National

Ever since President Donald Trump’s victory in November, election officials at every level and voting rights advocates have worried that he would gut the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — the little-known federal agency responsible for the nation’s cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure from digital threats. And now that those cuts have come to fruition, election officials are already experiencing the loss of crucial CISA resources they said are integral to voting security. In the seven years since CISA’s creation, it’s become a crucial agency to help secure elections from foreign and domestic cybersecurity threats. Among the agency’s routine functions are sending cybersecurity experts to local election offices to recommend upgrades and best practices, training election officials to spot foreign interference and connecting offices with law enforcement agencies — a crucial practice as violence and threats to election officials significantly grew in the past decade. Read Article

Can VotingWorks’ publicly viewable software boost faith in voting machines? | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

At a recent gathering of election officials in Washington, D.C., a technology vendor called VotingWorks demonstrated the systems that it has submitted for federal certification this year. The group says its mission is to make voting equipment everyone can trust “through transparency, simplicity, and demonstrable security.” It’s the first technology company to seek federal certification for a voting system relying on publicly available code. “I think it’s a big deal,” said Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, who sees the election technology industry moving toward more transparency. “I think it’s a good step forward.” Read Article

National: Trump’s federal shake-up sparks concerns among election security experts | Julia Mueller and Caroline Vakil/The Hill

Election experts are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s wide-reaching changes to the federal bureaucracy, which is impacting the cybersecurity agency responsible for protecting the nation’s critical cyber and physical infrastructure. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has paused its election security work while it conducts a review of all election security related funding, products, activities, and personnel. “Faced with limited resources, state and local election officials across the country rely on CISA’s expertise,” nonpartisan election watchdog Verified Voting’s president and CEO Pamela Smith said in a statement calling on DHS to keep CISA’s “essential” election security work in place. “Any reduction in these critical resources could make our elections more vulnerable and leave officials with fewer tools to protect our democratic process. Election security is national security — something every American has a stake in.” Read Article

National: Election security aid on the chopping block, rattling local officials | Kevin Collier/NBC

State and local election officials who have grown to rely on the federal government’s cybersecurity assistance fear that the Trump administration may permanently block that aid by Thursday. Such funding, which began in President Donald Trump’s first term and is funnelled through the country’s top domestic security body, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), stopped in February. Those programs include free on-site and remote security testing of election machines and the websites that report election results, and ad hoc “situation rooms” where election officials can virtually gather and discuss security tactics in real time. Read Article

National: Trump Bid to Take Over Postal Service Could Threaten Mail Voting | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump may soon attempt to absorb the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), an independent agency, into his administration by issuing an executive order that reportedly would dissolve the service’s leadership. The order could allow the Trump administration to make mail voting — which was used by tens of millions of voters last year — more difficult. Trump has repeatedly said he’d like to end the practice, falsely claiming it allows for widespread fraud. “Taking over the Postal Service just kind of opens up a whole Pandora’s box of mischief,” said Barbara Smith Warner, the executive director of National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit which works to increase voters’ access to and confidence in mail voting. Read Article

National: Judge finds Mike Lindell in contempt for failing to turn over documents in Smartmatic defamation case | Laura Romero and Soo Rin Kim/ABC

A federal judge in Minnesota has found MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to provide discovery and financial documents in the defamation case brought by voting machine company Smartmatic. Smartmatic sued Lindell for defamation in 2022, alleging that he lied about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election for his own financial gain. In a filing on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan said Lindell failed to produce analytics data for his company’s website and financial records to show Lindell’s financial condition for the years 2022 and 2023. Read Articles

National: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves | Elisabeth Bumiller/The New York Times

The silence grows louder every day. Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute. Even longtime Republican hawks on Capitol Hill, stunned by President Trump’s revisionist history that Ukraine is to blame for its invasion by Russia, and his Oval Office blowup at President Volodymyr Zelensky, have either muzzled themselves, tiptoed up to criticism without naming Mr. Trump or completely reversed their positions. More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond. Read Article

National: Trump keeps cutting election security jobs. Here’s what’s at risk | Jocelyn Mintz/Fast Company

As the Trump administration continues to dismantle federal agencies, one that plays a critical role in U.S. infrastructure and election security faces an uncertain future. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), housed in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and tasked with enforcing cybersecurity and protecting American infrastructure across all levels of government, placed multiple members of its election security team on administrative leave over the last few weeks. The 17 reported election security team members, part of the agency’s foreign influence and disinformation teams, were placed on administrative leave as part of an overall review of the team, with a particular focus on those two operations. A DHS spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that number. On Friday, the Trump administration separately fired more than 130 members of CISA, the DHS confirmed. Read Article

National: Mac Warner, Who Said CIA Stole Election, Now Leads DOJ Civil Rights | Ben Penn/Bloomberg Law

The Justice Department has inserted Mac Warner, who last year espoused false claims that the CIA stole Trump’s 2020 presidential victory with the FBI’s help, to run the civil rights division, replacing an ousted career official who’s started reporting to the new sanctuary cities office. Warner, West Virginia’s former secretary of state, embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election while running in the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary. Warner told DOJ civil rights staff Monday that he’s assumed control of the division, according to an email obtained by Bloomberg Law. He’ll function as the top official until Harmeet Dhillon, another 2020 election denier who Trump selected to lead the anti-discrimination enforcement office, wins Senate confirmation. Read Article

National: Fact-check: Trump relies on falsehoods when pushing voting changes in speech to governors | Amy Sherman/PolitiFact

President Donald Trump told governors to change their election laws and repeated falsehoods and misleading statements to make his case for new voting policies. If states required “proof of citizenship, voter ID, paper ballots, one day voting,” Trump said, it would result in knowing “the results of your election by 10 p.m.” What Trump leaves out: The vast majority of U.S. voters already use paper ballots; a majority of states require voter ID at the polls; and only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Read Article

National: State Election Officials Seek to Avert Deeper Cuts | Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Alarmed by cuts already made to federal agencies that help safeguard elections, and fearful that more could be coming, a bipartisan group of the nation’s top state election officials has appealed to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, for help. In a rare move, the ordinarily restrained National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to Ms. Noem, the former South Dakota governor, on Friday asking that critical election programs and protections be spared during an upcoming agency review. Among the programs the group singled out for preservation were those aimed at assessing the physical security of voting locations and election offices, shoring up cybersecurity for election offices, sharing classified intelligence on foreign threats to elections and responding to attacks like ransomware. Read Article

National: Election systems feared to be vulnerable as Trump administration cuts workers tasked with security | Nicole Sganga/CBS

Over the last month, the U.S. government has worked quickly to pause, disband and dismantle the U.S. effort to fight foreign meddling in elections, raising concern among federal lawmakers and election officials across the country who rely on the federal cybersecurity agency and its counterparts to warn them about attacks on election systems. First came a flurry of notices forcing out Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency personnel who are tasked with stopping foreign interference in U.S. elections — at least a dozen have been put on leave or fired over the past month. Then, on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first day in office on Feb. 5, she disbanded the FBI task force targeting foreign influence operations originating from places like Russia, China and Iran. Read Article

National: CISA layoffs do foreign disinformation peddlers a massive favor | Gintaras Radauskas/Cybernews

At the beginning of February, staff at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who are focused on disinformation and influence operations, were placed on leave, sparking concerns about the future of American efforts to counter digital threats under the new administration. For good measure, Pam Bondi, the new Attorney General, also dissolved an FBI task force formed in response to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections that worked to sniff out efforts by Russia, China, or Iran to manipulate US voters. These moves aren’t surprising as they originate from within an administration that has consistently claimed that even merely pointing out potential disinformation is censorship in disguise. Read Article

National: Experts warn the proposed SAVE Act could make it harder for some married women to vote. Here’s who could be affected. | Alex Clark/CBS

A claim circulating on social media suggests that married people who changed their last name will face difficulties when trying to vote under the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Experts say the bill, which was recently reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, would not explicitly prevent these voters from casting a ballot, but it could create barriers to registration by requiring them to show additional documentation. If passed, the act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to offer voter registration when obtaining a driver’s license, to mandate documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Read Article

Election officials blast Trump’s ‘retreat’ from protecting voting against foreign threats | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline

The Trump administration has begun dismantling the nation’s defenses against foreign interference in voting, a sweeping retreat that has alarmed state and local election officials. Local election officials are nervous and uncertain about the federal election security cuts, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works with state and local election officials to keep voting systems secure. The threat landscape for elections is “extreme,” she said. And even though it’s not a major election year, quieter times are when election offices can prepare and perfect their practices, she said. “It is a retreat and it’s a really ill-advised one,” she said. “It’s a little bit like saying the bank has a slow day on Tuesday, we’re going to let our security guards go home.” Read Article

National: Dismantling of federal efforts to monitor election interference creates opening for foreign meddling | Ali Swenson and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

When a suspicious video of ballots being ripped up in Pennsylvania gained attention on social media last October, federal agencies responded quickly and called it out as Russian disinformation. On Election Day in November, bomb threats to polling places in numerous states caused relatively few disruptions to voting. It’s one of the many scenarios covered by the nation’s cybersecurity agency in its outreach to state and local officials. The future of that assistance is now uncertain. The Trump administration’s downsizing and disbanding of federal agencies has hit efforts that improve election security and monitor foreign influence. That could create gaps for America’s enemies to exploit the next time the country holds a major election. Read Article

National: Trump Justice Department signals retreat from voting rights cases | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

The government’s approach to voting rights is changing fast under the new administration, and a complex, closely watched redistricting case out of Louisiana shows just how fast. On Jan. 16, the U.S. solicitor general, who represents the government in court, asked the Supreme Court to allow the federal government to participate in upcoming oral arguments in the Louisiana case. But on Jan. 24, four days after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, the acting solicitor general withdrew that request. Her filing said the government no longer supported its earlier argument that the district court had erred in its ruling. Read Article

National: Trump keeps cutting election security jobs. Here’s what’s at risk | Jocelyn Mintz/Fast Company

As the Trump administration continues to dismantle federal agencies, one that plays a critical role in U.S. infrastructure and election security faces an uncertain future. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), housed in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and tasked with enforcing cybersecurity and protecting American infrastructure across all levels of government, placed multiple members of its election security team on administrative leave over the last few weeks, according to reports by the Associated Press and TechCrunch. The 17 reported election security team members, part of the agency’s foreign influence and disinformation teams, were placed on administrative leave as part of an overall review of the team, with a particular focus on those two operations. A DHS spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that number. On Friday, the Trump administration separately fired more than 130 members of CISA, the DHS confirmed. Read Article

National: Trump Dismantles Government Fight Against Foreign Influence Operations | Steven Lee Myers, Julian E. Barnes and Sheera Frenkel/The New York Times

The Trump administration is targeting government officials who had been flagging foreign interference in U.S. elections, despite ongoing concerns that adversaries are stoking political and social divisions by spreading propaganda and disinformation online, current and former government officials said. The administration has already reassigned several dozen officials working on the issue at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forced out others at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, they said. The cuts have focused on people who were not only combating false content online but also working on broader safeguards to protect elections from cyberattacks or other attempts to disrupt voting systems. In last year’s election, the teams tracked and publicized numerous influence operations from Russia, China and Iran to blunt their impact on unsuspecting voters. Read Article

National: The Trump Administration Is Going After Our Elections Too | Lawrence Norden and Derek Tisler/Slate

In its crusade against federal agencies, the Trump administration is targeting our election system, making potentially dangerous reductions to protections that help keep elections free, fair, and secure. On Friday, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software. Read Article

The elephant not in the room: Key cybersecurity agency is a no-show at gathering of election officials | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Secretaries of state and election officials from across the nation gathered at separate conferences this past week in Washington, where the new administration has been moving quickly to slash the federal workforce and dismantle certain agencies. One pressing question at the gatherings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors was how the shift in power will affect collaborations with federal agencies that help safeguard elections, including the FBI, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. So far, it’s hard to tell. Read Article

National: SAVE Act Would Undermine Voter Registration for All Americans | Wendy R. Weiser and Andrew Garber/Brennan Center for Justice

Last month, congressional Republicans pledged to fast-track the SAVE Act, a bill that would require all Americans to provide a birth certificate, passport, or one of a few other citizenship documents every time they register or re-register to vote. If enacted, it would devastate voter registration while disenfranchising tens of millions of eligible American citizens. More than 21 million American citizens don’t have these documents readily available, according to survey data. But the SAVE Act would likely adversely affect far more Americans than the data suggests. Many might not have noticed how broadly the bill could apply — its show-your-papers requirement is not just limited to new registrations but rather applies to every “application to register to vote,” which in many jurisdictions includes re-registrations and changes of address. And tens of millions of Americans register or re-register between every federal election. Read Article

National: CISA election, disinformation officials placed on administrative leave, sources say | Derek B. Johnson/CyberScoop

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency placed several members of its election security group on administrative leave last week. According to one source, the moves happened Thursday and Friday of last week and were targeted at employees focused on CISA’s mis-, dis- and malinformation teams. The moves include four employees currently working on or assigned to the team, two more that left the team in the past four years but still hold positions at the Department of Homeland Security, and another two that work on elections misinformation or disinformation at DHS. A second source confirmed that some, but not all members of CISA’s election security team, were placed on leave last week. Read Article

National: Efforts to fight foreign influence and protect elections in question under Trump | Jenna McLaughlin/NPR

The new Trump administration is moving quickly to roll back long-standing work to counter foreign influence in U.S. elections, work that began in the first Trump term after revelations about the extent and ambition of Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election. Staffers working on countering foreign mis- and disinformation as well as a team of 10 regional election security advisers at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been put on administrative leave, according to two sources directly familiar with the matter who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. In addition to the disruption to CISA’s work, Attorney General Pam Bondi also ordered an end to an FBI task force to combat foreign influence campaigns in American politics by Russia, China and other countries. Read Article

National: Ed Martin, Advocate of Jan. 6 Rioters, Now Runs Office That Investigated Them | Eileen Sullivan, Alan Feuer and Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times

Ed Martin was in the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, posting on social media that the violent riot that day was marked by “faith and joy.” He has often echoed President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, declaring on the night before the Capitol was stormed that “true Americans” should work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal.” He has spent the past four years raising money for — and in some cases defending — people charged with joining the mob. And when the House committee that investigated Jan. 6 sent him a subpoena, he never complied, risking criminal charges. Now, Mr. Martin, 54, has been tapped by Mr. Trump to oversee the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington where he has been put in charge of dismantling the office’s signature project: the sprawling investigation of Jan. 6 that he has energetically opposed. Read Article

National: GOP laws aimed at very rare noncitizen voting could hit eligible voters | Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez/The Washington Post

Republicans in Congress and state legislatures are charging forward with plans to require Americans to prove they are citizens as they say they seek to crack down on noncitizen voting — an almost nonexistent problem. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal in all state and federal elections, and requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship could make it harder for millions of legitimate voters to cast ballots. Driver’s licenses and other state IDs can be used only for people who provided proof of citizenship to get those IDs, so some people will need to track down other documents. Many people do not have ready access to birth certificates or passports, including women who changed their names when they got married, rural residents who live far from government offices where birth records are kept, and people who lost documents in fires or floods. Read Article

National: With firings and lax enforcement, Trump moving to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails | Eric Tucker, Michelle L. Price and Zeke Miller/Associated Press