Election Deniers Think the Venezuela Attack Is All About 2020 | David Gilbert/WIRED

Election deniers and MAGA influencers are confident that the US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has nothing to do with oil or drug trafficking. Instead, they’re sure it’s all linked to unfounded claims that the Venezuelan government rigged the 2020 election in former president Joe Biden’s favor. President Donald Trump and his administration appear to have boosted these conspiracy theories. In the days after Maduro’s capture on January 3, Trump shared a flurry of posts on his Truth Social platform about election fraud, including ones related to Dominion Voting Systems. Other MAGA influencers posted about Smartmatic, another election company. Read Article

National: U.S. Capitol attack anniversary renews big lie claims, midterm worries | Antonio Fins/Palm Beach Post

The legacy of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol hovers over the 2026 midterm voting this year, a top elections analyst said on Jan. 6, the insurrection’s fifth anniversary. David Becker, the founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the cloud largely exists because of an effort to “rewrite history” about what happened on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021. In reality, Becker said, what occurred was a violent mob was sent to the Capitol by then-President Donald Trump with the aim of stopping the official election of Joe Biden. “And yet, we’re seeing an attempt to rewrite history,” he said. “It’s been going on almost immediately after those attacks, to not just forget about the events of January 6, but completely reinvent a fake mythology around those attacks.” Read Article

National: Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioters Rally and Demand More from Trump | Karoun Demirjian/The New York Times

Five years after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, several dozen rioters, including many who were jailed and later pardoned, gathered in Washington to retrace their steps and vow to keep fighting for payback, even against the Trump administration. The “J6ers,” as they refer to themselves, have been emboldened by President Trump, who pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,600 people who planned or participated in storming the Capitol to protest the results of the 2020 election. During Tuesday’s anniversary march, they praised Mr. Trump for setting them free, but were critical of his administration for not doing more for them. “Retribution is what we seek,” said Enrique Tarrio, a far-right activist and leader of the Proud Boys, one of the organizers of the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration and Tuesday’s anniversary event. “Without accountability, there is no justice.” Read Article

 

National: New USPS postmark rule could affect mail voters | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Mail voters in 18 jurisdictions may need to take extra care to ensure that their ballots aren’t rejected under new guidance from the U.S. Postal Service about how it processes mail. In a notice in the Federal Register that took effect Dec. 24, the Postal Service announced that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it. The change could affect thousands of people who vote by mail in places that allow mail ballots to be counted if they are received after Election Day but postmarked by Election Day. Those policies are in effect in 14 states — Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia — along with the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The new guidance means that, even if a voter delivers their ballot to the Postal Service by Election Day, it may nevertheless be rejected if it is not postmarked that day. Read Article

National: Trump pulls US out of international cyber orgs | Tim starks/CyberScoop

The Trump administration is withdrawing the United States from a handful of international organizations that work to strengthen cybersecurity. As part of a broader pullback from 66 international organizations, the administration is leaving the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, the Online Freedom Coalition and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. Trump’s decision is in line with a president who has expressed hostility toward the existing international order, an approach critics fear creates a leadership power vacuum for U.S. adversaries to fill. Read Article

National: The Supreme Court may leave alone the Voting Rights Act just long enough to keep the GOP from House control in 2026 | Samuel Benson and Andrew Howard/Politico

Republicans want a big Supreme Court redistricting win. They’re losing hope it will help them in the 2026 midterms. The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais could weaken the Voting Rights Act and open the door to redrawing congressional maps, particularly across the South. Court watchers expect at least a partial win for conservatives that could let the GOP draw more seats for themselves by erasing Black- and Hispanic-majority districts. But while that decision could theoretically come as soon as when the court returns on Friday, many experts think the case is more likely to be resolved with the flurry of decisions the court typically releases in late June. Read Article

National: All eyes on secretary of state races – with 2028 White House at stake | Sam Levine/The Guardian

When Americans go to cast ballots in the midterm elections in 2026, much of the attention is likely to be on races for the US House, Senate and governorships – contests that will serve as a referendum on Donald Trump’s first two years in office and determine the trajectories of the final ones. But further down the ballot, voters will choose secretaries of state in key races that could have a major effect on how elections are run in many US states, including several battleground states that are key to the 2028 presidential race. Twenty-six states are set to choose secretaries of state next year, including the presidential battlegrounds of Nevada, Arizona and Michigan. In many US states, the secretary of state serves as the chief election officer and is responsible for overseeing how elections are run across their state. Many also play an important role in certifying election results in their states. Read Article

National: A court ruling could shrink Black representation in Congress | Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

The United States could be headed toward the largest-ever decline in representation by Black members of Congress, depending on how the Supreme Court rules in a closely watched redistricting case about the Voting Rights Act. For decades, the landmark law that came out of the Civil Rights Movement has protected the collective voting power of racial minorities when political maps are redrawn. Its provisions have also boosted the number of seats in the House of Representatives filled by Black lawmakers. That’s largely because in many Southern states — where voting is often polarized between a Republican-supporting white majority and a Democratic-supporting Black minority — political mapmakers have drawn a certain kind of district to get in line with the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 provisions. In these districts, racial-minority voters make up a population large enough to have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates. Read Article

Opinion: Jan. 6 Never Ended | Jamie Raskin/The New York Times

Tuesday is a heavy day for the police officers who fought to put down the bloody insurrection at the Capitol five years ago. It is also a solemn day for the F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors who worked the largest criminal investigation in American history to bring the members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and all the other police-attacking rioters to justice. Five years after Jan. 6, 2021, we are still caught up in a struggle between forces who are willing to use authoritarian violence outside the Constitution to take and wield power and those who stand up nonviolently for our Constitution in the streets and in the polling places. Neither side can claim victory yet. It’s still very much Jan. 6 in America. Read Article

National: Mobile Voting Project’s vote-by-smartphone has real security gaps | Andrew Appel/CITP Blog

Bradley Tusk has been pushing the concept of “vote by phone.” Most recently his “Mobile Voting Foundation” put out a press release touting something called “VoteSecure”, claiming that “secure and verifiable mobile voting is within reach.” Based on my analysis of VoteSecure, I can say that secure and verifiable mobile voting is NOT within reach. It’s well known that conventional internet voting (including from smartphones) is fundamentally insecure; fraudulent software in the server could change votes, and malware in the voter’s own phone or computer could also change votes before they’re transmitted (while misleadingly displaying the voter’s original choices in the voter’s app). In an attempt to address this fundamental insecurity, Mr. Tusk has funded a company called Free & Fair to develop a protocol called by which voters could verify that their votes got counted properly. Their so-called “VoteSecure” is a form of “E2E-VIV”, or “End-to-End Verified Internet Voting”, a class of protocols that researchers have been studying for many years. Unfortunately, all known E2E-VIV methods, including VoteSecure, suffer from gaps and impracticalities that make them too insecure for use in public elections. In this article I will pinpoint just a few issues. I base my analysis on the press release of November 14, 2025, and on Free & Fair’s own “Threat Model” analysis and their FAQ. Read Article

National: 2025: The Year Cybersecurity Crossed the AI Rubicon | Dan Lohrmann/Government Technology

“Crossing the Rubicon” means passing a point of no return. The idiom comes from Julius Caesar illegally leading his army across the river Rubicon in 49 B.C., an act that sparked the Roman civil war and ultimately made him dictator for life. But how has cybersecurity crossed the AI Rubicon? Put simply, the integration of AI into both attack and defense has permanently changed the nature of cybersecurity, creating a before-and-after moment in 2025. We are witnessing a great acceleration in the speed and scale of change, with an exponential growth in threats, complexity and the deployment of AI tools that characterized the year. At the same time, cybersecurity has become a geopolitical weapon with a convergence of cyber and real-world conflict. This is a shift from mere data loss to nation-state conflict and hacktivism as the dominant narratives. Read Article

National: Republicans push mail-in voting for the midterms in defiance of Trump | Lisa Kashinsky/Politico

Republicans are making mail-in voting a core part of their midterm battle plans — a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s efforts to abolish the practice as they scramble to turn out his base. In Wisconsin, the state party is preparing a full-court press of mailers, emails, phone banks, door knocks and digital ads to get voters to sign up for mail ballots. In Michigan, the Monroe County GOP ran a social media campaign ahead of the fall election urging voters to utilize permanent absentee ballots and is planning an even bigger push next year. In Pennsylvania, where Republicans poured $16 million into boosting the number of GOP voters using mail ballots in 2024, the state party chair called it “a priority” for 2026. The nonprofit Citizens Alliance, which aided efforts to get Republicans to return their mail ballots in Pennsylvania last year, is planning to knock 750,000 doors ahead of the midterms to encourage infrequent voters to embrace the practice. Read Article

National: The Justice Department has now sued 18 states in an effort to access voter data | NPR

The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election. The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation. For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver’s license numbers and parts of voters’ Social Security numbers. Read Article

National: Congress could try to pass new election laws before the 2026 midterms | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have had a lot to say about the rules and laws that govern our elections. Changing them, though, is harder. House Republicans are signaling plans for legislation to inscribe at least some of the party’s election-administration wish list into federal law, including changes to the landmark National Voter Registration Act that would make it easier to remove ineligible voters from the rolls. Republicans have long accused states of failing to appropriately clean their voter rolls, and the U.S. Justice Department has filed a host of lawsuits seeking access to unredacted state voter rolls in what government lawyers have said is an effort to make sure states are complying with their obligations under federal law. Trump issued a sweeping executive order on elections in March, and the White House said last month he is working on a second. But major provisions of the March order have so far been halted by the courts after federal judges found the president lacked the constitutional authority to enact them. Read Article

National: Key lawmaker says Congress likely to kick can down road on cyber information sharing law | Tim Starks/CyberScoop

With a little more than a month left before a foundational cyber threat information sharing law expires for a second time, Congress might have to do another short-term extension as negotiations on a longer deal aren’t yet bearing fruit, a key lawmaker said Tuesday. House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., said the problem with a long-term extension of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which provides legal protections to companies to share cyber threat data with the federal government and other companies, is that there are three different views about how to approach it. The Trump administration and some in the Senate want a clean, 10-year reauthorization of the law, which Congress extended last month until Jan. 30 as part of the legislation that ended the government shutdown, after the information sharing law lapsed in October. But a reauthorization without any changes could run into House opposition, Garbarino said. Read Article

National: AI tops cybersecurity in survey of state IT priorities | Colin Wood/StateScoop

In a development that will surprise few who’ve been tracking government, technology or world events more broadly, artificial intelligence has, on average, overtaken all other concerns in state technology offices across the nation. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers, a group that represents state governments’ top IT officials, on Tuesday published its annual list of priorities, which is based on a survey of its membership. In last year’s list, AI was barely edged out for the top slot by cybersecurity, a technical and political concern that has made the list all 20 years since its first edition. But this year, said Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director, AI won and “it wasn’t even close. It’s been a very swift ascension to No. 1.” For state CIOs, generative AI tools represent a means of offsetting workforce shortages that have been slow to repopulate after the COVID-19 pandemic, chatbots to provide residents more personalized experiences when they visit government websites, or a scalpel to shave a few extra hours of work off processing applications for safety-net benefits that will receive less support under the second Donald Trump presidency. Read Article

25 Years After Bush v. Gore, Supreme Court and Election Law Still Feel the Fallout | Stephen Spaulding/Brennan Center for Justice

It all started with that infamous ballot. Presidential candidates from major and minor parties appeared on either side of a line of holes down the center of the ballot for voters to punch through with a stylus to indicate their pick. On the left, the first two names were Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, but confusingly they corresponded to the first and third holes. In addition to the layout problems was an issue with how the ballots recorded votes: Some voters punched cleanly through the card, while others left only dimples that election workers later examined with magnifying glasses to determine voter intent. Some ballots presented the issue of the “hanging chad,” where a piece of the ballot was left clinging by a corner or two. (The Smithsonian also has a bag of these.) Studies indicate that at least 2,000 Palm Beach County voters accidentally selected Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Gore, who lost Florida — and therefore the Electoral College — by just 537 votes. Read Article

National: Republicans in Congress eye more power for states to remove voters | Jonathan Shorman/Stateline

Republicans in Congress want to give states more authority to remove ineligible voters — including noncitizens and people who have moved or died — from voter rolls, seeking to reinforce the Trump administration’s own push to scrub the lists. At a U.S. House hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers weighed changing a landmark federal voter registration law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, which requires state motor vehicle agencies to offer residents the opportunity to register to vote. Some conservatives say the law makes it too difficult for states to keep their voter rolls up to date. Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have ramped up efforts to scoop up data on voters and pressure state officials to conduct more aggressive maintenance of their lists to ensure that everyone on the roll is eligible to vote. Read Article

National: Governors Shapiro (D) and Cox (R) join forces to denounce political violence | Colby Itkowitz and Yasmeen Abutaleb/The Washington Post

Josh Shapiro and Spencer Cox know firsthand what happens when political violence comes home. Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor who is widely expected to run for president in 2028, was asleep with his family when an arsonist set fire to their home. Cox, Utah’s Republican governor, was one of few voices who called for calm and “moral clarity” after the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot onstage at Utah Valley University in September. The two spoke together about rising political violence Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral, a rare bipartisan event in a deeply polarized country. Both criticized their parties for not doing enough to cool partisan tensions and condemn political violence when it affects their opponents. Read Article

National: Trump’s SAVE citizenship tool is flagging U.S. citizen voters | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

Anthony Nel is the kind of voter who doesn’t like to skip an election. The 29-year-old lives in the Dallas-Forth Worth area and usually votes early, which he did as recently as Texas’ Nov. 4 constitutional election. So he was disturbed last month to open a letter from his local election office in Denton County, calling into question whether he was eligible to vote at all. “We have received information from the Texas Secretary of State reflecting that you might not be a United States citizen,” read the notice. The notice said he needed to provide proof of citizenship — such as a copy of a U.S. passport, birth certificate or naturalization certificate — within 30 days. Otherwise, his registration would be canceled, though it said he could be immediately reinstated if he showed that documentation at a later date. Read Article

National: Voting by mail faces uncertain moment ahead of midterm elections | Jonathan Shorman/Stateline

Derrin Robinson has worked in Oregon elections for more than 30 years, long enough to remember when voters in the state cast their ballots at physical polling sites instead of by mail. As the nonpartisan clerk of Harney County, a vast, rural expanse larger than Massachusetts, Robinson oversees elections with about 6,000 registered voters. Oregon has exclusively conducted elections by mail since 2000, a system he thinks works well, requires fewer staff and doesn’t force voters to travel through treacherous weather to reach a polling place. “As you can tell, I’m not an advocate for going back,” Robinson said. Not everyone agrees. An Oregon Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation to end the state’s mail voting law, and organizers of a ballot measure campaign seeking to ban mail-in voting say they have gathered thousands of signatures. Read Article

National: CISA Left Leaderless as Plankey’s Nomination Stalls in Senate | Emily Hill/The National CIO Review

The nomination of Sean Plankey to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has effectively stalled following his exclusion from a recent Senate vote to advance a group of nominees. Plankey, a former Coast Guard officer and cybersecurity adviser, faced multiple procedural holds from senators, one of which was linked to a dispute over a Coast Guard contract. As Plankey was not included in a package of nominees that advanced last Thursday, Senate procedures now make it unlikely that his nomination will move forward in the current session. This development leaves CISA without a Senate-confirmed director at a time of increasing focus on national cybersecurity efforts and ongoing transitions in agency leadership. Read Article

National: John Robert’s Dream Is Finally Coming True | David Daley/The Atlantic

In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data in redistricting. That could lead to the end of the VRA’s Section 2 protections for minority voters, and allow states across the South to redraw congressional districts currently represented by Black Democrats into whiter, more rural, and more conservative seats, potentially before the 2026 midterms. A central question of the case, hotly debated during oral arguments, is whether Section 2 should prohibit election laws and procedures that have a racially discriminatory effect, or just those passed with clear racially discriminatory intent. Roberts almost certainly had flashbacks. This is the same question that was at the center of the 1982 reauthorization fight. Back then, the future chief justice’s job was to design the Department of Justice’s VRA strategy. Read Article

 

National: The Feds Cut Funding for Election Cybersecurity. How Will Public Officials Adapt? | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Governing

Election officials frequently face all manner of cybersecurity threats. Cyber attackers may try to breach voter registration databases and steal information, take down websites that help voters find polls, spoof official websites and more. Just this November, Utah Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson issued a warning about AI-generated fake election results circulating online. Across the country, public officials have often turned to trusted federally supported resources for help managing these dangers. The nonprofit Center for Internet Security (CIS) has traditionally provided no-cost and low-cost cybersecurity services and intelligence to state and local governments, in particular through its Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). For decades, the MS-ISAC has helped states defend against and respond to cyber attacks. States and localities that are ISAC members receive threat intelligence as well as one-on-one consultations with cybersecurity experts, some cybersecurity tools and a 24/7 security operations center. Read Article

National: DHS lookup tool may expose sensitive data of hundreds of millions of Americans, secretaries of state warn | Colin Wood/StateScoop

A repurposed IT system being used by the Department of Homeland Security presents “unacceptable risks” to the nation’s eligible voters, according to a group of secretaries of state who on Monday signed off on a letter opposing a recent proposal by the federal agency. The remarks, which include the signatures of a dozen secretaries of state, mostly from states run by Democrats, are a 29-page protest against a disclosure by DHS that it plans to codify its repurposing of a system originally designed to check immigration statuses and verify benefits eligibility. The arcane and purportedly unwieldy system, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, is subject to numerous legal changes under DHS’s proposal, including that it would be used not for its original narrow purpose, but allow bulk searches and searches of “individuals that are U.S. citizens by birth” to find ineligible voters and instances of voter fraud. Read Article

National: Justice Department sues six more states to get detailed voter data |Michael Casey/Associated Press

The Justice Department on Tuesday sued six more states in its ongoing campaign to obtain detailed voter data and other election information. The department announced it was suing Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington over their “failure” to produce statewide voter registration lists. It has portrayed the litigation as part of an effort to ensure the security of elections, but Democratic officials have raised concerns over how the data will be used and whether the department will follow privacy laws in protecting it. Tuesday’s actions bring to at least 14 the number of states the Justice Department has sued in its quest for the voter information. Read Article

National: Changes to the agency that helps secure elections lead to midterm worries | Steve Karnowski and Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Since it was created in 2018, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency has helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments, showed officials how to protect polling places from attacks and gamed out how to respond to the unexpected, such as an Election Day bomb threat or sudden disinformation campaign. The agency was largely absent from that space for elections this month in several states, a potential preview for the 2026 midterms. Shifting priorities of the Trump administration, staffing reductions and budget cuts have many election officials concerned about how engaged the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will be next year, when control of Congress will be at stake in those elections. Some officials say they have begun scrambling to fill the anticipated gaps. “We do not have a sense of whether we can rely on CISA for these services as we approach a big election year in 2026,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who until recently led the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State. Read Article

National: They tried to overturn the 2020 US election. Now, they hold power in Trump’s Washington | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

The people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have more power than ever – and they plan to use it. Bolstered by the president, they have prominent roles in key parts of the federal government. Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who helped advance Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, now leads the civil rights division of the justice department. An election denier, Heather Honey, now serves as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the Department of Homeland Security. Kurt Olsen, an attorney involved in the “stop the steal” movement, is now a special government employee investigating the 2020 election. A movement that once pressured elected officials to bend to its whims is now part of the government. Read Article

National: Dominion Voting’s new owner pledges impartiality, says, ‘I’m not on anybody’s side’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

The new owner of Dominion Voting Systems affirmed in his first interview since buying the company that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and pledged that his company’s machines, used by nearly a third of US voters, won’t be misused to help either political party. Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official from St. Louis who already runs a separate election tech company, bought Dominion last month and rebranded it Liberty Vote. The surprise move, and a public announcement that seemingly embraced parts of Trump’s push to transform voting procedures, spooked election officials around the US, raising concerns about the future of a company that unexpectedly found itself at the center of Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Read Article

National: Secretaries of state ask DOJ to clarify how it’s using their voter data | Colin Wood/StateScoop

After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls, which can include information like driver’s license numbers, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and birth dates. The letter, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, flags an Aug. 28 call with Michael Gates, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division until he stepped down this month. Gates, the secretaries wrote, assured them that the DOJ would protect the voter information in compliance with the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Read Article