Trump Nemesis Calls Out Goon on Election Threat

California Governor Gavin Newsom fired back at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin after he issued a series of threats against blue states, including jail time for state election officials ahead of the November election.

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Fresh off President Donald Trump’s rambling speech about “election integrity,” Mullin held a press conference on Friday in which he demanded that blue states work with the administration ahead of the midterms.

“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,” Mullin said.

But Newsom fired back on X, “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them. Try us.”

While Mullin claimed voting systems are vulnerable, election experts, including those at the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, have pushed back that the systems are as secure as they have ever been and are closely monitored.

Democrats are warning, as the Trump administration dials up the alarms on election fraud this week, that the White House and the president are laying the groundwork to call into question the 2026 election results they do not like as the president’s approval is deep underwater with American voters.

Mullin, a former plumber and MMA fighter, turned member of Congress and then DHS secretary, insisted on Friday that he was not trying to rehash the 2020 election but to “expose” what took place and ensure it never happens again.

But his series of threats came just one day after Trump stopped short of declaring the 2020 election was stolen and failed to provide evidence to back up his repeated election-rigging claims despite his administration hyping what they insisted would be bombshell revelations in his primetime address.

Mullin claimed on Friday that the administration had found 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four blue states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada. However, the DHS secretary later admitted it was not clear yet whether any of those individuals had actually voted, as they were still trying to get more information.

Mullin also lobbed largely incoherent threats at states that do not work directly with the Trump administration when it comes to voting machines.

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“We are going to make our security enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want a grant and they want to be reimbursed to work—to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security issues, just security issues,” Mullin said. “We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying the machines have to be secured, and that your voter restoration [sic] list needs to be scrubbed. We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting.”

Mullin claimed Trump has given him the tools and resources needed to secure the election even as the president has ranted about the need for his SAVE America Act.

“We have to have the states partner with us,” Mullin declared. “If they choose not to, then the voters should hold them accountable.”

Mullin said that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency(CISA) will release an updated election infrastructure plan. That same agency is one that the administration has cut by 30 percent since Trump reentered office.

He also said if states participate in the SAVE program, the administration would provide resources to support election integrity. That service seeks to verify U.S. citizenship.

It is already illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote in federal or state elections, and there is no evidence that noncitizens are voting in elections in significant numbers and is, in fact, extremely rare, despite Trump’s repeated claims.

“Before and after the election, we will scrub all election records looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased,” Mullin declared.

The DHS secretary warned that the administration would proactively look at early voting and would later continue to scrub those who did vote. The U.S. Constitution gives states the primary authority to administer elections.