely legal challenge | Jessica Huseman, Carrie Levine, Jen Fifield, Carter Walker, Alexander Shur, Hayley Harding and Natalia Contreras/Votebeat

President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order Tuesday that would dramatically change the administration of U.S. elections, including requiring people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, but experts and voting rights advocates said they expect the order to face quick legal challenges. The order, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” also would change the certification standards for voting systems, potentially forcing states to rapidly replace millions of dollars in voting equipment, and it would prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterwards, which 18 states and Washington, D.C., currently permit. Voting rights advocates and legal experts said the bulk of the executive order will certainly be challenged in court, as the Constitution grants authority over elections to states and to Congress, not the president. Should it take effect, they say, millions of voters could be disenfranchised. Read Article

Election Security Is at Risk Amid Federal Government Actions | Paul Rosenzweig, Pamela Smith and Adam Ambrogi/Newsweek

American democracy is under attack—from cybercriminals and foreign adversaries seeking to undermine trust in our elections. As members and support staff of The National Task Force on Election Crises, we have seen firsthand how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has helped build a crucial line of defense, protecting our election infrastructure from cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and physical threats. Yet, at a time when these threats are escalating, the federal government is pulling back its support, putting the integrity of our elections at greater risk. CISA was established to help secure critical infrastructure, including elections, against cyber threats and foreign interference. Its work has been instrumental in ensuring election officials on all levels have the resources, intelligence, and technical support needed to combat an increasingly sophisticated landscape of threats. It is deeply troubling that the current administration appears to be dismantling key efforts to combat election threats that we cannot afford to lose. Read Article

National: Trump Is Trying to Gain More Power Over Elections. Is His Effort Legal? | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

President Trump pushed on Tuesday to hand the executive branch unprecedented influence over how federal elections are run, signing a far-reaching and legally dubious order to change U.S. voting rules. The executive order, which seeks to require proof of citizenship to register to vote as well as the return of all mail ballots by Election Day, is an attempt to upend centuries of settled election law and federal-state relations. The Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections. Instead, it gives states the power to set the “times, places and manner” of elections, leaving them to decide the rules, oversee voting and try to prevent fraud. Congress can also pass election laws or override state legislation, as it did with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Read Article

National: Trump’s executive order on elections is far-reaching. But will it actually stick? | Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking broad changes to how elections are run in the U.S. is vast in scope and holds the potential to reorder the voting landscape across the country, even as it faces almost certain litigation. He wants to require voters to show proof that they are U.S. citizens before they can register for federal elections, count only mail or absentee ballots received by Election Day, set new rules for voting equipment and prohibit non-U.S. citizens from being able to donate in certain elections. A basic question underlying the sweeping actions he signed Tuesday: Can he do it, given that the Constitution gives wide leeway to the states to develop their own election procedures? Read Article

National: Trump’s voting rights order targets anybody who’s ‘not white,’ advocates say | Trevor Hughes Deborah Barfield Berry/USA Today