Will the midterm elections be free from interference from bad actors? | The Excerpt

On the Monday, June 29, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: A bipartisan group of secretaries of state is warning that the federal government may no longer be a reliable hub for election threat information, according to an internal memo shared exclusively with USA TODAY. Senior National News Reporter Sarah Wire joins The Excerpt to explain why state officials are concerned and what this could mean for November’s midterms.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Are our elections safe? According to a memo by the Bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State shared exclusively with USA TODAY, maybe not. That memo raises broader concerns about election threat information sharing by the federal government with state officials. Should you be concerned?

Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's, The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, June 29th, 2026. Joining me now to talk through the significance of this memo and what it may mean for November's midterms is Sarah Wire a senior national news reporter for USA TODAY. It's great to have you back on Sarah.

Sarah Wire:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Let's start with some broad strokes here. First, what is this memo and how did USA TODAY come to have it?

Sarah Wire:

This was an internal memo that summarizes some meetings that the association and a partner group were having in March about what information they were getting from the federal government, but also about how confident states were that they would receive reliable, trustworthy information.

We got the document from a nonpartisan national security transparency group and the group is called Property of the People. They brought it to us wanting to make sure that everyone was aware that this was happening.

Dana Taylor:

You cited the memo saying, quote, "Federal agencies are not seen by states as reliable or sufficient options for being the national hub for election threat information sharing," end quote. First, what kinds of threats are we talking about, Sarah? Election integrity threats, personal safety.

Sarah Wire:

It's a mix of both actually. So since 2018, the federal government has served as a conduit to bring information to the states about what threats they're hearing from foreign governments, from hackers, from possible bad actors.

They're bringing information from the FBI, and the director of national intelligence, spy networks and it's helping states have the same information, but also learn quickly about what's happening in other states.

Dana Taylor:

And so the people who wrote this memo are basically alleging that federal officials aren't cooperating with state officials as they had in the past regarding election threat information. Why not?

Sarah Wire:

They're saying that the normal training that they would receive from the federal government isn't happening. The communication back and forth isn't happening.

And we saw during the first few months of the Trump administration that a lot of the experts that did this work were laid off or forced into early retirement. And the agency itself, CISA is what it's called, isn't doing the routine things they would do at this point.

So they're not holding trainings, they're not holding national security briefings. They're not coming into states to check for holes in their cybersecurity. Some of the normal in-person assessments they would do like, is a facility safe? Could it be broken into on election night?

Dana Taylor:

Is there any precedent for this?

Sarah Wire:

Now this only started back in 2018 after the 2016 election. This agency that was created was signed into law by President Donald Trump. This is still a relatively new agency, but these states have come to rely on it and there's no other group that can really facilitate this level of information sharing.

You've got these nonprofits that are trying to do it. They're trying to fill these gaps. You've got states leaning on one another and trying to have these communications, but they all acknowledge that they can't do it on their own. They don't have the resources that the federal government has.

And several secretaries of state said they're up against nation state actors that are pouring huge amounts of money into this in Russia and Iran. And so you've got 50 different attempts to block and share information going up against these governments that have unlimited amounts of money.

Dana Taylor:

Sarah, how are state officials planning to address the intelligence shortfall here? And are they confident that their plans will successfully fill in the gaps?

Sarah Wire:

So associations like the National Association of Secretaries of State are trying to step up and fill some of those gaps. It's all voluntary. They're holding more trainings. They're going to work with tech companies to try to make sure that all the states have the information they need.

But secretary after secretary told me it's going to be sufficient, but it's not going to be equal to what would happen under the federal government. A few told me that they're worried that there's going to be a cyber attack and they might not even know until afterwards.

Dana Taylor:

I want to stick with the private tech companies. You mentioned they're rolling up their sleeves to help here. Which ones and how do they say they can help?

Sarah Wire:

So the big tech companies like Google and Microsoft already track election threats and they've done it on behalf of the federal government and on behalf of state governments for years now.

They're offering to bolster the trainings they're doing and talk more with state governments, but it comes at a cost. Not all of this is free and it was free coming from the federal government. So states are having to bolster the amount of money that they're putting forward.

When I talked to secretaries, they said the information they receive from the tech companies tends to be reactive telling them what's already happening versus the information they're receiving from the federal government, which was more proactive and immediate.

A Washington State secretary of state told me that a couple of years ago he received a call from the agency director in the middle of the night saying that a county's website was being accessed by an IP address out of a foreign government.

And he was able to immediately react, disable access to the voter system and turn off the whole website, send a quick reaction team to plug any holes. Learning that that might happen after it already did from a tech company is not quite as useful.

Dana Taylor:

The National Association of State Secretaries also shared information about a White House communication related to this memo. Tell me about that.

Sarah Wire:

The association is bipartisan. They want to keep moving forward in a bipartisan manner and keep a working relationship with the White House. And so this letter sent March 11th was laying out what they can do but also what they're hoping to receive from the federal government and continue this partnership.

We haven't seen much of a change in what the White House and this intelligence agency is willing to do. The really fascinating thing to me was that this letter was sent the same day that the meeting happened that the memo summarized. And so you could see that the association was already moving forward to do the work without the federal government.

Dana Taylor:

You mentioned the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA earlier. Did you ask them for their response to these allegations? And if so, what did they tell you?

Sarah Wire:

I did. They're housed under the Department of Homeland Security. And so we asked them to respond to the secretary's concerns. We basically just got a statement back summarizing what the agency does and it didn't go into any detail about how they're working specifically with the states this year.

I followed up asking for some statistics. How many assessments have they done? How many trainings have they held? And we never got an answer back.

Dana Taylor:

Sarah, I have to ask, most of our audience is well aware of President Donald Trump's repeated false allegations about election fraud in 2020. What, if any, role is politics playing in all of this?

Sarah Wire:

I heard different things from different secretaries, they definitely think this is very political. This CISA agency was created during President Trump's first term. He's the one who signed it into law.

But after the 2020 election, CISA, which is a nonpartisan agency, came out and said there was no interference in the 2020 election. They had no indication that foreign governments were involved, that election machines were interfered with or anything like that. And the director of the agency was fired very quickly.

So in some ways it was not very surprising to see the reductions in CISA, but it had acted as a nonpartisan agency, it had acted as something that every state, regardless of party, could rely on. I heard from the states that they're reeling that this is happening.

Dana Taylor:

What's your biggest takeaway from your reporting here, Sarah?

Sarah Wire:

States are trying their absolute best. Election officials, they might be partisanly elected in some states, but they don't see themselves as partisans. They want to do the best that they can for Americans.

They see that as more their call is to uphold free and fair elections and they want every tool and resource they possibly can have. And they wanted me to make sure that people knew that they don't see this directly interfering with elections themselves because we have paper backups in every single state except for Louisiana when you cast a vote.

So they're not worried about it changing the outcome of the elections, but they're worried that not having this information could cause chaos in some areas on election day.

Dana Taylor:

Sarah Wire is a senior national news reporter for USA TODAY. Sarah, it's great to see you again.

Sarah Wire:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for listening to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Make The Excerpt part of your weekday routine. New episodes are available every weekday morning.