National

President Donald Trump fired all three remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Thursday, abruptly disabling the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration at a moment when Trump has sought to reshape federal voting rules. The two Democratic commissioners, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, were notified by email. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email said. It was signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President. The third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign, according to three sources within the agency. McCormick declined to comment when reached by phone. The agency’s fourth commissioner, Republican Donald Palmer, voluntarily departed the agency earlier this year to join the Heritage Foundation. Read Article

National: Trump administration ramps up pressure on state election officials | Geoff ulvihill and Marc Levy/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening to withhold some federal funding from states that don’t make changes to voting practices and is warning state election officials that they face arrest if they don’t remove noncitizens from voter rolls. Letters to states and grant application details are the latest in a line of actions by Trump’s administration to shape details of running elections that have long been the job of states. Courts have largely rejected the administration’s previous efforts, which reflect untrue claims about widespread voting fraud and come less than four months ahead of crucial midterm elections where Democrats seek to take control of one or both chambers of Congress and check Trump’s power. “The overall point is that Trump is trying to use whatever levers of power and persuasive power that he might have to try to interfere with how states and localities are going to conduct the 2026 election,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “Some of this is aimed at changing how the rules are conducted. Some of it appears to be aimed at undermining voter confidence in the integrity of the election process.” Read Article

National: Justice Department Threatens Top Election Officials Over Noncitizen Voting | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

The Justice Department sent letters to at least 10 states on Tuesday threatening criminal prosecution of top election officials if ballots cast by noncitizens were counted in upcoming elections. The letters arrived in the midst of an ongoing campaign by President Trump and his allies to tighten election rules to prevent a problem that doesn’t exist: widespread noncitizen voting in American elections. The effort has, however, continued to sow doubt and distrust in the electoral process, most notably among the president’s base of supporters. And his proposals could have the effect of making it more difficult for eligible voters to cast their ballots — an outcome that many voting-right activists say is the president’s real goal. The letters sent on Tuesday came from Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department’s civil rights division. They are largely identical, according to multiple copies obtained by The New York Times. The seven-page letters detail a host of federal election laws that prohibit noncitizens from voting in elections — laws that have been clear for decades. Read Article

National: States will shape America’s future as nation confronts a pivotal choice | Jonathan Shorman and Kevin Hardy/News From The States

A quarter millennium after its founding, the United States faces a stark choice that will define its future. In the years ahead, the country can continue to follow the path blazed by President Donald Trump, who is attempting to bring states under the authority of a more powerful federal government led by him. Or it can move in a different direction, one where states become a heavier counterweight to an aggressive White House and rebalance the relationship between the states and the federal government. The United States’ foundations are undergoing a significant stress test, experts say, raising questions about whether a radical reconception of the nation lies ahead. The federalism that has helped bind the states — and therefore, the nation — together is fraying, pulled apart by a president who demonstrates little regard for many of the nation’s core principles. Read Article

National: Federal law that protects voters from last-minute removal is at the center of Trump’s anti-voting war | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

If the Supreme Court weakens the quiet period, that protection could be replaced by a dangerous rule under which last-minute purges are barred only when states call them purges. The 90-day quiet period exists because elections require stability, not chaos, in the run-up to Election Day. Congress recognized that if eligible voters are swept up in a large removal program shortly before an election, many won’t have enough time to discover the mistake and get it corrected,” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the pro-voting nonprofit Verified Voting, told Democracy Docket. “Removing the 90-day buffer takes away the only structural safeguard between a bad data match and eligible voters’ ability to participate. That doesn’t mean voter registration lists stop being maintained. Election officials update them year-round, and individualized changes still happen during the quiet period — whether that’s processing a voter’s own request to cancel their registration, recording a death, or making other routine corrections permitted under state and federal law,” Smith said. “What the quiet period restricts is a systematic effort to remove a broad class of voters based on shared criteria. Calling a large-scale removal effort ‘individualized’ doesn’t change how it functions if the same criteria are being applied across thousands of records. County election officials already routinely review and maintain voter registrations on an individual basis throughout the year,” Smith added. “Labeling a bulk removal program as a case-by-case review just before an election doesn’t change its substance. Doing so would still undermine the period’s purpose and risk disenfranchising those who have every right to cast their ballot.” Explainer: Federal law that protects voters from last-minute removal is at the center of Trump’s anti-voting war - Democracy Docket

National: Threat of Foreign Influence on U.S. Elections Remain as Federal Defenses Recede | Kate Lurie and Zarine Kharazian/Brennan Center for Justice

Foreign influence is a persistent threat to U.S. elections, and three countries — China, Iran, and Russia — are poised to attempt to influence the 2026 midterms. Though their behavior is not new, this year, their access to sophisticated artificial intelligence tools and the lack of federal governmental pushback against them will likely require additional diligence from voters to ensure that they have accurate information. The Trump administration has degraded the federal infrastructure for detecting and countering foreign election threats, leaving states to prepare for these threats largely on their own for the first time since 2016. The rapid advances in artificial intelligence tools have increased both the capabilities of existing actors and made the influence campaigns more believable. Further, domestic actors, including the Trump administration, are using the real threat of foreign influence — mixed with promotion of unsubstantiated rumors of foreign interference, meaning the technical targeting of voting machines or other hardware — to advance their political goals. Read Article

National: US Postal Service cannot carry out Trump order on mail ballot delivery, judge rules | Tierney Sneed/CNN

A federal judge blocked the US Postal Service from carrying out its plan for President Donald Trump’s mail ballot executive order, finding that the proposal violated a settlement in a 2020 lawsuit against the agency. Trump had directed USPS to only transmit ballots for states that submit to the agency lists of their mail-in voters and that meet other requirements for their mail voting programs. Previously, a judge in Boston had halted the Postal Service from implementing the order for two-dozen states that challenged it in court. But the new ruling from US District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who sits in Washington DC, blocks the directives nationwide. If courts let Trump’s order from March 2026 stand, it would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections — and could put even more voter data in the hands of Trump officials searching for supposed election fraud. Read Article

National: Trump Is Getting Tired of Losing Election Cases | Toluse Olorunnipa/The Atlantic

Earlier this year, President Trump claimed a new area of expertise: election law. “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject,” Trump wrote on social media, and found an “irrefutable one” that he would soon present. He suggested that it would allow him to bypass Congress and gain approval from the courts to impose his will on the nation’s locally run election system, including requiring voters to show identification while casting ballots in the upcoming midterms. It was a heady time for a man who obsesses over voting policy and is seeking to prove that the 2020 election was stolen out from under him. Two weeks before Trump claimed in his February 13 post to have broken new legal ground, the FBI had conducted a raid of an election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia. Officials made off with more than 650 boxes of ballots as part of a criminal investigation stemming from Trump’s 2020 defeat, an unprecedented action that the president hailed as a major advance for his unsubstantiated claim that the contest was riddled with fraud. The House of Representatives had just passed the SAVE America Act, a bill that would force people to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote and to show photo identification when casting a ballot. Read Article

National: Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s bid to restrict mail-in voting | George Chidi/The Guardian

The Trump administration’s plan to deny mail-in ballots to states that would not give their voter rolls to federal officials was blocked on Thursday morning by a federal judge in Boston. US district judge Indira ⁠Talwani ruled that the provisions of an executive order issued by Donald Trump on 31 March requiring the postal service to require the use of a barcode tracking system for ballot envelopes tied to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data was unconstitutional. It comes amid a broader drive by the president and his officials to reshape rules and regulations around voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump is pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would impose new ID requirements on voters and curtail mail-in voting. Voting rights groups, joined by 23 states and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to stop the proposed rule, arguing that the US constitution provides no authority for the president to issue orders governing the administration of elections. Read Article

National: Court rules SAVE database illegal, orders it dismantled | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

A federal court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s national voter database violates federal privacy laws, interferes with Americans’ right to vote, and must be dismantled. In the ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District Court of Washington D.C. wrote that records reviewed by the court show federal agencies knew that the SAVE voter database violated federal laws like the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, but were “scrambling” to comply with President Trump’s executive order to create a system for mass voter verification. That pressure resulted in agencies “haphazardly” combining and repurposing the personal information of millions of Americans from different government databases, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable. Read Article

National: White House delays release of US voting machine study as midterms near | Erin Blanco, Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay/Reuters

White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the nation's voting machines ahead of the November midterms, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting ‌machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, the sources said. It does not say the vulnerabilities have led to votes flipping, but examines security gaps in how the machines are used during U.S. elections. Some White House officials have argued the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. Others have said they do not believe the report goes far enough in supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, the three sources said. Some Democrats said privately they worried Gabbard’s probe into voting machines would be used by the administration to push states to use paper ballots. Several court cases filed by Trump's lawyers failed to prove voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race. Read Article

National: Federal judge bars Trump from proof of citizenship requirement to vote | Julie Carr Smyth and Michael Casey/Associated Press

A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban. Casper rejected the Republican administration’s argument that the lawsuit to block the changes brought by Democratic state attorneys general was premature because the rules had yet to be put in place. Instead, she agreed that the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to regulate elections, and that Trump’s requirements violated the separation of powers. Read Article

National: Trump admin plans to use DHS funds to force states election changes | Gabe Cohen and Tierney Sneed/CNN

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states unless they adopt a sweeping set of election changes, according to multiple sources and internal documents obtained by CNN. The move is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to root out alleged voter fraud — despite studies showing it’s far rarer than he claims — and exert more federal influence over how elections are run. It comes as multiple states have passed laws that seek to prevent the federal government from interfering with elections. Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database. Read Article

National: Democratic states scramble to prevent potential Trump administration interference in their elections | Fredreka Schouten/CNN

Democratic-led states are racing to safeguard November’s midterm elections against potential interference from the Trump administration and its allies, passing new laws that restrict the presence of law enforcement at polling places or seek to thwart the federal government’s efforts to obtain sensitive election material. Five states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington state — have recently enacted legislation to shield their elections from federal actions, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election-related legislation, and CNN’s research. Sponsors say they are responding to President Donald Trump’s continued rhetoric about fraud in voting and the administration’s increasingly aggressive moves to reshape how voting is conducted. The US Constitution gives states the primary task of running elections and Congress the power to set the ground rules for federal contests. Read Article

National: The Election System Wasn’t Built for This | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Atlantic

Not so long ago, the Republicans who ran elections in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds—Maricopa County, Arizona—largely got along. There were egos and quibbles, sure. But in the face of unyielding attacks on elections led by President Trump, the recorder and board of supervisors—which together split election duties—resolved conflicts without blowing up a delicate system built on trust and cooperation. Today’s recorder and board, a mostly new cast chosen by voters in 2024, are different. They’re locked in an all-out war over the machinery, money, and operations that make the democratic process possible. Both sides agree that the standoff threatens their ability to carry out November’s midterm elections free of complications for the county’s 2.6 million voters, more than half the state’s total. The recorder’s side describes the situation in dire terms, writing to a judge that “the legal validity of the election results themselves” is at risk. The recorder’s critics fear that the fight could be used as pretext to cancel results MAGA doesn’t like in elections that could tip the balance in Congress. Read Article

Opinion: These 19 election deniers and vote suppressors are on the ballot in the midterms. We should be worried | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

From Maine down to Texas, and from North Carolina out to Arizona — hundreds of Republican election deniers and vote suppressors will be on the ballot this fall. Many are running for pivotal state-level roles like governor or secretary of state that wield enormous power to undermine a fair election. Others are running for seats in the U.S. House or Senate, from which they could help drive anti-voting policies that threaten to disenfranchise millions of voters. A tally by the pro-democracy group States United Action found that there are 132 election deniers across 35 states running for statewide or federal office this year. Read Article

National: Experts alarmed as Trump launches broad-front attack on US voting rights | Peter Stone/The Guardian

The Trump administration is waging war on voting rights using justice department lawsuits, FBI investigations and an executive order to limit voting by mail, moves mirroring the US president’s false claims he lost the 2020 election due to voting fraud, say election experts and ex-officials. Since Donald Trump began his second term, numerous 2020 election denialists have been installed in key agencies such as the Department of Justice, the FBI and elsewhere to pursue widely discredited claims of fraud, which can intimidate election workers and voters in swing states that Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020. The justice department has also filed lawsuits seeking sensitive voter data from 30 states – even though, by law, states control elections – and the FBI has launched investigations into debunked allegations of voting fraud in Georgia, Wisconsin and a few other swing states that Trump lost in 2020. Trump in late March this year issued an executive order sharply tightening mail-in voting rules, which Trump has long claimed without evidence contribute to fraud. The order gives the United States Postal Service unprecedented powers to issue new rules making voting by mail harder. Read Article

National: Local election officials reel over ‘logistical nightmare’ of Trump’s vote-by-mail order | Jonathan Shorman/News From The States

As election officials across the country steel themselves for the midterm elections in less than five months, President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail threatens to upend their preparations. The executive order instructs the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t provide lists of voters or meet other requirements. It has created a sense of deep uncertainty and concern among election officials as they consider how to comply, according to a review of court documents and interviews with election officials and experts on election administration. The March 31 executive order, and a proposed Postal Service rule published June 2 that would put the order’s requirements into effect, raise serious logistical and procedural challenges for those running elections, they say. Rural areas with limited resources are especially at risk, but jurisdictions of all sizes could be forced to scramble. The executive order is the latest step taken by Trump to assert control over state-run elections, along with the stalled SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. The Justice Department, under Trump’s control, is also trying to obtain state voter rolls. Read Article

National: Voting officials fear DHS may actually be a threat to elections this year | Miles Parks/NPR

Gary Berntsen is convinced Venezuela stole the 2020 U.S. election. That myth has been debunked numerous times, including as part of Fox News' 2023 $787 million settlement with voting machine company Dominion, but Berntsen, a former CIA operative, has been pushing it for years. "One of the things that we learned is there's 14 different technical ways that you can steal an election," Berntsen explained in an interview in the fall with conservative podcaster Lara Logan. But ahead of the 2024 election, Berntsen says he couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Not the FBI. Not the media. Finally, he went to Congress, where he says he was similarly rebuffed by almost everyone, including Republicans. Except one. "One politician in America was not afraid," Berntsen told Logan. "It was Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma." Allies of Berntsen say Mullin — then a U.S. senator, now the head of the Department of Homeland Security — brokered a meeting at Mar-a-Lago so Berntsen could brief President Trump's team on conspiracy theories about Venezuelan interference in elections. That is just one time of many that Mullin has gone to bat for election denial. DHS could be a threat to midterm elections this year : NPR

National: Trump Pulls Back Intelligence Pick to Pressure Congress on Elections Bill | Michael Gold and Dustin Volz/The New York Times

President Trump said on Wednesday that he was pulling back his own nominee to be the nation’s top intelligence official as he again tried to pressure Congress to pass a strict voter identification law that does not have enough support among Republicans to advance. Mr. Trump announced last week that he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to be the director of national intelligence, after senators in both parties condemned his earlier decision to install Bill Pulte, a loyalist and his top housing official, to the post. Senate leaders had sought to quickly confirm Mr. Clayton, hoping to clear the way for a bipartisan agreement to renew a surveillance law that expired last week. The bill to extend it collapsed amid the furor over Mr. Pulte, who has no national security experience and drew withering bipartisan criticism. And some Democrats had indicated they might be willing to fast-track his confirmation, eager to block Mr. Pulte. Read Article

National: Challenges in Rural Election Administration ‘Exacerbated’ in Runoff Elections | Bridget Goodman/The Daily Yonder

Runoff elections — including Tuesday’s in Alabama and Georgia — stress existing fragilities in rural election administration. “Challenges are exacerbated by the short timeline of a runoff,” said Cameron Wimpy, political science professor and director of the Institute for Rural Initiatives at Arkansas State University. “And then other challenges become exacerbated by the fact that you’re just having to do a whole election again.” More than two-thirds of American elections happen in rural areas, according to Wimpy. Although elections are administered – and often, largely financed – locally, counties must meet state standards. “A lot of things in election administration have to happen the same, whether you’re in a small place or a large place, an urban place or a rural place,” Wimpy said. “Voting machines have to be tested, boxes have to be checked, laws have to be followed, but that’s often being done with less people.” There are 10 states with runoff elections: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas. Each state has unique state laws governing how and when those elections occur. Read Article

National: Watch Out for False Voter Fraud Claims Fueled by SAVE Program | Jasleen Singh/Brennan Center for Justice

This year, observers should be wary of voter fraud claims made by government officials and private groups, even if those claims cite federal government data. Many such false or misleading claims promoted over the past year have relied primarily on the flawed Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which this article addresses in detail. The second Trump administration has been engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine elections. Part of that involves collecting state voter files and using federal data sources to lend pseudolegitimacy to false claims of widespread fraud. While there may be valid ways to use federal data to support election officials’ efforts to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date, there are notable shortcomings in such data, and it may be misused to spread misinformation. To properly assess any claim of voter fraud based on federal data, it is important to understand the flaws in the data, common analytical pitfalls, and the ways faulty data may be exploited to disenfranchise eligible voters and erode confidence in elections. Read Article

National: Republicans are trying to impose Trump’s voting restrictions at the local level | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Shasta County, California, recently approved one of the most sweeping local attacks on voting since 2020: a measure that would end most mail-in and early voting, require strict photo ID to register and vote, force election officials to hand count ballots and disconnect the county from California’s statewide voter registration system. The initiative, known as Measure B, passed this month with 56% of the vote in the rural Northern California county, where President Donald Trump received 67% of the vote in 2024. California is suing to block the measure, warning that Shasta County is trying to carve itself out of statewide election protections that apply to all 58 counties. “No city or county gets to unilaterally rewrite our election rules,” Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said in a statement. But Shasta is not an isolated case. Read Article

Trump Administration Pushes Limits of Election Investigations | Devlin Barrett/The New York Times

The administration is “throwing everything against the wall that they can find, and nothing is sticking,” said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer at the Justice Department who is now the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “Almost all of their work is going back over conspiracy theorists’ allegations that were debunked five years ago,” he added. “They are running out of tools in their toolbox. "Even though the White House has no formal or legal role in administering elections, Mr. Trump installed Kurt Olsen, who tried to help overturn his election loss in 2020, to oversee election integrity and security. Mr. Olsen has since moved to the Justice Department, working in a U.S. attorney office’s in Florida that is investigating what Trump supporters call a “grand conspiracy” against him. Despite the Trump administration’s demands for voter roll data, at least eight federal district judges have turned the administration away. Half of those judges were appointed by Mr. Trump. The administration is appealing the decisions. “I don’t know that the Department of Justice has ever had a zero-for-eight streak,” Mr. Becker said, adding that Mr. Essayli’s comments were likely to make it even harder for a judge to rule in the administration’s favor. Read Article

National: Postal Service won’t deliver mail ballots for states that don’t hand over voter lists, under plan for Trump directive | Tierney Sneed, Jeremy Herb and Gabe Cohen/CNN

State election officials could soon face a stark choice: Hand over voter lists to the Trump administration or risk losing Postal Service delivery for mail-in ballots. That dilemma stems from newly proposed USPS rules that seek to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed this spring to crack down on mail-in voting. If courts let the order stand, it would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections — and could put even more voter data in the hands of Trump officials searching for supposed election fraud. The proposed rules lay out new conditions that states would have to meet to send ballots through the mail, including giving the agency lists of all voters set to receive mail ballots. Read Article

National: Justice Department officials dance around Trump’s unsupported claims of California election fraud | Tierney Sneed, Paula Reid and Hannah Rabinowitz/CNN

When President Donald Trump made claims of Democratic vote-rigging in the Los Angeles election, his top appointed prosecutor in the city took to the cameras to validate those beliefs while hinting his office may never be able prove that kind of grand conspiracy. The Justice Department has launched no new criminal cases connected to how the city administered last week’s contest, according to a source familiar with the matter, even as the president said on social media last week that such an investigation was underway. The playbook is a familiar one — both for Trump, who faced criminal charges for his schemes to overturn the 2020 election, and now for the Justice Department leaders whose standing in the administration depends on keeping the president happy. They have seized on long-standing gripes about how long it takes California officials to report election results. But without providing evidence of a sweeping plot to steal elections from Republicans, DOJ officials are instead hyping singular cases they have prosecuted dealing with illegal voter registration or single-digit noncitizen voting, while accusing Democrats of getting in the way of their investigations. Read Article

National: States step into voting rights void left by federal rulings | News From The States