Mullin warns states could lose funds over Trump election demands
The homeland security secretary said states must adopt federal election security measures to receive certain funds, echoing Trump’s disputed claims.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
4 min read
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned states on Friday that federal election money could depend on whether they adopt measures sought by President Donald Trump. The remarks matter because they put the administration on a collision course with states that run elections under the US system.
Al Jazeera reported that Mullin’s comments largely tracked Trump’s prime-time address a day earlier, in which the president called for a tougher federal role in election administration ahead of the 2026 midterms. Mullin described the effort as a campaign of “maximum pressure” aimed at forcing compliance.
Mullin also said his department was looking at people in the intelligence community and in former President Joe Biden’s administration over actions tied to the 2020 election. Trump has falsely claimed he won that election.
“This isn’t about rehashing the 2020 election. This is just exposing what took place and to make sure it never happens again,” Mullin said, according to Al Jazeera. He added that people who “purposely misled the American people” or abused official power would be held accountable.
Four states singled out
Mullin named California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada as immediate targets for the administration’s election push, Al Jazeera reported. Those states are either Democratic strongholds or competitive states and carry a large number of Electoral College votes.
According to Al Jazeera, Mullin claimed the four states together have 250,000 non-citizens on voter rolls, but he did not provide a basis for the figure. He also repeated Trump’s claim that the government had found nearly 278,000 foreign nationals registered to vote nationwide.
Al Jazeera reported that the administration has not shown how it reached that number. Election experts cited by the outlet have said registration records alone do not prove that someone voted, and states already screen voters for citizenship and other eligibility rules.
The Brennan Center for Justice found in an analysis of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 elections that ballots cast by non-citizens amounted to 0.0001 percent of votes, Al Jazeera reported. Election specialists have widely rejected claims that non-citizen voting is a threat to US election outcomes.
Funding threat and voter data fight
Mullin said states that want grants or reimbursement for running federal elections would have to put the administration’s security measures in place. “The machines have to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.
Trump has long criticized electronic voting without substantiating his security claims and has urged a return to paper ballots, Al Jazeera reported. He has also sought limits on mail voting, even though he has used that method himself.
The administration has pressed states to provide voter rolls to the federal government, but several federal courts have blocked Trump’s attempts to create a federal voter database, according to Al Jazeera. The administration’s planned tool, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, has faced criticism over claims that it can wrongly identify foreign-born US citizens as non-citizens.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signaled resistance after Mullin’s comments. “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them,” Newsom wrote on social media, according to Al Jazeera. “Try us.”
Networks and license threats
Mullin also criticized major television networks that declined to carry Trump’s Thursday address live in full. Al Jazeera reported that ABC, NBC and CNN did not air the entire half-hour speech on their main channels, while Fox News carried it with caveats.
Trump accused outlets that did not air the speech of taking part in a “plot” and said election fraud should lead to license revocations, according to Al Jazeera. Mullin called the networks “shameful” and suggested they were withholding information from the public.
Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, rejected Trump’s threat. “The FCC has no authority to punish a station for refusing to air a blatantly political speech,” Gomez wrote on social media, according to Al Jazeera.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.