National

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted. Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include “a barcode or quick-response code.” Those few technical words could have a big impact. Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states. Three of them — Georgia, South Carolina and Delaware — use the machines statewide. “I think the problem is super exaggerated,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that focuses on election technology and favors ending the use of QR and barcodes said “In the long run, it would be nice if vendors moved away from encoding, but there’s already evidence of them doing that.” Read Article

National: Trump Has Taken a Renewed Interest in the Conspirators Who Infiltrated 2020 Voting Machines | Susan Greenhalgh/Slate

When President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, he used the power of the presidency to protect convicted criminals whom he incited to stop the certification of his electoral defeat in 2020 and the peaceful transfer of power. Recently, in a blunt and ham-fisted attempt to again undermine the rule of law, he used his social media bullhorn to call for the release of Tina Peters. The former Colorado county clerk was last year convicted of crimes committed in 2021 in order to facilitate unauthorized access to Colorado’s voting system. This may be regarded as simply another instance of Trump’s immoral support for those who tried to help him steal an election. But the scheme Peters was involved in—to improperly access voting systems and make unauthorized copies of sensitive voting system software—has serious, ongoing implications for election security. Read Article

National: Attorneys general urge Congress to reject ‘irresponsible’ state AI law moratorium | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

A letter signed by a group of 40 state attorneys general on Friday called on Congress to reject an “irresponsible” federal measure that would bar states from enforcing their own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems for the next 10 years. The letter from the National Association of Attorneys General said the “broad” state AI moratorium measure rolled into the federal budget reconciliation bill would be “sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI.” The AGs, who addressed the letter to majority and minority leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, said the moratorium would disrupt hundreds of measures being both considered by state legislatures and those that have already passed in states led by Republicans and Democrats. Read Article

National: Justice Department changes to civil rights division spark mass exodus of attorneys | Ryan Lucas/NPR

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is in upheaval amid a mass exodus of attorneys as the Trump administration moves to radically reshape the division, shelving its traditional mission and replacing it with one focused on enforcing the president’s executive orders. Some 250 attorneys — or around 70% of the division’s lawyers — have left or will have left the department in the time between President Trump’s inauguration and the end of May, according to current and former officials. It marks a dramatic turn for the storied division, which was created during the civil rights movement and the push to end racial segregation. For almost 70 years, it has sought to combat discrimination and to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans in everything from voting and housing to employment, education and policing. Read Article

National: Political tension and fears of violence may have changed voter turnout in 2024 | Grace Panetta/The 19th

Women and gender-nonconforming people were more likely than men to fear violence and harassment while voting in the 2024 election, and those who expressed concerns about safety were more likely not to vote at all, new research shows. The study, released Monday and shared first with The 19th, was conducted by States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on promoting fair and secure elections and upholding the rule of law. “Tens of millions of Americans ultimately cast their ballots in 2024 without incident,” the report said. “But voting was not straightforward and safe for all Americans. Many were harassed, and a limited number were subjected to physical violence.” Read Article

Opinion | How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy? | Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt/The New York Times

Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela. The descent into competitive authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarms. Because governments attack their rivals through nominally legal means like defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations, citizens are often slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule. More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy. Read Article

National: State and local election officials plead with Congress for election security funding | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

As the Trump administration takes a hatchet to the federal government’s election security work and attempts to place conditions on funding to states, state and local election officials are pleading with lawmakers to provide robust support they say is crucial to keeping American elections secure. In a letter sent to leaders on the House and Senate Appropriations committees this week, 150 active and retired officials from across the country asked Congress to set aside $400 million next fiscal year for election security grant funding under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). “The federal government shares with state and local governments the responsibility to overcome funding shortfalls in the most essential charge our government carries: to ensure safe, secure, and effective elections,” the officials wrote. “Yet, Congress has recently provided inconsistent and insufficient funding to meet these requirements.” Read Article

National: DOJ Voting Section Has Just Three Lawyers Left, Watchdog Estimates | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

The voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice has only three attorneys left on staff, according to an estimate provided by a group working to support the department’s remaining staff. It’s a severe reduction in the voting section since the start of the Trump administration in January, when it had an estimated 30 attorneys assigned to enforce voting rights laws. According to the group, Justice Connection, staff attorneys in the voting section either resigned as part of the deferred resignation program, or were reassigned to another department in the DOJ. Justice Connection said it obtained its estimate from employees within the civil rights division, of which the voting section is a part. Read Article

National: Federal appeals court deals major blow to Voting Rights Act | Tierney Sneed/CNN

A federal appeals court on Wednesday shut down the ability of private individuals to bring Voting Rights Act lawsuits challenging election policies that allegedly discriminate based on race in several states, a major blow to the civil rights law that has long been under conservative attack. The ruling, which leaves enforcement of the VRA’s key provision to the US attorney general, comes as the Trump Justice Department is gutting its civil rights division and pivoting away from the traditional voting rights work. The DOJ, for instance, dropped major lawsuits previously brought against Texas and Georgia. The new ruling from the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals covers the seven midwestern states covered in the St. Louis-based Circuit. The opinion means that in those states, only the Justice Department can bring lawsuits enforcing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which was passed by Congress in 1965 to address racial discrimination in election policies. Read Article

National: DHS won’t tell Congress how many people it’s cut from CISA | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

The Department of Homeland Security won’t tell Congress how many employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency it has fired or pushed to leave, a top congressional Democrat said Wednesday. “You’ve overseen mass reductions in the workforce at CISA and” the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, told DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a hearing of the panel. “Despite repeated requests from this committee on how many people have been fired or have been bullied into quitting … DHS has refused to share that information. “It should worry every American that we do not know how many people are left at FEMA to respond to disasters and how many cyber defenders still work at CISA as China and other adversaries attack our systems every day,” he continued. Read Article

National: Trump Administration Cancels Scores of Grants to Study Online Misinformation | Steven Lee Myers/The New York Times

The Trump administration has sharply expanded its campaign against experts who track misinformation and other harmful content online, abruptly canceling scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country. The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media. Officials at the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation contend that the research has resulted in the censorship of conservative Americans online, though there is no evidence any of the studies resulted in that. Read Article

National: Advocacy groups ‘concerned’ about federal proposal to override state AI regulations | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

A provision included in a House committee budget bill this week would prohibit states from enforcing their own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems over the next decade. The provision, which is included in a broader, budget reconciliation bill pushed ahead by House Republicans of the Energy and Commerce Committee and advanced by a vote on Wednesday, would prohibit states and local governments cities from passing new laws or enforcing existing laws that regulate AI models or systems, until 2035. If enacted, the bill would put a moratorium on laws such as Colorado’s landmark comprehensive AI legislation, and California’s laws addressing harms caused by AI deepfakes. Many state AI laws are aimed at promoting transparency, protecting creative rights and mitigating harms that could be caused by invasions of privacy. Read Article

Opinion: The End of Rule of Law in America | J. Michael Luttig/The Atlantic

Thus far, Trump’s presidency has been a reign of lawless aggression by a tyrannical wannabe king, a rampage of presidential lawlessness in which Trump has proudly wielded the powers of the office and the federal government to persecute his enemies, while at the same time pardoning, glorifying, and favoring his political allies and friends—among them those who attacked the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection that Trump fomented on January 6, 2021. The president’s utter contempt for the Constitution and laws of the United States has been on spectacular display since Inauguration Day. For the almost 250 years since the founding of this nation, America has been the beacon of freedom to the world because of its democracy and rule of law. Our system of checks and balances has been strained before, but democracy—government by the people—and the rule of law have always won the day. Until now, that is. America will never again be that same beacon to the world, because the president of the United States has subverted America’s democracy and corrupted its rule of law. Read Article

National: Department of Justice Won’t Appeal Judge’s Order Against Trump’s Anti-Voting Decree | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Department of Justice (DOJ) does not plan to appeal a judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump from adding a proof of citizenship requirement on a federal registration form, according to a court filing made Monday by plaintiffs in the case. A federal judge last month issued a preliminary injunction against portions of the anti-voting executive order Trump issued earlier this year. The judge in part halted the president’s order that the Election Assistance Commission require eligible voters to show proof of citizenship if they attempt to register or update registration information using the National Mail Voter Registration Form. In a filing Monday, parties challenging Trump’s order said the Justice Department signaled that they will not appeal the judge’s order and agreed to allow the lawsuit to head to summary judgment. Read Article

Opinion: America Needs More Judges Like Judge Myers | Richard L. Hasen/The Atlantic

When judges act as partisan hacks, it is important to condemn their conduct. Last month, four Republican justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court blessed the antidemocratic attempt by the fellow Republican judge Jefferson Griffin to subvert the outcome of the November 2024 election for a seat on that same court by throwing out ballots of some North Carolina voters who had followed all the rules. But just as important is lauding the Republican judges who stand up against election subversion, including the Trump-appointed federal district-court judge Richard E. Myers, who ruled earlier this week that Griffin’s gambit violated the U.S. Constitution. Today, just two days after that decision, Griffin conceded defeat to Justice Allison Riggs. If the United States is going to resist attacks on free and fair elections, principled judges on the right remain indispensable. Read Article

National: Trump proposes closing CISA disinformation offices | Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill

President Trump proposed shuttering the disinformation offices and programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alleging in the White House budget request that they contributed to the censorship of the president and his supporters. CISA, formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration, is tasked with securing the nation’s infrastructure, including election voting systems. It is housed under the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal calls for slashing the agency’s budget by about $491 million. This would be a nearly 16 percent reduction in funding from what the agency received last year. It currently has a budget of about $3 billion. Read Article

National: Justice Department will prioritize Trump’s elections order, memo says | Nicholas Riccardi/Associated Press

The Justice Department unit that ensures compliance with voting rights laws will switch its focus to investigating voter fraud and ensuring elections are not marred by “suspicion,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. The new mission statement for the voting section makes a passing reference to the historic Voting Rights Act, but no mention of typical enforcement of the provision through protecting people’s right to cast ballots or ensuring that lines for legislative maps do not divide voters by race. Instead, it redefines the unit’s mission around conspiracy theories pushed by Republican President Donald Trump to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s attorney general at the time, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in that election. Repeated recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss, including some led by Republicans, affirmed Biden’s win and found the election was run properly. Trump and his supporters also lost dozens of court cases trying to overturn the election results. Read Article

National: States Are Tightening Rules for Getting Citizen-Led Proposals on the Ballot | Emily Cochrane/The New York Times

After a wave of successful citizen-led efforts to expand abortion rights via ballot measures, some state legislatures are making it harder for members of the public to put such measures before voters. Florida, which late last week became the latest state to enact stricter rules around the process, is already facing a lawsuit over whether imposing more restrictions on the ballot initiative process is constitutional. The suit was brought by a group, Florida Decides Healthcare, that is trying to get a proposal on next year’s ballot to expand Medicaid in the state. The group, which faces a February deadline to collect nearly 900,000 signatures from residents supportive of the plan, said that the new law was making signature-gatherers nervous. Read Article

National: House appropriators have reservations — or worse — about proposed CISA cuts | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

May 8, 2025

House appropriators on Tuesday challenged proposed budget cuts for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with Democrats saying the Trump administration was disturbingly moving money away from the agency and a key Republican saying he needed to see justifications for the reductions. The Trump administration has proposed cutting CISA funding by $491 million, and some members of a House Appropriations subcommittee raised doubts about that idea during testimony from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Specific details for those budget cuts weren’t released in the so-called “skinny budget” last week. Homeland Security subcommittee chair Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said that at a time when leading Hill voices and others are saying China is getting the better of the United States in cyberspace and as CISA personnel cuts are already underway, appropriators need more information on the budget proposal. Read Article

National: As of Today, the FEC Can’t Enforce Campaign Finance Laws — and That’s Only One of Its Problems | Daniel I. Weiner/Brennan Center for Justice

Starting today, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission won’t be able to do its job. That’s because the independent agency, which oversees money in campaigns for federal office, will no longer have the minimum four required members to do most business. The loss of quorum is due to the resignation of a Republican appointee, coupled with President Trump’s unprecedented move in February to fire a Democratic appointee. Such a shortfall has only happened three other times in the FEC’s 50-year history, including twice during Trump’s first term. Read Article

National: Trump’s justice department appointees remove leadership of voting unit | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Donald Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice have removed all of the senior civil servants working as managers in the department’s voting section and directed attorneys to dismiss all active cases, according to people familiar with the matter, part of a broader attack on the department’s civil rights division. The moves come less than a month after Trump ally Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed to lead the civil rights division, created in 1957 and referred to as the “crown jewel” of the justice department. In an unusual move, Dhillon sent out new “mission statements” to the department’s sections that made it clear the civil rights division was shifting its focus from protecting the civil rights of marginalized people to supporting Trump’s priorities. Read Article

National: People should be ‘outraged’ by efforts to shrink federal cyber teams, former CISA head says | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Chris Krebs, the former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security director who defied President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in 2020 and was subsequently fired, said on Monday that the cybersecurity community should be outraged at changes the second Trump administration is making to cybersecurity staff in the federal government. “Cybersecurity is national security. We all know that, right? That’s why we’re here,” he said while speaking to a room of security practitioners on a panel at the RSAC Conference in San Francisco. “That’s why we get up every morning and do our jobs. We are protecting everyone out there. And right now, to see what’s happening to the cybersecurity community inside the federal government, we should be outraged, absolutely outraged,” he added, which was met with applause across the room. Read Article

National: 100 days in, Trump’s moves to overhaul election law get pushback from courts, Democrats | Niels Lesniewski/Roll Call

On March 25, the president issued an executive order outlining new federal actions, including making available Social Security database information for states to verify voter eligibility and directing Attorney General Pamela Bondi to “take appropriate action” against states that “fail to comply with the list maintenance requirements of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.” But as with many of the president’s moves, federal court challenges and constitutional questions abound. On April 25, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., put on hold key provisions of Trump’s order, including a directive to the Election Assistance Commission to make changes to the national mail voter registration form to require proof of citizenship. “The President is free to state his views about what policies he believes that Congress, the EAC, or other federal agencies should consider or adopt,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “But, in this case, the President has done much more than state his views: He has issued an ‘Order’ directing that an independent commission ‘shall’ act to ‘require’ changes to an important document, the contents of which Congress has tightly regulated.” Read Article

National: Fox’s false claims about 2020 race was an audience strategy, Smartmatic says | Sarah Ellison and Scott Nover/The Washington Post

Smartmatic accused Fox News in a court filing Wednesday of embracing false claims that the voting technology company had helped steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden only after the network endured an audience backlash for calling the race in Arizona for Biden. Smartmatic, which makes voting machines and election management systems, has been engaged in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., since 2021. The lawsuit stems from on-air comments that Fox News hosts and guests made around the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Smartmatic has alleged that Fox News “decimated” the company’s business and marred its reputation with its false claims of election interference. Read Article

National: Cyber grant uncertainty puts state programs in limbo, GAO report shows | Colin Wood/StateScoop

Some state and local government agencies are unsure how they will continue to fund their cybersecurity initiatives in absence of federal support, according to a report published Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office. Over the past year, the office examined the $1 billion, 4-year State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, by randomly sampling state and territorial government agencies that have received funding. It found that most agencies had positive things to say about the program, and some agency representatives selected for interviews by the federal office reported concerns with how they’ll continue their cybersecurity initiatives after the program’s one-time funding runs out, or if it’s prematurely ended. The findings mirror what many technology officials and industry analysts have been saying during the first three months of the Trump administration, which has slashed hundreds of positions at the Department of Homeland Security and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, with plans to cut hundreds more. Read Article

National: Trump’s Executive Order on Proof of Citizenship for Elections Is Partly Blocked by Judge | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

A federal judge blocked part of an expansive executive order signed last month seeking to overhaul election laws, writing on Thursday that President Trump did not have the authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for all voters. “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states — not the president — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington. She pointed to federal voting legislation being considered in Congress, adding that the president could not “short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.” But the judge did not block another key part of the executive order that sought to force a deadline for mail ballots in federal elections by withholding federal funding from states that failed to comply with the deadline. She found that the Democrats who brought the legal challenge did not have standing to do so. The legal concerns with this provision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote, are being considered in other cases brought by state attorneys general. Read Article

A little-known federal agency is at the center of Trump’s executive order to overhaul US elections | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

Florida’s “hanging chads” ballot controversy riveted the nation during the 2000 presidential contest and later prompted Congress to create an independent commission to help states update their voting equipment. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has operated in relative anonymity since, but is now central to President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul elections. One of the commission’s boards will meet Thursday in North Carolina, the first commission-related meeting since the directives were announced. Among other things, Trump directed the agency to update the national voter registration form to add a proof of citizenship requirement. But whether the 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: Trump is shifting cybersecurity to the states, but many aren’t prepared | Madyson Fitzgerald/Stateline

For the first half of his career in law enforcement, working as a police officer in South Florida, Chase Fopiano did not think cyberattacks on police agencies were a serious threat. Many of his law enforcement colleagues were under the same impression — that since they were the most likely to investigate the attacks, there was no way cybercriminals would go after them. By about 2015, as technology advanced and hackers became more creative, that changed, Fopiano said. Now, from the U.S. Secret Service to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, there are thousands of attempts to compromise networks or organizations every day, he said. “A lot of those [attempts] are toward government or even police, especially because they know that we’re not as prepared as we should be,” said Fopiano, who now oversees cybersecurity as part of a regional task force. Read Article

National: Election officials question agency about Trump’s order overhauling election operations | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

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