The man now responsible for securing American elections spent years pushing debunked conspiracy theories about Venezuela stealing the 2020 election, voted not to certify the results anyway, and personally brokered a meeting at Mar-a-Lago so a former CIA operative could brief Trump's team on those same conspiracies. That man is Markwayne Mullin, and he is the Secretary of Homeland Security. Welcome to the 2026 midterms.
The Guy Who Thinks Venezuela Stole 2020 Now Runs Election Security
Here's the thing about Gary Berntsen. He's a former CIA operative who has spent years insisting Venezuela manipulated the 2020 U.S. election, a claim debunked so thoroughly that Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million in 2023 rather than defend it in court. Berntsen went to the FBI. He went to the media. He went to Congress. Almost everyone, including most Republicans, told him to get lost.
Almost everyone. As NPR reports, the one politician Berntsen says took him seriously was then-Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who didn't just listen politely and change the subject. According to Berntsen's allies, Mullin brokered a meeting at Mar-a-Lago so Berntsen could brief Trump's team directly on his Venezuela election conspiracy theories. Mullin described the experience to conservative podcaster Lara Logan as the act of a man who wasn't afraid. Sure. That's one word for it.
On January 2, 2021, Mullin posted that due to 'all of the fraud and uncertainty surrounding the 2020 election there is no way I can vote to certify the Electoral College.' Four days later, after a mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop that very certification, Mullin was one of 147 congressional Republicans who still voted against certifying the results. Not before. After. Once the building had been attacked and people had died.
CISA: The Agency That No Longer Seems to Exist
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, was actually created during Trump's first term to serve as the federal government's main partner for local election security. It was, by most accounts, one of the genuine success stories of that era. Going into 2026, it is something closer to a ghost.
As NPR reports, most of the people who worked on election security at CISA were pushed out or resigned last year. The agency has had no Senate-confirmed leader for the entirety of Trump's second term. Paul Lux, a Republican election supervisor in Okaloosa County, Florida, told NPR he hasn't heard of a single county in Florida that has actually received services from CISA recently. 'Try calling somebody at CISA and see who answers the phone,' Lux said. 'Because at the end of the day it's been radio silence from CISA when we reach out about just about anything.'
A CISA spokesperson told NPR the agency is still providing services to state and local officials. Local officials, across the political spectrum, are telling NPR the opposite. Somebody is wrong here, and it's probably not the county clerks who can't get anyone to pick up the phone.
Local Officials Are Refusing to Share Data With Their Own Government
The distrust has gotten so bad that local election officials are now actively avoiding cooperation with the federal government. Think about what that means for a second. The people running your elections are so worried about what the federal government might do with information about your elections that they have stopped sharing it.
Matt Crane, a former Republican county clerk who now leads the professional organization for local election officials in Colorado, put it plainly to NPR. 'I'm actively discouraging it,' he said. 'I don't trust how the administration is using that data. I don't trust that they're going to keep it confidential. And so I can't in good conscience advocate that any of my counties do any work with them right now.' This is not a progressive activist. This is a former Republican county clerk telling his members to freeze out DHS.
Crane also flagged that the current DHS point person for elections, someone named Heather Honey, has her own long history of spreading election misinformation. So the Secretary of Homeland Security has a record of promoting election conspiracies, the agency's election-focused staffer has a record of promoting election conspiracies, and the president himself has spoken openly about wanting to 'take over' elections. Crane called it 'bringing the fox into the henhouse.' That is being extremely generous to the fox.
ICE at the Polls Is Now Apparently on the Table
If the structural gutting of election security infrastructure wasn't enough, Trump allies have been openly musing about deploying immigration enforcement agents to voting locations this fall. White House border czar Tom Homan said on The Charlie Kirk Show this spring that if only citizens can vote, he doesn't 'see the issue' with ICE presence at polling places. He pointedly refused to say what the plan was 'going forward.'
For the record, deploying immigration enforcement to polling places would be against federal law. NPR makes that clear. Homan either does not know this or does not care, and at this point the odds are roughly even. At his confirmation hearing in March, Mullin said DHS agents would only be at polling places in response to specific threats. Whether a midterm election result that Republicans don't like would qualify as a 'specific threat' in this administration's mind is, to put it gently, unclear.
DHS, for its part, told NPR that Secretary Mullin is 'committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens, and only American citizens, are electing American leaders.' They offered no response to the part where local Republican election officials are refusing to work with them.
The Dingo Take
Let's be honest about what is happening here. The Trump administration has systematically dismantled the federal infrastructure that helped secure American elections, installed officials with documented records of promoting election lies into the roles responsible for election security, and is now floating the idea of putting immigration agents outside polling places in November. None of this is subtle. None of this is deniable. It is a coherent strategy, and it points in one direction.
The midterms are this fall. If Democrats perform well enough to threaten Republican control of Congress, the apparatus for contesting those results is being assembled right now. DHS under Mullin. A Justice Department already demanding sensitive voter data from states. An administration whose leader has publicly said he wants to 'take over' elections. The fact that local election officials, including Republicans, have already started treating the federal government as a threat rather than a partner tells you everything about how far this has already gone.
Markwayne Mullin brokered a Mar-a-Lago briefing on Venezuelan election conspiracies, voted to overturn a certified election after the Capitol was attacked, and is now the nation's top official for election security. If you designed a system to undermine election integrity from the inside, this is roughly what it would look like. That's not a coincidence. That's the point.
