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2 entries with this tag
Trump Fired Every Remaining Member of the Bipartisan Election Assistance Commission — Gutting the Agency That Certifies Voting Machines Four Months Before the Midterms — Then Gave a Primetime Address Claiming China Stole "220 Million Voter Files," a Claim His Own Government's Intelligence Flatly Contradicts
On July 16, 2026, Trump delivered a 25-minute primetime address from the White House East Room claiming he was "declassifying intelligence" that revealed "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure" — including the assertion that "The People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files." His own government's intelligence contradicts him: a federal report from March 2021 concluded "We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections." FactCheck.org and others found the documents the White House posted did not support the sweeping claims. The speech came exactly one week after Trump fired the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission — Democrats Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland (dismissed by email) and Republican Christy McCormick (asked to resign by phone) — leaving the bipartisan federal agency that certifies voting-machine standards and helps states run elections without a quorum, unable to act, and unlikely to regain one before the November midterms. The White House cited a recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision on the president's power to fire independent-agency members as its justification. Trump also repeated debunked 2020 conspiracy theories and baselessly claimed fraud cost a Republican the Los Angeles mayoral primary. A Reuters analysis found his noncitizen-voting claims unsupported — just 129 prosecutions under the relevant law since 1996, most involving confusion or paperwork errors, not organized fraud. It all lands atop the administration's broader campaign to seize control of election administration: the FEMA counterterrorism-funding blackmail, the SAVE voter-roll purges, and DOJ criminal threats to state officials.
FEMA Will Withhold 20% of a $1 Billion Anti-Terrorism Grant Program — Money for Cybersecurity and Protecting Crowded Public Spaces — Unless States Rewrite Their Elections to Trump's Demands Before the Midterms, a Power the Constitution Gives Him Zero Authority Over
The Trump administration is holding counterterrorism money hostage to force states to change how they run elections before the November 2026 midterms. FEMA's fiscal-year 2026 Homeland Security Grant Program notice says the agency will withhold 20% of each state's total award — from a $1.064 billion program that funds cybersecurity, emergency planning, training, equipment, and protection of crowded public spaces — until the state proves it has complied with new "Election Security" requirements. Those requirements: submit a plan to abandon electronic voting systems that use bar codes/QR codes and move to hand-marked paper ballots (eliminating ballot-marking devices); conduct 5% manual post-election audits; reconcile voters against ballots cast; run the entire voter roll through the DHS "SAVE" citizenship database within 120 days; and verify the citizenship of every poll worker and vendor. In FY2025 the election-related hold was just 3% for three modest actions; FY2026 escalates it to 20% and a far larger list. The 3% election-security set-aside and the 20% holdback are explicitly separate — meeting one does not release the other. The grants flow largely to populous urban states: New York alone expects about $204 million in FY2026. Switching to hand-marked paper ballots would cost states hundreds of millions — Georgia's Republican secretary of state estimated $66 million for his state alone. The Constitution gives the president no authority over election administration; a federal judge recently wrote exactly that while blocking parts of Trump's anti-voting executive order, and another judge blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters, finding the administration "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens." The DOJ has separately sued 30 states for refusing to hand over voter lists and warned election officials in all 50 states they could face criminal charges. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul: the administration is "once again putting New Yorkers' lives at risk to forward their political agenda." Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows: "Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he's terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms."