The Trump administration is threatening to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds from states, coercing them into adopting sweeping election changes that include using a controversial citizenship verification database. This state action coincides with the Senate advancing a Trump-backed housing package that offers no new federal funding and waives environmental regulations, explicitly prioritizing capital's ease of operation over addressing the rising costs faced by the working class.
Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take steps including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. States must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database. If states refuse, they would lose 20% of the grant money, potentially millions of dollars in security funds. These grants, expected to total more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year, are Washington’s main vehicles for helping state and local governments prevent terrorism, protect infrastructure and prepare for major disasters. A DHS spokesperson stated, “Any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent.”
The State as Enforcer of Election Control
The election changes Trump is seeking could be enormously expensive for states. The nationwide cost of upgrading election equipment to align with voluntary voting standards has been estimated at $2.7 billion. In Georgia, where the state legislature has also passed a law to require hand-marked paper ballots, Republican Secretary of State Raffensperger estimated it will cost $66 million. The administration’s gambit fits a broader Trump playbook: using federal funds as leverage to pressure states to adopt policies aligned with his agenda, demonstrating the state's role in enforcing particular political outcomes.
A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of the federal tool central to the Trump administration’s efforts to nationalize elections, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), can no longer be used. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who argued the recent upgrades aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls. Judge Sooknanan stated that the federal government had “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” She added that federal agencies “knew that the database violates those statutory protections” by centralizing personal identifying information.
The SAVE system, which the Trump administration significantly expanded in April one year and two months ago, has since scanned at least 67 million registrations. Critics say the DHS system is flawed because it can produce false matches and may wrongly flag eligible voters for removal. Anthony Nel, a naturalized citizen, had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, temporarily canceled last year after Texas ran its voter file through SAVE and wrongly identified him as a potential noncitizen. Plaintiffs’ attorney Nikhel Sus noted that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls, stating, “They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database.” Mark Johnson, a law professor, said it “couldn’t be more clear” that the SAVE program violates federal privacy laws, adding, “It’s an illegal idea. Plus it’s a bad idea.”
Housing: Capital's Terms Prevail
Separately, the Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, on Monday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic architect of the package, described the legislation as "tweaks to current programs and policies" that "over time will make housing more affordable." Warren claimed the legislation would "beat back private equity, so they won’t invade your neighborhood, buy up all the houses, and turn America into a nation of renters." However, the package does not allocate fresh federal funding for housing, with Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, a Republican, lauding it as "deficit neutral." It also does not directly address rising costs of homeownership, focusing instead on building new homes and lowering the barrier of entry for Americans to get into a home.
Sen. Alan Armstrong, a Republican, argued the legislation “fails to meaningfully address” housing costs, calling it a “half-hearted attempt to waive minor environmental laws.” The package includes provisions to waive some environmental review regulations for new home construction and establish pre-approved housing designs to speed up construction. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican, stated the legislation sends a signal to "not torturing homebuilders," prioritizing capital's ease of operation over fundamental housing reform for the dispossessed.
Workers Bear the Cost of Deindustrialization
President Trump’s trip to a Mack Truck facility in Pennsylvania Tuesday shifts attention to the U.S. economy amid rising prices, which could color the verdict voters render on Trump’s stewardship in the fall. Manufacturing employment, which peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs, now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demonstrating the ongoing deindustrialization and its impact on the working class. Trump’s visit to West Mifflin one year ago saw him tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry, a move to protect domestic capital. In July 11 months ago, Trump was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state, further benefiting capital accumulation. Bob Brooks, president of the state firefighters’ union, is the Democratic challenger in the 7th Congressional District, highlighting organized labor's engagement in electoral politics. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy in a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, while most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of the Iran war, which began Feb. 28 same year.