Trump Tries a New Tactic to Change Election Rules

The Trump administration is attempting to use federal funding to assert control over how elections are run at the state level, a new tactic that comes after a series of courtroom losses and the apparent death of an election-security bill in Congress.

The Department of Homeland Security said officials are considering whether to use grant funding allocated to states — and the threat of withholding it — to “advance core national security priorities,” which includes changes to U.S. election security and infrastructure. According to documents obtained by CNN, the administration wants states to hand count ballots and use the newly overhauled Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database to flag potential noncitizen voters, both demands championed by President Donald Trump in recent weeks.

The president is willing to pull up to 20% of DHS grant funding, typically used for infrastructure projects, terrorism prevention and disaster preparation, from states that do not comply, the network reported.

A spokesperson for the department told NOTUS on Tuesday that no funding changes have officially been made yet.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS and FEMA are committed to ensuring homeland security grant funding advances core national security priorities, to include the security and integrity of our nation’s election infrastructure,” the spokesperson said. “Any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent.”

It’s part of a long-running push to exert more federal control over the ballot box. Trump has a long-held belief that there is rampant fraud in American elections, stemming from his loss in 2020. His broad claims that noncitizens are illegally voting in large numbers has led to serious pressure for states to investigate past elections, purge voter rolls and create barriers to mail-in voting.

Several states have challenged Trump’s efforts to change election rules, resulting in a number of high-profile courtroom losses for the administration.

Most recently, a federal judge on Monday blocked the administration’s overhaul of the SAVE database, which the judge said threatened Americans’ right to vote and right to privacy.

The Department of Justice has also had nine of its election-related cases dismissed, all brought by states that refuse to comply with requests to turn over voter rolls. And a federal court blocked Trump’s attempts in March to change federal rules to require voters to show a passport or a similar document to cast their ballot.

In Congress, Trump has also spent months pushing the passage of the SAVE America Act, a voter-identification bill that could potentially complicate the voting process for several groups: married women, military members serving overseas, Native Americans living on tribal land and the elderly.

But the SAVE America Act has sputtered out in the Senate, leading to months of Republican recriminations that have repeatedly thrown a wrench into congressional business. A version of the bill passed the House in February, but opposition from a slate of Republican holdouts — including Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis — has effectively killed the measure.

“The facts on the ground are very clear. There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster, and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday. “Those are just hard realities, and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”

Without the support of Republican senators, Trump is growing more desperate to make sweeping changes to election administration ahead of this year’s midterms.

The cycle is especially vital for the Democratic Party, which sees an opportunity to flip the House of Representatives in its favor this November.

Trump has warned Republicans that if they lose control of the House, Democratic lawmakers will move to impeach him. Some Democrats have signaled that they are looking into the possibility as well.

“He’s done a million impeachable things, so I don’t want to be too coy about this, but I do think it’s an important tactical question,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who many think is a shoo-in for the Democratic whip position should the party regain power, told CNN’s “Inside Politics” on Sunday.