Last week, Trump gave an address to the nation about malign attempts by foreign powers to influence our elections. He said that China was meddling in our elections, but the documents he released pointed to Russia’s efforts to help him. When he ran against Biden in 2020, the documents showed, Russian propaganda tried to portray Joe Biden and his son Hunter as recipients of foreign bribes; multiple investigations never produced any evidence for these claims.

Ironically, MSNOW points out, Trump has eliminated the federal agency that helped protect election security. You have probably never heard of that agency (CISA), so he correctly assumes that you won’t notice.

Now the Department of Himeland Security says it will offer election security only to states that hand over their voter rolls.

It’s important to remember that the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to control their elections, not the President or any federal agency.

Laura Barrón-López and David Rohde write:

President Donald Trump says he is worried about foreign interference in U.S. elections. That was the reason he gave when he released declassified intelligence documents last week that ended up undercutting his own baseless claims about rigged elections.

In his primetime address on July 16, Trump said the U.S. “must take urgent action” to protect voting infrastructure against foreign actors. But shortly after taking office last year, Trump gutted a key agency designed to protect America’s elections from exactly that. 

It’s called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an office created during Trump’s first term. CISA is one of the main federal partners for states on election security, sharing intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and providing quick regional support. 

After Trump returned to office, the cyber agency housed under the Department of Homeland Security took a major hit. Elon Musk’s DOGE fired more than 100 workers, including election security advisers. More than 600 others were placed on administrative leave, were reassigned or took buyouts. 

Now the Trump administration is telling states they will only receive resources if they hand over voter rolls to be screened through a new federal database that a judge recently deemed unlawful in its current form.

That database is known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, which experts and a federal judge are concerned has a high error rate that could disenfranchise voters. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said CISA will release an “election infrastructure plan” in the next 30 days — barely three months out from the midterms, which will determine which party controls Congress.

“If they participate in the SAVE program, we’ll provide the resources and training to support state election integrity,” Mullin said last week. “We’re not trying to change the outcome.”

‘They’re flying blind’

Multiple current and former senior election and national security officials told MS NOW that they could not recall a time when the federal government held back resources and money meant to secure America’s elections. 

And multiple state election officials have said they are not receiving any briefings on possible foreign threats to election security from the federal government. Such briefings were once a regular occurrence, they said.

During the first Trump administration, “we were collaborative — carrots rather than sticks,” said one of the former officials, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The second Trump administration is “very much focused on sticks.”

One election official in a swing state said the difference from 2024 is stark, saying that “it’s every state for themselves.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns about retaliation from federal officials. During the last cycle, the state official said they had a regional federal cybersecurity expert “on speed dial” who could “see the whole puzzle.”

That doesn’t exist anymore, and without it, the state election official said, “we’re less informed on the pattern of the attackers and are slower to respond.” 

“I’ve literally never heard anybody effectively say ‘to keep you safe, you have to give me what I want,’” said the swing state election official, referring to DHS threats to withhold resources if states don’t hand over sensitive voter data. 

The risks compound at the local level, they added: “Does [a clerk’s] laptop have the IT infrastructure to defend against an attack from Iran? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

Cait Conley, a West Point graduate and combat veteran who served as the senior adviser to the director of CISA during the Biden administration, accused Trump of gutting the agency and sowing doubt about the security of U.S. elections in his speech last week. 

“If Donald Trump were truly concerned about election security, he would not have fired hundreds of federal workers whose jobs were to secure our elections,” she said. Conley is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat. 

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