A federal judge in Massachusetts struck down major sections of a Trump administration executive order  that would have restricted mail-in ballots through the U.S. Postal Service and required states to adopt federally approved voter lists.

The ruling Thursday from Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts found those parts of the order were unconstitutional, while declaring another section that directs federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute noncompliant state and local officials legally nonbinding.

Talwani wrote that the U.S. Constitution empowers States and Congress in different roles but “does not grant the President any specific power over elections.”

While the White House has cited the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Civil Rights-era voting laws as justification, Talwani found those laws do not authorize the government to regulate state voter registration practices.

“Notably, nowhere in HAVA does Congress prescribe who should be included on State voter lists,” Talwani wrote. “Further, neither in HAVA nor any other federal statute does Congress authorize the federal government to create their own voting database. Instead, Congress, consistent with the Constitution, has left that authority to the States alone.”

Talwani also declined to remove President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as named defendants in the suit, rejecting the administration’s argument that the court could not regulate or intrude upon the president’s’ constitutional authority “in the performance of his official duties.”

“Contrary to Defendants assertion, Presidential action is not inherently unreviewable,” Talwani wrote.

The order, issued in March, instructs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be sent to states, most of which have already refused similar Trump administration efforts to control voter registration.. The order instructs the Department of Justice to investigate  and prosecute  state and local election officials who issue  ballots to ineligible voters. 

The order also requires mail-in ballots to be sent in special barcoded envelopes for tracking. Crucially, it demands states provide lists of voters eligible for mail-in voting, and threatens to deny ballots to states that refuse. It also claims the attorney general is entitled to withhold federal funding from noncompliant states.

Talwani found that states have shown they already have a rigorous voter registration and verification process to ensure non-citizens and other ineligible voters aren’t able to vote in U.S. elections, and have laws in place to investigate and prosecute those who do.

Executive branch lawyers argued the order was merely an internal federal directive that does not impedestate authorities. But Talwani noted that states like Connecticut were already pulling staff from critical activities, such as translating election materials required under the Voting Rights Act, to develop compliance plans for the order.

Nearly half of the states in the lawsuit have already purchased mail-in ballots for this election cycle that are out of compliance with the Postal Service’s envelope and design standards.

Despite a string of losses in the courts and Congress, the White House has continued to assert broad authority over the way states and localities administer elections.

The Department of Justice has sued dozens of states to force them to hand over sensitive voter data. In the 10 cases decided so far, states have won every one.

In their opinions, judges cited the executive branch’s lack of inherent authority to create state voter lists. Others accused the DOJ of misusing Civil Rights-era laws designed to protect Black and minority voters,  creating an “unreliable” database that would disenfranchise  legitimate voters.

The Massachusetts ruling comes to the same conclusion, with Talwani writing “it is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling Confirmed Citizen Lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the U.S. citizens residing in every State.”

On Wednesday, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill in an attempt to pressure  congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would implement many of the same changes to U.S. elections. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he considered passage of the bill to be a “National Emergency.”

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A federal court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s national voter database violates federal privacy laws, interferes with Americans’ right to vote, and must be dismantled.

In the ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District Court of Washington D.C. wrote that records reviewed by the court show federal agencies knew that the SAVE voter database violated federal laws like the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, but were “scrambling” to comply with President Trump’s executive order to create a system for mass voter verification.

That pressure resulted in agencies “haphazardly” combining and repurposing the personal information of millions of Americans from different government databases, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable.

“The Court therefore sets aside and vacates the 2025 SAVE modified system and the related notices because they were contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law,” Sooknanan wrote.

The League of Women Voters, its local affiliate groups and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the lawsuit last year. They argued the administration violated privacy laws that restrict the government’s ability to collect or combine private data without congressional authorization.

Sooknanan wrote that the SAVE database violates a prohibition in the Social Security Act against the disclosure of Social Security numbers and other related SSA records as well as substantive and procedural protections in the Privacy Act, which prevent the non-consensual disclosure of certain information both by federal agencies and between federal agencies and require notice and comment.

The court also ruled that SAVE violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the federal government develops regulations and makes official decisions to ensure they’re fair and impartial.

Sooknanan had earlier declined to rule the database illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act, saying the plaintiffs had failed to prove the data would cause  irreparable harm. In her final ruling, she changed course, writing that the states have since run their voter rolls through the federal government’s modified SAVE system, and some voters have been wrongfully identified as non-citizens and had their voter registrations canceled.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

The ruling reinforces longstanding objections from former government officials and privacy experts over the past year, who have said Congress has repeatedly passed privacy laws explicitly to prevent the executive branch from using Americans’ data in ways not proscribed through law. That is what DHS did last year when it took SAVE, a database meant to process government benefits for legal immigrants, and combined it with data from the Social Security Administration and other agencies to create a new massive database of American voters and their citizenship status.

John Davisson, deputy director of enforcement at EPIC, celebrated the decision in a statement, saying the ruling “underscores that government agencies must follow the law, defend privacy and remain accountable to the public they serve.”

 “Today’s decision is a victory for us all. By halting the illegal consolidation of sensitive personal data across federal agencies, the court has safeguarded not only our privacy rights but also the bedrock of our democracy: the right to vote,” said Davisson. 

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Former Mesa County, Colorado election clerk Tina Peters remained unapologetic in her first public interview since her prison sentence was commuted, reiterating many of the same conspiratorial beliefs about elections while vowing to recover her health and fight on in court to have her criminal record expunged.

In an interview with former Trump campaign manager and White House official Steve Bannon, Peters called it a “miracle” that Democratic Governor Polis commuted her sentence and defended him from “the horrible media and haters” who were critical of the move.

Peters said those critics “don’t go after murderers and people like that [Polis] chose to pardon but they go after me, so there is a concern there for my well-being and my safety.”

Although Polis has said that Peters expressed contrition for her crimes prior to the commutation, she complained in her interview with Bannon that the Colorado governor had refused to issue her a full pardon that would remove the conviction from her criminal record, vowing to continue to “fight” the matter in court using leftover legal funds.

“Even though Governor Polis reduced my sentence from nine years to four and a half years, I still have a fight to clear my name and bring the truth of why they came after me the way they did,” Peters said.

Peters was convicted of seven felonies and sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing another person’s identity and using it to break into Mesa County election facilities, turn off the cameras and take voting system data.

Polis’ commutation of Peters sentence, which came after two years of relentless pressure from Trump, was met with cheers from conservative allies and bitter criticism from members of his own party.

The Colorado Democratic Party censured Polis and banned him from participating in future state party events. Incumbent Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., is running to succeed Polis as the Democratic candidate for governor this year, potentially putting him in position to appoint his own successor in the Senate. 

In an interview with CNN, Bennet called the commutation a “terrible decision” and that after announcing it Polis called him to say he would not be interested in the job.

Bennet wasn’t surprised.

“I viewed the decision that he made with respect to Tina Peters as disqualifying, and I think he knows that,” Bennet said.

Following the commutation, Polis has defended his decision, claiming Peters was being punished holding incorrect but constitutionally protected beliefs about election fraud that were unrelated to her actual crimes. He recently showed up to a virtual gathering of Colorado Democrats wearing a piece of tape over his mouth and has predicted the commutation will be looked upon “fondly” in the future.

Reached for comment, Polis’ press office referred CyberScoop to a previous May 15 Facebook post by the governor announcing Peters’ commutation and a follow up Substack blog he posted on Sunday defending the decision.

In his Substack, Polis said he believes Peters committed “real crimes” and deserved her conviction, but also argued that her sentence had become disconnected from her crimes. He pointed to a Colorado Court of Appeals hearing last month that upheld her conviction but ordered her to be resentenced in court as evidence that her sentence was lengthened for her First Amendment protected beliefs.

“Tina Peters should be punished for what she did,” Polis wrote. “She should not receive additional punishment for what she believed or said.” Still trying to figure out what that would look

But many election officials have also publicly stated that Peters committed serious felonies, remains unrepentant for her actions, and that her conspiratorial beliefs played a direct role in motivating her crimes.

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The U.S. Postal Service is moving forward with mail-in ballot restrictions, following a court’s rejection of a request by voting rights groups to immediately block an executive order from President Donald Trump ordering the changes.

A new regulation proposed last Friday seeks to apply “uniform standards for the mailing of absentee ballots to and from voters,” including new ballot envelope standards with unique barcodes, election mail logos and other changes that would allow the federal government unprecedented abilities to track – and halt – the movement of mail-in ballots across the country.

Trump has long argued that mail-in ballots facilitated election fraud in 2020 that cost him the presidency, though election experts, election officials and even some Trump allies have dismissed those claims as baseless.

According to the proposed rule, these changes would allow USPS to follow ballots at a granular and individual level, something critics have said will make it easier for the Trump administration to meddle with their delivery.

“Uniquely serialized [barcodes] facilitate the tracking of individual pieces of Ballot Mail to and from individual voters as the barcodes are scanned on the Postal Service’s mail processing equipment,” the proposed rule states.

Trump’s executive order, issued in March, would require states to send the federal government a list of all voters eligible to vote by mail prior to USPS mailing them ballots. The federal government has indicated that it plans to cross-check those voters with data from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

The proposed rule says that after states submit their list of eligible mail-in and absentee voters, USPS will “compile” the information and then provide a “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List” back to them. The Postal Service said it “would not change the information provided by states” when compiling the return list. 

Further, the proposed regulation also includes new “verification” procedures that could potentially place USPS above states in deciding which voters are eligible to receive ballots. This would include having the USPS “confirm that a state submitted a list consistent with the conditions laid out in the proposed rule, and that the outbound ballot mail, and thus the blank ballot that could be returned by mail, is destined to individuals on the list, by checking the barcodes.”

The rule claims that USPS “would not verify whether individuals should be included” on state lists and that states retain “full control over the content of that list.”

However, the White House’s March order also instructed the Department of Justice to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local officials or any others involved in the administration of federal elections who issue federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a federal election.

That order was immediately challenged through lawsuits in multiple federal courts, where many of the White House’s plans to take greater control of elections have fallen short. That includes a lawsuit brought by Democrats and nonprofits in Washington.

While Judge Carl Nichols declined to halt the order, that decision was made on strictly procedural grounds, and he indicated the plaintiffs could be in a better position to prove their case later.

“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote. “Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur. Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”

A separate federal lawsuit challenging the order in Massachusetts remains ongoing.

Alexandra Chandler, director of Free and Fair Elections at nonprofit Protect Democracy, noted that USPS and the federal government have no constitutional authority to regulate how states administer their elections, including micromanaging voter roll maintenance.

While the proposed regulation claims USPS will not overrule states on a voter’s eligibility to receive mail-in or absentee ballots, it’s also peppered with caveats and exceptions that could allow USPS to do just that if they determine it is part of their obligation to uphold federal laws or assist law enforcement investigations.

The rule states that USPS “assumes no responsibility for any outbound ballot mailing” until its accepted into the mail, and is “not responsible for service delays” whenever preparation or entry standards aren’t met.

Chandler called the proposed rule a clear attempt to disrupt election processes, sow distrust in elections among voters and lay “the groundwork to disrupt ballot delivery in real time, create fodder for false investigations and prosecutions, and to contest the midterms after the fact.”

“The administration is trying to turn postal workers into de facto election auditors with the power to decide whether people’s votes get counted while at the same time building an entire federal voter data and technical infrastructure it has no legal authority to create,” Chandler said.

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Cybersecurity threats to the 2026 midterm elections are targeting the accounts and platforms that campaigns, donors and voters use to communicate, according to a security report released Monday by Check Point Software Technologies.

So far in this election cycle, threats are not aimed at voting machines or ballot-counting systems. Instead, threat actors are going after the email accounts, websites and fundraising platforms that election organizations depend on.

Jeremy Fuchs, a campaign manager for Check Point, told CyberScoop that the report’s core findings reflect a broader trend in cybersecurity: Bad actors are using AI to make their attacks larger and more effective.

“The barrier to entry is lower and the quality is so much higher than it was three years ago, 10 years ago, that everything is going to look more realistic and it’s going to be more effective at accomplishing whatever goals [attackers] have,” he said.

Email remains the easiest way for hackers to perpetuate election-related schemes. Check Point found that 82% of malicious attacks arrive through email, where threat actors covertly trick users into handing over their passwords for major fundraising sites. Approximately 9,500 stolen passwords were tied to ActBlue, which collects donations for Democratic candidates. Approximately 6,500 were linked to WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform.

Fuchs noted that this information may not be directly used for election-related schemes, yet could be leveraged for opportunistic follow-on attempts at accessing other accounts.

“Whenever an exposure like this happens, whether it’s with a political site or not, oftentimes it’s saved for later,” he said. “If I have your email and password, if I have your phone number, I can just start an attack, a simple phishing attack that has nothing to do with the election right now.”

Threat actors are also registering many new websites with election-related names. In January, about 1,300 new websites included the word “election” and about 4,010 included the word “vote.” These websites can be used for phishing scams, where hackers trick people into giving up their passwords by pretending to be legitimate election organizations.

Fuchs noted that not every website may turn out to be malicious, but the speed with which these sites have been established — especially when legitimate campaign sites have been running years before an election — has led researchers to believe that the majority will be used for nefarious purposes. 

“If you’re spinning up these websites very quickly and at scale, there’s a reason for it,” he said. 

Misinformation and manipulated content present another layer of concern, especially as AI-generated political content has become increasingly visible in the 2026 cycle. Earlier this month, OpenAI rolled out a suite of tools and safeguards that’s meant to provide a layer of security for this particular election cycle.

Fuchs said this AI-powered manipulation is only going to grow as we get closer to Election Day, and as the models get better, so too will actors’ ability to deceive people with fake content. 

“It’s really hard to make sense of these things when the AI, and the attacks, have just become so good,” he said. “It was hard when they weren’t good. So now imagine how much harder it’s going to be when it is good, and it’s continuing to get better and better.” 

Fuchs warned that the speed at which AI-powered election threats are evolving presents a challenge that extends beyond technical defenses, saying that the true challenge lies in a threat landscape that’s changing faster than public understanding can keep pace.

“There’s so much more that we as a society can truly fathom,” he told CyberScoop. Generative AI “is moving so fast. It’s getting so good. And if we’re not having those conversations about, ‘hey, this is how things might change,’ all this stuff is just going to continue to get more difficult and more difficult. And it’s going to flare at these inflection points, whether an election is kind of the perfect place for it, because there’s just so much at stake for so many people.”

You read the full report on Check Point’s website. 

Update, 6/2/2026, 4:30 p.m.: This story has been amended to further clarify how threat actors are obtaining passwords for campaign donation sites.

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OpenAI on Wednesday hailed its plans to safeguard information and aid cybersecurity defenders in the 2026 midterm elections, including work to combat deepfakes and other forms of artificial intelligence misuse. 

The announcement builds on commitments from major tech companies in 2024, including OpenAI, to protect elections from AI-infused election interference — efforts that some thought weren’t enough. Government agencies, non-governmental institutes and others have increasingly warned about AI’s ability to have a negative impact on elections even as they advertise its potential for good.

OpenAI’s plan has five planks: spreading reliable information about voting and election results, helping with cybersecurity, watermarking deepfakes, enforcing policies that ban users from deploying its tools for election interference, and weeding out political bias in its models.

OpenAI highlighted that it has made its Codex Security agentic framework and Trusted Access for Cyber framework available to election officials, and was briefing the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors on its tools.

“This is an important moment for cyber defenders across industries, and we believe AI plays a critical role in hardening digital infrastructure — including systems that support elections,” the company said. “OpenAI is committed to building resilience across the infrastructure stack, including in ways that support election execution.”

Some elements of OpenAI’s plans aren’t new so much as it’s taking pieces from other announcements and putting them together in one, such as reiterating last week’s partnership with SynthID to add watermarks to images generated with ChatGPT to assist in evaluating whether something is real or a deepfake.

One new element of Wednesday’s announcement is that OpenAI has struck a partnership with the Associated Press on sharing election data.

One election security expert welcomed the OpenAI announcement.

“Given the prevalence and amplification of disinformation about our elections, sometimes coming from leaders in high office, it’s always a good thing when platforms and services embrace their obligation to deliver accurate information to users,” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told CyberScoop. “It appears OpenAI is doing that with this announcement. I hope other platforms embrace this responsibility as well.”

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Colorado Governor Jared Polis has commuted the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County election clerk who was sentenced last year to serve nine years in state prison for carrying out one of the most serious election-related data breaches in U.S. history.

Peters was arrested in 2021, accused of abusing her position as clerk to break into Mesa County election facilities under false pretenses, steal election and voting machine data and share them with allies of President Donald Trump in a quixotic quest to prove he won the 2020 presidential election.

Peters has served less than a year and a half of a nine-year prison sentence handed down last year by a judge after she was convicted of using another Mesa County resident’s identity to enter county election facilities, where she stole voting data from the 2020 election and shared it with Trump allies online.

Peters hoped the data would show that Trump actually won the state in 2020. It did not. Election and cybersecurity experts have said Peters’ actions were a serious breach of election data, while Mesa County officials say it has cost them millions of dollars to deal with the legal fallout while Peters ran for higher office in 2022.

In handing down her nine-year prison sentence, Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters a “charlatan” and deserved a longer punishment because “I’m convinced you’d do it all over again.”

But for months, Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis has hinted at pardoning or commuting her sentence,  claiming that it was overly harsh for her crimes.

Trump has attempted to pressure state officials to pardon or commute Peters’ sentence. Because Peters was convicted of state crimes, she could be freed by a federal pardon alone, though Trump tried that as well.

In the past, Polis has claimed that he would only grant clemency to Peters if she showed remorse for her crimes. However, Peters’ own community and neighbors in Mesa County testified at her sentencing hearing last year that she has been largely unrepentant even after she was arrested and charged.

A review of dozens of Polis pardons and commutations as Colorado Governor by Denver news affiliate KUSA shows that Polis has never previously pardoned or commuted the sentence of a prisoner who did not openly express remorse for their crimes. Polis claimed in an interview with the outlet that Peters expressed regret.

Polis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The Trump administration released a legal opinion outlining the legal rationale behind its nationwide voter data collection efforts, justifying an aggressive federal role in vetting voter eligibility, a position courts have repeatedly rejected in related litigation.

The memo, released Tuesday by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, concedes that while election administration is “primarily the purview of the states,” the administration’s efforts are a lawful exercise of federal oversight. 

The Justice Department grounds that rationale in a provision of the 1960 Civil Rights Act, requiring election officials to keep voter records for 22 months after an election so it can investigate potential civil rights violations. Under the memo’s reading, that retention rule also gives the Attorney General authority to obtain copies of those records “upon demand in writing.” 

The memo also cites several other federal election laws – like the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act – as support for the executive branch’s efforts. It argues that those statutes have long required states to modernize and secure voting systems (including accessibility upgrades) and maintain accurate voter rolls by removing ineligible voters.

The memo further argues that the potential presence of one or more non-citizens on state voter rolls is enough to trigger the federal government’s nationwide data collection and sharing efforts with immigration authorities.

“Because illegal aliens are ineligible to vote, these generally applicable laws are also implicated by an illegal alien’s presence on a state’s voter rolls,” the memo states.

Multiple federal courts have come to the opposite conclusion, dismissing half a dozen lawsuits from DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security that would force states to comply. Further, states have repeatedly confirmed through recounts, audits, investigations and lawsuits that the number of non-citizens registered to vote (and who end up actually casting ballots) in U.S. elections is infinitesimal.

David Becker, executive director of the Center of Election Innovation and Research, noted in a post on BlueSky that “6 courts, including 2 judges appointed by the current president, think this ‘opinion’ isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” Becker, a former DOJ senior trial attorney in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division, has consistently argued that the executive branch and White House have no legal or constitutional role to play in vetting state voter registration. 

Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Secretary of State for Vermont, gave a similar reaction when CyberScoop reached out for comment.

“It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on,” Hanzas said in a statement. “Or the electrons it takes to store and transmit 41 pages of fantasy.”

Election officials have largely resisted the federal government’s demands. Earlier this year, West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner told CyberScoop he had no intentions of handing over more information than is already publicly available.

“If they want it, they can have it: $500 dollars for [anyone to buy] the statewide list, but they’re not getting personal information,” Warner said in a January interview. “State law says we’re not sharing that and my job is to carry out the law laid out by the West Virginia legislature.”

The inability of the federal government to point to serious evidence of mass voter fraud or non-citizen voting has led states to rebuff attempts to collect sensitive data on every voter in their state, including names, social security numbers, home addresses, voter history and other details.

The administration says it intends to cross-check state data against immigration records, share that data with DHS and immigration enforcement agencies and ultimately create its own list of eligible voters. An executive order issued by the White House earlier this year sought to deny federal funding to states that did not accept voter lists from the federal government and directed the Attorney General to investigate state election officials for voter roll discrepancies. Voting groups have challenged the order’s legality, and a previous election-related executive order was largely ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

The administration has sued dozens of states who have refused to hand such data over, though it has yet to convince courts of the merit. One judge called the administration’s efforts “unprecedented and illegal” and accused the administration of twisting the Civil Rights Act and other federal laws that were passed “to protect hard won civil rights victories allowing access to the ballot box” in order to obtain unfettered access to state voter data.

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The Senate’s top Democrat called on the Department of Homeland Security Friday to work closely with state and local governments to defend against artificial intelligence-strengthened hacks. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to make sure state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) governments aren’t left behind as AI models advance, posing new hacking threats.

“There is a race between cybersecurity defenders and AI-enabled hacking — and there’s no time to waste,” Schumer wrote.

“While the White House has reportedly begun hosting meetings about its internal security priorities following these frontier AI cyber breakthroughs, it is glaringly obvious that the Department of Homeland Security needs an updated plan for coordinating these efforts with [state, local, tribal and territorial] governments and implementing procedures to reduce the risk of disruptive cyberattacks enabled by frontier AI,” he stated.

Schumer said he was worried about the capabilities of DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to carry out that coordination, given federal funding cuts to the Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center, and the lack of a Senate-confirmed CISA director for the duration of the second Trump administration.

Schumer wants a plan from DHS by July 1 on coordinating with state and local governments on a range of questions, such as how to identify top AI talent, carry out rapid patching and conduct risk assessments.

“AI is changing the cyber battlefield fast — and we cannot let hackers get there first,” Schumer said in comments accompanying the letter. “Hospitals, power grids, water systems, schools, elections, and emergency services cannot be left exposed while criminal gangs and state-backed hackers race to exploit new AI tools. DHS must immediately help states and localities find and fix vulnerabilities before Americans are hit with outages, disruptions, and attacks that could put lives and livelihoods at risk.”

CISA is using AI to help on the defensive side internally, agency officials recently said.

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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned Social Security Administration chief Frank Bisignano that any follow-through on President Donald Trump’s executive order creating a new database of U.S. voters using agency data would be viewed by Democrats as a conscious choice on the part of SSA officials to participate in “blatant voter suppression.”

“Facilitating Donald Trump’s directive to create a flawed voter database would be willing participation in blatant voter suppression ahead of consequential midterm elections,” Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a letter to Bisignano sent Friday.

The executive order, issued March 31, directs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be transmitted to states, most of which have already rejected previous Trump administration efforts to collect voter data or dictate voter registration lists. Another section of the order would direct the postmaster general to develop a similar state-by-state list of voters eligible to vote by mail.

“The clear intent of this executive order is to undermine vote-by-mail and disenfranchise eligible voters,” Wyden wrote. “SSA has a duty to ensure its data is not misused as part of this effort.”

Wyden echoed numerous state officials and election experts in calling the Trump administration’s executive order an unconstitutional encroachment by the executive branch on election authorities that the U.S. Constitution clearly delineates to Congress and the states.

The White House’s executive order has already been challenged in lawsuits from states officials and voting rights advocates, and a previous, less ambitious executive order issued last year that attempted to assert similar executive branch authorities was largely overturned by U.S. courts.

Wyden’s missive essentially asks Bisignano to consider whether following the Trump administration’s order would conflict with his responsibility to safeguard Social Security records under laws like the Privacy Act and the Social Security Act.

He asks how the agency will ensure it’s not disenfranchising voters, and whether it sought permission from citizens to use their Social Security data for a federal elections list, noting that the agency’s own regulations limit the sharing of Social Security data to “routine use for determining eligibility or amount of benefit in a health or income maintenance program.”

Expanding the agency’s role to elections — an area it has no background or experience in — would be in direct conflict with those rules.

“Simply put, sharing Americans’ personal data to DHS for creating a ‘state citizenship’ list does not meet this standard,” Wyden wrote.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that purports to limit mail-in voting, though critics say the move will almost certainly be challenged in court on constitutional grounds.

The order instructs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be transmitted to states, most of which have already rejected previous Trump administration efforts to collect voter data or dictate voter registration lists. The White House order instructs the Department of Justice to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of state and local officials or any others involved in the administration of federal elections who issue federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a federal election.  

The order also directs the postmaster general to issue new proposed regulations that require mail-in ballots to be mailed in special envelopes that include barcodes for tracking. Crucially, it asks states ahead of time whether they intend to submit a list of voters eligible to vote by mail, and attempts to assert the authority to deny sending ballots to states that do not participate. It also claims the attorney general is entitled to withhold federal funding from noncompliant states.

The Trump administration’s previous efforts to aggressively assert executive branch authority over elections have been rebuffed by courts, with judges noting the U.S. Constitution explicitly empowers states and Congress to set the time, manner and place for elections. 

The order justifies White House involvement by claiming it has “an unavoidable duty” under Article II of the Constitution to maintain confidence in election outcomes by preventing violations of criminal law. But numerous post-election audits, investigations and recounts have consistently confirmed over decades that criminal non-citizen voting is infinitesimally rare in U.S. elections, and for the small number that did, most turn out to be accidents or decades-old administrative errors.

Criticism from election officials, experts and Democrats in Congress was swift.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, who has resisted demands by the DOJ to hand over state voter data, predicted the order “will meet the same fate” as previous executive orders in being struck down by courts. Other secretaries of state have issued similar statements rejecting the order’s constitutionality. 

“Our office has helped stop his actions before and we are now exploring our legal options to stop this new order from taking effect,” Simon said in a statement to CyberScoop.

He also stumped for mail-in voting, calling it a secure, trustworthy and convenient way for citizens to exercise their rights to vote. Local election officials “track every ballot” sent by mail and have a range of checks and safeguards to ensure they’re sent to only eligible voters and that voters can only cast one ballot.

“Absentee voters who choose to vote by mail must provide a matching ID number, sign their signature envelope, and have a witness sign their ballot envelope before returning their ballot,” Simon said. “All of that information is tracked digitally by election administrators. Voters are able to track the status of their ballot using our online ballot tracker tool. Any attempt to register or cast a ballot while ineligible is referred for investigation and potential prosecution.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., called the order a “blatant, unconstitutional abuse of power” and said he expected “immediate” lawsuits challenging its legality.

“The President and the Department of Homeland Security have no authority to commandeer federal elections or direct the independent Postal Service to undermine mail and absentee voting that nearly 50 million Americans relied on in 2024,” Padilla said in a statement. “A decade of lies about election fraud does not change the Constitution.”

David Becker, executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the administration’s latest mandates are so far outside the constitutional limits of the executive branch they will almost certainly be halted through lawsuits. 

“Some may freak out about this, but honestly, this is hilarious,” Becker wrote on Bluesky. “It’s clearly unconstitutional, will be blocked immediately, and the only thing it will accomplish is to make liberal lawyers wealthier. He might as well sign an EO banning gravity.”

However, while lower courts have consistently struck down previous orders and lawsuits from the White House, election experts have expressed concerns that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority — which has clashed with lower courts over the Trump administration’s constitutional authority — appeared receptive to the administration’s position in a recent oral argument.

Alexandra Chandler, director of the Free and Fair Elections program at nonprofit Protect Democracy, said in a statement that the White House order “is more like an attempted executive override” of state authority over elections.

“Meant to solve for a problem that exists only in the false rhetoric of the Trump administration and its political fortunes, the [order] is a classic example of their playbook to deceive the American people and disrupt the election process in order to deny any future results that don’t suit them,” Chandler said.

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A year-long effort to strengthen cybersecurity and modernize tech at U.S. intelligence agencies has led to policy standards for using AI to bolster cyber defenses, a shared repository of all apps that have undergone a cybersecurity review and more, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Thursday.

An unclassified summary of cyber and tech modernization work under the first year of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s stewardship states that the office has expanded the automation of threat hunting across intelligence community networks. (The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency conducts threat hunting across federal civilian agencies.)

The ODNI also has developed a zero-trust strategy that shifts “to a data-centric security model that protects information regardless of location or network,” according to the summary.

“Over the past year, we have taken meaningful steps to begin fulfilling that responsibility through the largest IC-wide technology investment and modernization effort in history,” Gabbard said in a news release. “President Trump’s Intelligence Community is moving faster and more decisively on cybersecurity modernization and investments in IT than ever before, delivering stronger defenses, greater efficiency, and real cost savings for the American people.”   

It constitutes the first significant cybersecurity announcement out of the office under Gabbard and the second Trump administration.

While the year-long effort began before the recent release of a national cyber strategy, the ODNI initiatives reflect many of its goals, including better protection of federal networks, advancing artificial intelligence for defensive purposes and going on offense against cyber adversaries.

The ODNI directed its National Counterintelligence and Security Center “to proactively combat foreign intelligence actors seeking to engage in cyber-attacks against U.S. interests,” according to the summary. 

The idea of an intelligence community repository of cybersecurity authorizations is to save both time and money, as it would allow agencies to capitalize on the testing of apps that other agencies have done without having to repeat them. 

On AI, the ODNI is “developing the policy framework, governance, and standards necessary to accelerate AI adoption for cybersecurity and other critical technology,” the summary states.

“Protecting our nation’s most sensitive information from those who seek to exploit it, while making sure our intelligence professionals have the tools and access they need to do their jobs, is not optional. It is essential to our national security,” Gabbard said. 

Gabbard’s appearance earlier this year during an FBI search of an elections office in Georgia has drawn congressional scrutiny, an appearance she has defended in part by citing her office’s role in coordinating and analyzing intelligence related to cybersecurity. Gabbard’s own personal cybersecurity practices prior to taking the job of DNI have also raised questions.

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A California county sheriff and Republican contender for the state’s gubernatorial race has seized 650,000 physical ballots from Riverside County, saying they were part of an investigation into election fraud tied to redistricting wars.

State officials and election security experts say that the underlying allegations are spurious and local law enforcement do not have the authority to unilaterally investigate or validate election results.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said at a news conference Friday that he intended to conduct a hand count of the ballots, which were tied to elections last November, and “compare that result to the total votes recorded.”

In a March 6 letter, California Attorney General Rob Bonta directed Bianco to pause the investigation until the state could review “the factual and legal basis” for the probe and seizure.

Based on an initial review of the warrants and affidavits in the case, Bonta wrote that his “office has serious concerns as to whether probable cause existed to support the issuance of the warrants, and whether your office presented the magistrate with all available evidence as required by law.” 

While Bonta’s letter does not describe the underlying content of the search warrants, it points to a public presentation made by a resident at a Feb. 10 Riverside County Registrar of Voters meeting that “addresses the alleged vote discrepancy that appears to be the basis of your investigation.”

In that meeting, an individual identifying himself as “Errol” — wearing a “Trump 2028” hat — alleged the council had participated in local, state and federal election fraud.

At several points, the individual said he relied on Google for information on individuals and companies he was accusing of receiving improper payments. At another point, he claimed the Riverside County auditor would not disclose the purpose behind thousands of pages of county payments, before saying “you’re not getting the files, I got them put away.”

“We have a lot of problems, you guys. You’ve committed serious fraud here, forever,” the individual alleged, adding that he hoped the members of the council were imprisoned.

Bonta accused Bianco of “flagrantly violating my directives” under the California State Constitution, and threatened court action should he proceed with the investigation and hand recount.

The act by Bianco — who is running third in the state’s open primary for governor this month, per an Emerson College poll — is the second such seizure of ballots to take place this election cycle, following the FBI’s raid of Fulton County, Georgia’s election office.

Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CyberScoop that the election allegedly being investigated wasn’t a close race. Further, like virtually every other election, candidates or parties have opportunities to contest irregularities or results, including automatic recounts or recounts paid by candidates or campaigns — along with state courts that regularly adjudicate questions of election outcomes.

“It’s important for people to know none of those processes involve someone coming in and haphazardly coming in and grabbing the ballots,” she said, adding: “I worry if it happens closer to an actual election what it could do to interfere with it.”

Ramachandran said that by seizing physical ballots, which she called “the gold standard” we use for determining ground-level truth about voter intent, Bianco was disrupting the chain of custody that is one of the key processes designed to give voters trust in their elections.

“It should just be a really high bar, not just, ‘I’m suspicious, I want to do a fishing expedition,’” she said. “That’s not enough to have someone who doesn’t have any experience in counting ballots or keeping them safe [to] just come in and grab all that stuff.”

Bonta’s suggestion that Bianco did not materially inform the courts echoes what Fulton County officials alleged in their own lawsuit, which accused the FBI of presenting the judge with a “flagrantly misleading narrative” that omitted key evidence, undermining the government’s basis for investigating the 2020 ballots. 

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