Power Grab/Fire anyone who can stop him
The Homeland Security Secretary says election officials who refuse to let DHS “scrub” voter rolls could face “prison time”
On July 17, 2026 Markwayne Mullin tied federal election funding to state cooperation, citing a DHS report alleging more than 250,000 noncitizens on rolls in four states.
What happened
On July 17, 2026, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that states must let DHS “scrub” their voter rolls to keep federal election funding. He cited a DHS report alleging more than 250,000 noncitizens on the rolls in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. The day before, Trump had made the claim in a primetime address.
Mullin said that if election officials were given information and “chose not to” act, “those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.” DHS’s letters to the states were more careful. Across the four states it had data matches for 118,003 of the 256,463 it claimed.
The states disputed the figures, and Nevada found that 185 registrants DHS later cited were all citizens. On September 30, DHS renewed its threat to withhold states’ homeland security grants. No election official had been charged by October 9.
Who benefited
Trump and Mullin kept the 250,000 figure in circulation for months before any letter was made public. Republican state officials who wanted to resume checks through the SAVE database also gained, after the Supreme Court stayed a ruling against it on September 25.
Who wanted something
Mullin delivered the threat and signed the letters, and the White House has sought since 2025 to turn SAVE into a national voter-citizenship audit and make states hand over their rolls. The threats followed the department’s inability to get the data through the courts.
Who lost out
Election officials were threatened with prison for declining to use a tool a federal judge had found unlawful on June 22, and citizens the tool wrongly flags lost out too. Texas voters who had proven citizenship at the DMV were marked as noncitizens, and one plaintiff had her registration cancelled without notice.
Why it matters
A cabinet secretary threatened prison for election officials who will not use an error-prone federal database. The inflated numbers show the purpose: to make purges look necessary and resistance look criminal. The Supreme Court’s September 25 stay let officials resume using SAVE.
Sources NBC NewsPoliticoU.S. Senate (Slotkin/Padilla/Peters et al.) (primary)Politico