Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, doubled down on Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated election claims on Friday amid his agency’s efforts to support the president’s agenda. Trump used a memo compiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the basis of many of his unsubstantiated claims on Thursday during his televised primetime address to the nation.
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Mullin claimed that DHS identified “250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada”. However, election experts, including David Becker, the executive director of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the administration has not been “transparent about the methodology” in reaching that number.
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Mullin also claimed that 28,000 noncitizens have been identified on the voter rolls of the more than 20 states that have “proactively” worked with the administration on the Save program – a tool implemented by DHS to verify citizenship status. Becker noted that this number sounds plausible, but it is only 0.04% of the 68 million eligible voters in those states. “One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts is they don’t lie,” Mullin told reporters today.
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Mullin also repeated many of the president’s baseless conspiracy theories that he pushed on Thursday evening – particularly that voting machines are unsafe and insecure. This, despite election officials and cybersecurity experts routinely underscoring that these machines are not connected to the internet and undergo scrupulous testing before each election to make sure they haven’t been compromised.
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Mullin also repeated his threat of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency grant funding to states that don’t work to “secure” elections. “If they’re not willing to do it, it should raise serious questions. It’s not that hard. This isn’t a partisan issue,” the homeland security secretary said. The federal government has previously sought access to state voter rolls, which contain the personal data of millions of Americans. States have refused to turn the data over, resulting in a number of lawsuits that the administration has lost.
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In other news, Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own, affecting national security and financial markets. The move announced on Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news first from top Truth Social contributors so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates. It follows similar offers of paid access on rival platforms, although with one key difference: the most popular Truth Social poster is the president himself, and, as the biggest shareholder of the publicly traded parent company, he would benefit directly.
Key events
Further to our earlier post, DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin has shared on social media four letters he has penned to the secretaries of state for California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
His department allegedly found “over 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four state”, Mullin claims. As Shrai noted earlier, election experts have said the Trump administration has not been “transparent about the methodology” in reaching that number.
In each letter, Mullin writes that his department’s preliminary review found a number of registrants in that state “for whom the name, date of birth, address, and social security number match a non-citizen in our files”.
“The most efficient way to ensure accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification,” he says, adding that DHS has resources available to assist the state in verifying the individuals’ identities.
This methodology is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Mullin says himself, there hasn’t been any verification yet on the identities of those people the review has supposedly identified. Secondly, being registered to vote and actually voting are two separate things; someone might be registered but not actually cast a ballot in a given election. And, as citizenship status can change over time, his department would need to prove the individuals were not citizens at the time of actually casting a ballot. In sum, what Mullin has said so far isn’t sufficient evidence that illegal voting has taken place in these numbers.
Appointed senator Darline Graham, the sister of the late Lindsey Graham, indicated to the White House yesterday that she may be interested in running for a full Senate term in South Carolina, Semafor reports, citing three people familiar with internal party deliberations.
Graham was appointed to serve for the rest of the year after the sudden death of her brother last Saturday. Donald Trump encouraged South Carolina governor Henry McMaster to appoint her to the seat, she was sworn in on Tuesday and, by yesterday, she had already joined with Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal to introduce the Russia sanctions bill her late brother worked on in the months preceding his death.
It’s unclear if she would have Trump’s support for such a move, despite his enthusiasm for her to serve as “interim senator” as a “fabulous tribute to Lindsey Graham”.
As Semafor notes, “picking Darline Graham as an interim senator was supposed to allow the administration more time to decide on a possible GOP primary endorsement in South Carolina. It was also designed to free whomever Trump chose from the distraction of campaigning for the full-term nomination.
“If Darline Graham runs, she’ll have to juggle Senate duties with a lightning-quick 11 August Republican primary, and a potential runoff two weeks later if no candidate wins a majority. However, if she does become the GOP pick, it could help House speaker Mike Johnson by preventing a House member from winning the seat and shrinking his margin later this year.”
US hits civilian infrastructure as it expands strikes against Iran
William Christou
The US hit bridges, energy facilities and a key Iranian port on Friday, expanding its aerial campaign against Iran, and prompting swift Iranian strikes against US allies in the region.
US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state TV reported. The bridges were a key transit point for Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port. Further US airstrikes brought down a tower in Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman that the US military claimed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used to facilitate attacks on vessels in the strait of Hormuz. The US also targeted key electrical infrastructure and Iranshahr airport.
Iran’s energy ministry told citizens to reduce their use of electricity and air conditioning after the power grid came under strain due to US strikes on energy facilities. The ministry said areas in the south were experiencing “extreme heat and attacks on power infrastructure” as temperatures in Iran soared.
Strikes on civilian infrastructure not being used for military purposes could constitute a war crime, human rights experts have said.
Renewed US strikes had killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 in Iran by Friday morning, said a spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, Hossein Kermanpour.
Donald Trump has said his administration is searching for a “vandal proof material” following damage he continues to allege was inflicted upon the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.
“The Reflecting Pool, so badly damaged by Deranged Vandals, has been emptied as the massive slash gets repaired. We got it through the great July Fourth Weekend. What kind of animals would do such a thing?” the president wrote on Truth Social. “We are looking for a Vandal Proof material, but such a thing should not have been necessary. The Scum in Court will hopefully be prosecuted to the MAX.”
There have been multiple arrests in relation to the alleged vandalism of the reflecting pool, with Trump claiming repeatedly last month, without evidence, that “they took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250-ft-long [though he also claimed it was 300ft and then 350ft long] gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete,” and that “they also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the pool”.
The cost of his renovation of the DC landmark – including painting the bottom “American flag blue” – ballooned to over $16m as he rushed its completion to coincide with the Fourth of July. But within days of the project’s initial completion last month, the water was swiftly beset by algal blooms which turned the water green again and the new coating on the pool’s bottom surface began peeling away. It’s now grey, for anyone keeping track.
Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals for the peeling paint, though critics allege it’s the result of shoddy repair work.
Court documents show that the National Park Service reported to the US park police a 9 June incident in which a sharp knife or razor was said to have been used to cut the pool’s new liner.
Former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn pleaded not guilty last week in DC superior court to deliberately damaging the reflecting pool. Hearn has said he reached inside the pool to examine the peeled sealant and let go of a chunk of it when he was told to do so by a park worker.
His attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided the case as an abuse of prosecutorial power and maintain he is being scapegoated for the poor job done fixing up the reflecting pool.
At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanours for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the pool, court records show. All three pleaded not guilty during initial court appearances.
Aisha Down
Donald Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by the prominent Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young, the Guardian can reveal.
The intended grants, revealed in US government documents, are part of a package of support for European groups viewed favourably by the Trump administration. Some former US officials have criticised the funding as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics.
The documents reviewed by the Guardian set out details of the grants for the first time. They include $7m for 878, a “leading British and American thinktank” devoted to “the rediscovery of our ancient culture” and “ending mass immigration”.
The 878 group lists its founding directors as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former minister of state for Brexit opportunities, and his former special adviser Dr Radomir Tylecote, who has appeared on short-lived former prime minister Liz Truss’ YouTube show. During his appearance, he claimed: “We are not a functioning democracy at this point … it’s a worse system than in the United States.”
According to the document, the funding is justified by 878’s “unique role in the United Kingdom as … a dedicated nonpartisan organisation focused on advancing fundamental freedoms”.
Mullin threatens states that refuse Trump’s election demands
Mullin also repeated his threat of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency grant funding to states that don’t work to “secure” elections.
“If they’re not willing to do it, it should raise serious questions. It’s not that hard. This isn’t a partisan issue,” the homeland security secretary said.
This also comes after the Trump justice department sent letters to election officials in every state threatening officials with potential criminal charges if noncitizens vote.
The federal government has previously sought access to state voter rolls, which contain the personal data of millions of Americans. States have refused to turn the data over, resulting in a number of lawsuits that the administration has lost.
Mullin repeated many of the president’s baseless conspiracy theories that he pushed on Thursday evening – particularly that voting machines are unsafe and insecure. This, despite election officials and cybersecurity experts routinely underscoring that these machines are not connected to the internet and undergo scrupulous testing before each election to make sure they haven’t been compromised.
“We know for sure that our foreign adversaries, not our allies, foreign adversaries have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines,” Mullin said, appearing to repeat the president’s claims that the CIA obtained reporting of “a specific plot by the Maduro regime” in Venezuela” to “digitally rig their own country’s elections in 2020”.
However, the vulnerability involved voting technology used in Venezuela by Smartmatic and did not extend to the US, according to the CIA analysis. Claims that Venezuela’s leadership controls electronic voting systems worldwide – including those used in the 2020 U.S. election – are part of a long‑running conspiracy theory and are not supported by credible evidence.
On Friday, Mullin said, again without evidence, that rivals can “change voter registration and your vote”.
“There’s not a question. It’s not even for debate,” he said.
Mullin holds press conference about election security after Trump address
Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin is now holding a press conference to discuss his department’s alleged findings about election security. Donald Trump used the review compiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as the basis of many of his unsubstantiated claims on Thursday during his televised address to the nation.
“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, after the president’s speech was widely criticized for revealing no new information about the safety and security of the US elections, despite claiming that system falls “catastrophically short” of “greatness”.
Mullin claimed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified “250,000 non-citizens registered to vote in California, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada”. However, election experts, including David Becker, said the administration has not been “transparent about the methodology” in reaching that number.
On Thursday, several state officials from the states that Mullin mentioned responded to the administration’s claims. Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s Republican secretary of state, said that voters in the Keystone state “must take steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot, including providing proper identification every time they register to vote, vote by mail, or vote at a new polling place.”
He added: “All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.”
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom also shot back at the numbers compiled by DHS.
“California law is clear: You MUST be a U.S. citizen to vote state and federal elections,” the California governor’s office wrote on X. “Voter fraud is EXTREMELY RARE – and almost always committed by U.S. citizens.”
And in comments reported by the New York Times, Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state said during a news conference today that when it comes to the 2026 elections, “our biggest threat is not foreign adversaries, it’s a federal adversary.” She added: “It’s the White House, it’s the weaponization of the federal government against us.”
This morning, the homeland security secretary also claimed that 28,000 non-citizens have been identified on the voter rolls of more than 20 states that have “proactively” worked with the administration on the Save program –a stool implemented by DHS to verify citizenship status.
Becker noted that this number sounds plausible, but it is only 0.04% of the 68 million eligible voters in those states.
“One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts is they don’t lie,” Mullin told reporters today. “This isn’t something that I’m trying to tell you to spin a narrative. This is what is going on, and what we are saying is that every state should partner with us to work to secure this.”
Edward Helmore
The Trump administration has said it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the US to 240 days, down from five years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days.
The rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements.
In addition to journalists, the new visas rules will also affect foreign students and exchange visitors that the government said had also been allowed to “remain in the United States indefinitely without routine government oversight”.
“For nearly half a century, the outdated ‘duration of status’ system has compromised national security and created an environment ripe for immigration fraud,” said the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin.
“For decades, foreign students have been admitted into the US indefinitely, allowing thousands to abuse our immigration system by perpetually enrolling in courses to avoid having to leave the US.”
By implementing “clear, finite limits” on the visas, Mullin said, the US “is reclaiming its ability to properly screen, vet and monitor individuals within our borders”.
Democrats slam Trump’s ‘pathetic attempt’ to sow doubt in election process
Several Democrats have slammed Donald Trump’s Thursday night speech where he repeated conspiracies and unfounded claims that both the 2020 election was stolen, and the current state of election integrity is compromised.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said the address was a “pathetic attempt” by the president to cast doubt on the fact that he lost the 2020 election.
The top Democrat said that Trump is evading discussing contentious policy issues, and is instead “working to rig the midterms before a single vote has even been cast”. This comes as the president’s approval rating hit 37% per recent polling – the same level as when he left office in 2021.
Schumer was also adamant that the Save America act – Trump’s voter-ID legislation which that requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote – “isn’t going anywhere” in Congress.
“The courts have rejected it, Congress has rejected it, even members of your own party have rejected it – give it up,” Schumer said in a statement.
Other Democratic lawmakers mocked the president’s logic.
“Trump says Democrats forgot to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *he* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats supposedly stole was the one he himself controlled,” said Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern. “You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe this bullshit.”
Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster and critic of the president, said that Trump is “preemptively working to delegitimize America’s elections”. Meanwhile, Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chair, said there is “one simple reason” Trump and his GOP allies continue to “lay the groundwork” for interfering in the November elections.
“Republicans know they’re going to lose the midterms,” Martin said in a statement.
Fatcheck: elections expert explains how secure voting machines are
During his speech, Donald Trump also repeated his unsubstantiated claims that voting machines, used to tabulate ballots, are “vulnerable” and “easily compromised”.
Part of the declassified document dump that the White House released last night included details that Venezuela was trying to take advantage of a vulnerability in a voting system used in the country, but not in the US. As my colleague Aram Roston has reported, it’s part of a long-running conspiracy theory that Venezuela’s leadership controls electronic voting software worldwide and caused his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden. A key part of the debunked claims is that Smartmatic, which had the contract for electronic voting machines in Los Angeles, and Dominion, which ran voting in many other parts of the country, had been created or influenced by Venezuela to fix elections. A reminder that a judge in 2023 ruled that several conservative news outlets had to pay hundred hundreds of millions in total damages in defamation claims for airing baseless accusations about these voting machine companies.
“Like every piece of technology, our voting machines are not invulnerable to attack,” Becker noted. But this is the reason why there are “systems by design that confirm and verify everything those machines do”.
Becker underscored that voting machines are not connected to the internet, they are kept under intense security and they are tested before each election.
He also noted that every voter in the US, with the exception of Louisiana, votes on paper ballots. “Those paper ballots are auditable. Every state conducts audits,” Becker said. “They check and make sure through hand audits, reading the ballots, confirming the counts by hand under transparent observation … They do that transparently in public, and then they compare it to the machine count to make sure it worked.”
Factcheck: elections expert debunks Trump speech claims
Speaking to reporters today, David Becker – the executive director of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation & Research – said that Trump’s speech was ultimately “a dud”.
“There was absolutely nothing here that was news. Nothing here that even calls into question past elections. Certainly not the 2020 election,” Becker added.
On some of the president’s more specific claims of foreign election interference, namely that China obtained 220m voter records from the period of from 2020 to 2023, Becker said that it’s a known fact that China “has a policy of vacuuming up as much American data as it can”.
However, voter data is some of the easiest to obtain because each state has a public voter file. Those can often be purchased, or even retrieved off the internet in some states. These files have existed since the beginning of voter registration in the US, Becker notes.
He also said the key allegation from the Trump administration that China could vote on behalf of people is “100% false”.
“I could have a list of all the students at a particular university. That doesn’t mean I can change their grades, and that’s what’s happening here. Just having the data doesn’t give you an ability to access their voter record,” Becker said. “You need many, many more private, personally identifiable information points, things like driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, which aren’t in this data.”
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