The New Republic72%
DHS Sec. Threatens to Jail State Officials Who Defy Trump’s Demands 78%
By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling62%
7/17/2026, 4:55:01 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Ad Hominem, Biased Writer Voice, and False Dilemma, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 34.1% saturation with 155 hits. Analysis detected 980 faulty-reasoning hits from 454 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.5% and a BS Rank of 78% (4,875 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 77.70% of the article peer group.
The Trump administration has promised to stonewall federal grants unless states “scrub” their voter rolls and to imprison state officials who refuse to comply.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference in Washington Friday that state officials who refuse Washington’s new election demands could be jailed for their disobedience.
“If the states choose not to participate with the state program, and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states, and hold them—the election officials—accountable,” Mullin said.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even—depending on how far it goes—prison time.”
The pledge came hours after Donald Trump delivered a national address that not only included numerous factual inaccuracies and vast exaggerations about how he lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but also weaponized those conspiracies in an attempt to undermine American trust in future elections.
“Working with [Commerce] Secretary [Howard] Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory.
Meaning that if these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they are going to have to implement security issues,” Mullin said .
“Just security issues.
We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration lists need to be scrubbed.”
“We need to make sure that individuals legally able to vote are voting.”
The homeland security chief confidently announced the plot while standing in front of several American flags, despite the fact that the entire scheme is most likely illegal and that he is acting far outside the limitations of his office and even the executive branch.
Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls.
Only Congress has the power to do that.
Beyond that, voter fraud is a statistical nonissue in American elections.
For instance, a 2024 statewide audit out of Georgia—the epicenter of one of Trump’s baseless 2020 theories—revealed that 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population.
Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections many years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process.
The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
This story has been updated.
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100%flagged-word coverageMarkwayne Mullin
205 attributed words92% of attributed speech97% writer coverage
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