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By Jonathan Shorman
National

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is walking back, for now, a plan to sweep up data on millions of Americans who vote by mail under President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail ballots.

In a federal court filing Monday night, the Justice Department significantly hedged the data-sharing plan, pulling back from a position the Trump administration advanced last week. DOJ lawyers now cast the idea as in the early stages and dependent on approval of a new U.S. Postal Service rule for mail ballots, citing a memo that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin signed earlier Monday.

“The Secretary authorized DHS to continue preliminary conversations with USPS concerning potential data-sharing arrangements, and should USPS finalize its rulemaking process, consider working to advance potential coordination to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law and privacy protections,” the notice says.

Mullin’s memo, the Monday court filing says, “more accurately reflects the current policy of the Administration with respect to the implementation” of the executive order, reversing a Friday notice that said Homeland Security “contemplates” working to “integrate” the Postal Service’s voter data in an effort to monitor the flow of mail ballots and identify possible fraud. Friday’s filing said Homeland Security would use the information to generate investigative leads.

Trump’s March 31 executive order requires states to submit lists of potential mail voters to the Postal Service if they want ballots delivered and directs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state. The order faces several lawsuits ahead of the November midterm elections but so far hasn’t been paused by a federal judge.

Trump signed the executive order amid an ongoing campaign to influence how states administer federal elections. Under the U.S. Constitution, states run elections. While Congress can pass regulations, the president has no unilateral authority over voting.

Trump has long attacked mail voting and has also promoted the idea that noncitizen voting is rampant. In reality, it’s extremely rare.

Democrats and voting rights groups say the order represents an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to assert authority over elections. They also argue the order endangers the independence of the Postal Service, which is overseen by a Board of Governors, not the president.

Running out the clock

Michael McNulty, the policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said the Justice Department’s second notice almost appears to anticipate that a court will block the Postal Service’s new rule, which would require states sending ballots through the mail to provide lists of voters.

“It looks like they definitely walked back the USPS data-sharing language,” McNulty said in an interview.

Downplaying the current effect of the rule could be part of a legal strategy to shield the administration from court challenges.

Despite a series of legal challenges, the Trump administration has urged judges not to block the March order because federal officials haven’t taken major action to implement it — making the lawsuits premature. That argument will become more difficult to maintain as the Postal Service moves forward on the new rule for mail ballots and Homeland Security begins to take action.

David Becker, a former Justice Department Voting Rights Section attorney who leads the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said that since the beginning of the second Trump administration, the Justice Department has sought to “run the clock out” in legal challenges until it’s too late for courts to act or judicial action would cause chaos.

While Trump and his aides speak publicly about the alleged threat of noncitizen voting, in court the Justice Department seeks to minimize the extent of the actions the federal government has taken to carry out the executive order, Becker indicated.

“So I think this is a case of the government trying to have it both ways,” Becker said. “The government is trying to satisfy an audience of one, the president, while at the same time trying to play this rope-a-dope game with the court so that the court might not rule against them, they might say that a case isn’t ripe yet.”

In response to questions from States Newsroom, Homeland Security said in an unattributed statement that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within DHS, is “lawfully implementing” the executive order.

“President Trump has been clear: Nothing is more fundamental than the integrity and security of our elections,” the statement said.

Quest for voter rolls

The Trump administration has spent the past year attempting to obtain unredacted state voter rolls to feed into a powerful Homeland Security computer program that can identify potential noncitizen voters. The Justice Department has filed more than 30 lawsuits seeking to force states and the District of Columbia to turn over the information, but so far none have been successful.

Eight states — including heavily Democratic California, Oregon and Washington — have all-mail elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. For those states, complying with the executive order would effectively mean turning over the names of all or nearly all their voters to the Postal Service.

It’s unclear if those lists would include voters’ sensitive personal data, like driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, that the Justice Department has sued to obtain.

In its Monday notice, the Justice Department appeared to suggest Homeland Security had been planning to go beyond the scope of the executive order.

The executive order does not explicitly direct the Postal Service to share voter and mail ballot data with Homeland Security. Instead, it tells the Postal Service to coordinate with the Justice Department on investigations into suspected election crimes.

Data-sharing arrangements between DHS and the Postal Service “are not directed” by the order, the Monday notice says. Any future sharing would be contingent upon both the Postal Service’s mail ballot rule and “any policy and legal determinations as to the desirability and feasibility of any such data-sharing” — in other words, a decision the Trump administration will make later.

Computer system participation

The Justice Department had also reported Friday that Homeland Security planned to launch a “State Voter Roll Verification” powered by the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system — the computer program that can flag possible noncitizen voters.

The Friday notice said states would be able to upload their voter rolls to SAVE, but Homeland Security already allows states to voluntarily run this information through the program. Some Republican-led states have previously used SAVE to scan their voter rolls and it’s unclear how the new verification process would have been different.

On Monday, the Justice Department reversed itself on that issue as well. DOJ lawyers wrote in the second notice that the executive order “does not direct that approach, and the new memorandum no longer includes that discussion.”

The Justice Department’s Monday notice makes clear that Homeland Security still plans to create lists of citizens in each state, as mandated under the executive order. The agency plans to have a way for states to obtain citizenship information from federal agencies by June 30, the notice says.

The executive order also requires Homeland Security to allow individuals to access their citizenship-related records and update or correct them ahead of elections. The Justice Department said Monday that Mullin approved a phased plan for a portal accessible to the public.

Monday’s notice, citing Mullin’s memo, says only that those capabilities will be developed and launched later this year after the completion of legal, privacy and technical groundwork. That leaves open the possibility that states will have access to federal citizenship information weeks or months before individual voters will be able to view the same data and call attention to any errors.

Questions linger

What prompted Mullin to sign the memo on Monday is unclear. Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for a copy of the memo.

Early on Monday evening, lawyers for the League of Women Voters filed a court document in a separate lawsuit challenging Homeland Security’s use of the SAVE system that alerted the judge to the Justice Department’s Friday notice.

“It remains unclear—from the Implementation Notice or otherwise—what specific legal authority either the USPS or DHS have to share, consolidate, and use data in this way,” the lawyers wrote, referring to the initial data sharing plan between Homeland Security and Postal Service.

The Justice Department responded on Tuesday, saying in a court filing that information was “no longer accurate, as of yesterday evening.”

Also unclear is what role, if any, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has played in Mullin’s decision to change course. Trump’s executive order charges Lutnick with coordinating implementation efforts.

The Commerce Department didn’t respond to States Newsroom’s questions.

Sixteen Democratic senators last week demanded Lutnick halt implementation of the executive order. The letter, led by Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Alex Padilla of California, urged Lutnick to preserve records related to the development of the order ahead of congressional oversight.

“Vote-by-mail is safe, secure, and convenient, and it has been used successfully across the political spectrum over many election cycles,” the senators wrote.

By Ashley Murray
National

WASHINGTON — As various officials and groups aim to use the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, with the help of a famed sitcom actor, turned the spotlight Tuesday to a central tenet of U.S. democracy: religious freedom.

Actor Rainn Wilson, widely known for playing Dwight Schrute on NBC’s “The Office,” joined a press conference that U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., and Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., hosted along with religious leaders to advocate for the American tradition of religious freedom.

Reading from the Declaration of Independence, Wilson, an outspoken member of the Baha’i faith that originated in 19th-century Persia, now Iran, said the nation’s 250th anniversary “is an opportunity to ask profound questions.”

“How can we give fresh expression to the ideals in the declaration?” he asked. “How can we leave behind tendencies that divide us and replace them with a widening circle of concern? We need to be able to speak and think in terms of spiritual and moral dimensions of individual and collective life.

“We need to do that in ways that are meaningful across different perspectives, both religious and secular,” he continued.

Wilson’s appearance marked the public release of the Baha’i faith’s five-part letter “A Common Endeavor,” which argues for the realization of “ideals, like freedom, equality, and justice” as many Americans have become “exhausted and disillusioned by polarization.”

The press conference was attended by members of several denominations, and is among numerous independent events ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

‘A universal human right’

Boyle cited Baha’i writings that “beautifully” emphasize unity.

“My own Catholic faith teaches a similar truth. Pope Francis reminded us that we are called to come together as brothers and sisters, quote, ‘as children from the same earth,’” Boyle said.

“My hope is that for America’s 250th anniversary, this will be more of a focus on what our next 250 years look like, rather than just a wonderful commemoration of the past quarter of a millennium.”

Bilirakis, an Orthodox Christian who co-chairs the Congressional International Religious Freedom Caucus, said, “Religious freedom is not simply an American value, it is a universal human right, and I truly believe that.”

“Whether we are speaking out on behalf of the persecuted Christians, Muslims, Jews, Baha’is, Hindus, Buddhists, Uyghurs, or members of other faith communities, our message must remain clear,” he said. “Every person is endowed with inherent dignity and deserves the freedom to live according to their conscience.”

Bilirakis is an original cosponsor of a House resolution condemning the Iran government’s persecution of Baha’is. The resolution was introduced in December 2025, just months before the U.S. escalated war in Iran.

Pentagon list

The event on Capitol Hill, though unrelated, happened just one day after the Pentagon modified its list of recognized religions following criticism from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church.

Utah’s two Republican Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis directly appealed to the administration to change the Department of Defense list, which did not categorize the Latter-day Saints as Christian.

On Friday, the Pentagon revised its list of recognized religions for service members to 31, down from roughly 200.

The Pentagon’s shortened list includes the Baha’i faith.

By Ashley Murray
National

WASHINGTON — U.S. forces launched renewed strikes on Iran late Tuesday, in response to the downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter a day earlier, according to U.S. Central Command.

President Donald Trump ordered the operation, which began at 5 p.m. Eastern and was “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” a social media account for U.S. Central Command posted Tuesday evening.

Trump said earlier Tuesday the United States would retaliate after Iran shot down the helicopter late Monday over the Strait of Hormuz, and that the two American pilots aboard were unharmed.

Trump announced the cause of the helicopter’s downing in a Truth Social post just before 1 p.m. Eastern. As of early Tuesday morning, the incident had still been under investigation, according to U.S. Central Command.

“I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote.

Despite recent exchanges of fire, the administration maintains the war, named by the Pentagon as Operation Epic Fury, is over and that an April 7 ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran remains in place.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” with moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News, Trump said, before abruptly walking out of the interview a short time later, “I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It’s not a big war for us.”

The two military pilots were rescued at 7:33 p.m. Eastern time after the AH-64 Apache went down off the coast of Oman while the military was patrolling regional waters, according to U.S. Central Command.

“The Soldiers were safely rescued within approximately two hours and are in stable condition. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

“Rescue efforts were led by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the 82nd Airborne Division, with support from U.S. Air Force and Navy units including U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” according to the command’s statement posted on social media just after 6 a.m. Eastern.

The U.S. continues to block traffic to and from Iranian ports, and as recently as Monday fired on an empty oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman the military said was breaking the blockade just southeast of the Strait of Hormuz.

According to U.S. Central Command, American forces have disabled seven non-compliant vessels, redirected 134 ships that complied, and allowed 42 vessels supporting humanitarian aid to pass since initiating the blockade on April 13.

Iran has all but choked off international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum supply traveled before the war.

War status

Thirteen U.S. service members have died in the conflict, which began on Feb. 28.

The Pentagon’s tally for service members injured stands at 411 as of Tuesday. Despite the administration’s stance that the war is over, the Defense Casualty Analysis System lists one U.S. sailor as “wounded in action” in June as part of Operation Epic Fury.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified last week before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the U.S. war in Iran was “over.”

In response to a question from Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., about who won the war, Rubio answered, “Epic Fury is over, which is what you would consider the war.”

The U.S. launched the conflict in conjunction with Israel, and the Israeli government’s continued bombardment of southern Lebanon has stymied further peace talks — though Trump has repeatedly claimed Iran wants to make a deal.

Iran and Israel exchanged rocket fire Sunday into Monday for the first time since April.

Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in mid-April, Israel’s bombing campaign has continued in southern Lebanon, as Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters refuse to recognize the agreement.

By Jennifer Shutt
National

WASHINGTON — Congress must act to shore up Social Security during the next six years to avoid an automatic drop-off in benefits in 2032, according to a report released Tuesday.

The annual update on the Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund shows that it will “become depleted” in the fourth quarter of that year, a few months earlier than projected in last year’s report.

That would lead to recipients receiving 78% of their benefits — the projected yearly income to the trust fund — unless Congress acts before then. By 2100, benefits would be only 62%, according to the report.

That decrease would have a significant impact on the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the program to stay out of poverty, especially retirees.

Social Security Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano wrote in a statement that in order to “protect the promise of Social Security, it is important for lawmakers and the Social Security Administration to work together to ensure the trust funds continue to provide financial stability now and for future generations.”

Bisignano is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday, where he will likely face several questions about the new report and whether the administration has policy suggestions for Congress.

More than 68 million Americans received Social Security payments in April, according to data from the administration. More than 56 million of the beneficiaries were 65 or older.

Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, wrote in a statement November’s midterm elections will have an impact on who is in the Senate, where lawmakers have six-year terms, in the lead-up to the deadline.

“It’s important to recognize that the Senators we elect this year will be in office when Social Security becomes unable to pay out full benefits, so this must be a central campaign issue,” he wrote.

Peterson added that “there are many well-known solutions available” and that it’s “time for responsible, bipartisan leadership to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, ensuring the stability of these programs for generations of Americans to come.”

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, wrote in a statement that “Washington is sleepwalking into a retirement crisis, allowing our nation’s most important trust funds to go insolvent at the expense of over 70 million beneficiaries who count on these programs.”

MacGuineas added that there is “no shortage of options out there to avoid this.”

“It’s time for our leaders to start telling the truth on Social Security and Medicare, and working on real plans to save these programs,” she wrote. “Time is running out.”