Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened state and local election officials with prison time on July 17, 2026. His warning came one day after President Donald Trump gave a speech on election security. The threat stepped up the administration's effort to force states to follow federal election security rules (NPR) (PBS).

Mullin said he would make Trump's election security demands "mandatory" and run a "maximum pressure" campaign against states that push back, according to Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera). He also said the administration would take away federal funding from states that do not adopt its election security measures, NBC News reported (NBC News).

The threats follow a directive DHS issued on July 10 through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. FEMA hands out federal grant money to state and local governments. By sending the directive through FEMA, DHS could tie compliance to those grants without needing Congress to pass a new law. The department published a news release titled "DHS Requires States to Adopt Common-Sense Election Security Measures Receiving Federal [Funding]." In that release, Mullin said: "Election security is national security" (DHS).

NPR looked at the administration's broader stance on election integrity in a July 19 segment on "Weekend Edition Sunday," hosted by Ayesha Rascoe and Mara Liasson. The segment reported that Trump and Mullin have made claims about the vulnerability of U.S. election systems (NPR).

The July 17 escalation built on months of administration activity around election infrastructure. White House adviser Kurt Olsen pushed a plan to ban roughly half of U.S. voting machines, Reuters reported in May, after Trump asked Olsen to prove election-rigging conspiracy theories (Reuters). The White House later delayed the release of a U.S. voting machine study in June as the midterm elections approached (Reuters).

Democrats and some analysts warned of possible administration interference in the 2026 midterm elections because of the delayed voting machine study, Reuters reported (Reuters). Trump has vowed additional changes to how elections are conducted in the United States, the Associated Press reported (AP).

The administration's approach uses two tools of federal pressure: tying FEMA funding to state adoption of election security measures, and threatening criminal prosecution for officials who do not comply.

The broader context here is a tension between federal authority and the way U.S. elections are run. States set their own voting procedures, certify their own results, and operate their own equipment. The administration's demands test how far the federal government can go in pressuring locally run election systems before courts or Congress step in.

Olsen's role adds another layer. Tasked by Trump with proving election-rigging claims, Olsen advanced a proposal to ban a type of voting machine used across multiple states. The later delay of a federal voting machine study weeks before the midterms has drawn scrutiny from election analysts and Democratic officials who see the timing as potentially harmful to public confidence.

What is still unresolved is whether states will comply with the FEMA directive, whether the Justice Department will act on Mullin's criminal threats against local officials, and whether courts will allow challenges to tying federal emergency-management funding to election-security compliance. Each of those questions is likely to be litigated before November.