Monday, June 29, 2026, episode of the podcast The Excerpt: A bipartisan group of secretaries of state is warning that the federal government may no longer be a trusted 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 means for November’s midterm elections.
Press play in the player below to listen to the podcast and follow the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated and edited in its current format for clarity. There may be some differences between audio and text.
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Dana Taylor:
Are our elections secure? Probably not, according to a memo by the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State shared exclusively with USA TODAY. The memo raises broader concerns about the federal government’s sharing of election threat information with state officials. Should I be worried?
Hello. Welcome to this excerpt from USA TODAY. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, June 29, 2026. USA TODAY senior national news reporter Sarah Wire joins me to talk about the importance of this memo and what it means for November’s midterm elections. I’m so happy to have you back Sarah.
Sarah Wire:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s start with some broad strokes here. First, what is this memo? How did USA TODAY obtain it?
Sarah Wire:
This is an internal memo summarizing several meetings the association and partner groups held in March, not only about what information they are receiving from the federal government, but also how confident they are that each state will receive reliable and reliable information.
We obtained this document from the bipartisan National Security Transparency Group. The group is called “People’s Property.” They brought it to us because they wanted to make sure everyone was aware that this was happening.
Dana Taylor:
You cite this memo and state that “federal agencies are not viewed by states as a reliable or sufficient option to serve as a national hub for sharing election threat information.” End of quotation. First of all, Sarah, what kind of threat are we talking about? Threats to election integrity, personal safety.
Sarah Wire:
It’s actually a mixture of both. So since 2018, the federal government has served as a conduit to states to inform them about what threats they’re hearing from foreign governments, hackers and potential bad actors.
They bring in information from the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, the spy network, and they help each state get the same information, but also quickly find out what’s going on in other states.
Dana Taylor:
So the people who wrote this memo are essentially claiming that federal authorities are not cooperating with state authorities on election threat intelligence as much as they have in the past. Why not?
Sarah Wire:
They say they haven’t received the usual training they would receive from the federal government. Two-way communication is not occurring.
And during the first months of the Trump administration, we saw many professionals who did this work get fired or forced into early retirement. And the agency called CISA itself is not doing the routine things that they do at this point.
So they’re not holding any training or national security briefings. They’re not coming to states to check for cybersecurity deficiencies. In a typical in-person assessment, is the facility secure? Could it be broken into on election night?
Dana Taylor:
Is there any precedent for this?
Sarah Wire:
Now, this just started in 2018 after the 2016 election. The agency was created and signed into law by President Donald Trump. It’s still a relatively new institution, but these states have come to rely on it, and there’s no other group that can really facilitate this level of information sharing.
There are nonprofit organizations trying to do that. They are trying to fill these gaps. States rely on each other to make these communications happen, but each state recognizes that it cannot do it alone. They don’t have the resources that the federal government has.
And several secretaries of state have said they are confronting nation-state actors in Russia and Iran who are pouring billions into this problem. So for these governments that have unlimited funds, there are 50 different attempts to block and share information.
Dana Taylor:
Sarah, how are state officials going to address the lack of information here, and are they confident that their plan can successfully fill that gap?
Sarah Wire:
So groups like the National Association of Secretaries of State are stepping up and trying to fill some of those gaps. It’s all voluntary. They are doing more training. They will work with technology companies to ensure all states have the information they need.
But Secretary after Secretary told me that while that would be good enough, it was not equivalent to what would happen under the federal government. Several said they were worried that a cyberattack would occur, but that they might not know until afterward.
Dana Taylor:
I want to stick to private technology companies. You said they’re doing everything they can to help here. How do they say which one helps?
Sarah Wire:
That’s why big tech companies like Google and Microsoft already track election threats, and have done so for years on behalf of federal and state governments.
They’re proposing more training and more talks with state governments, but that comes at a cost. Not all of these were free, and the ones provided by the federal government were free. Therefore, states will need to increase the amount of funding they offer.
Secretaries told me that while the information they receive from tech companies is often passive, telling them what’s already happening, the information they receive from the federal government is more proactive and immediate.
A Washington state secretary of state told me that a few years ago, he received a call in the middle of the night from the agency’s secretary telling him that a county’s website was being accessed from a foreign government’s IP address.
And he was able to react instantly, disable access to voter systems, take down entire websites, and dispatch a rapid response team to plug the hole. Learning from technology companies that it might happen after it’s already happened isn’t very helpful.
Dana Taylor:
The National Association of Secretaries of State also shared information about White House communications related to the memo. Please tell me about it.
Sarah Wire:
This association is nonpartisan. They want to continue to move forward in a bipartisan manner and maintain a working relationship with the White House. So this letter, sent on March 11, set out not only what they can do, but what they hope to receive from the federal government and continue this partnership.
I don’t see any major changes in what the White House and this intelligence community are trying to do. What was really interesting to me was that this letter was sent on the same day that the meeting summarized in the memo took place. And it turns out that the association is already working without the federal government.
Dana Taylor:
You mentioned the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, earlier. Have you asked their reaction to these allegations? If so, what did they say to you?
Sarah Wire:
I did that. They are being held under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. So we asked them to respond to the Secretary’s concerns. Basically, we just received a statement summarizing the agency’s work, without going into detail about how it is specifically working with states this year.
I followed up for some statistics. How many assessments have they done? How many trainings have they done? And we never got an answer.
Dana Taylor:
Sarah, let me ask you this: Most of our viewers are familiar with President Donald Trump’s repeated false claims about election fraud in 2020. What role, if any, does politics play in all of this?
Sarah Wire:
I’ve heard different things from different secretaries, and they definitely think this is very political. The CISA agency was created during President Trump’s first term. He is the one who signed the law.
However, after the 2020 election, CISA, a nonpartisan agency, stated that there was no interference in the 2020 election. There was no indication that a foreign government was involved or that election machines were being interfered with or anything like that. And the director of that agency was immediately fired.
So in some ways, the cuts to CISA weren’t all that surprising, except that CISA operated as a bipartisan agency, one that all states could rely on, regardless of political party. I’ve heard from states that they’re upset that this is happening.
Dana Taylor:
Sarah, what is your biggest takeaway from your reporting here?
Sarah Wire:
Each country is doing its best. Election officials, although they may be elected on a partisan basis in some states, they do not consider themselves partisan. They want to do the best they can for the American people.
They believe it is their mission to maintain free and fair elections, and they want all the tools and resources possible. And they wanted people to understand that they don’t think this directly interferes with the election itself because every state except Louisiana has paper backup when voting.
So while they aren’t worried that it will change the outcome of the election, they are concerned that not having this information could cause confusion in some areas on voting day.
Dana Taylor:
Sarah Wire is a senior national news reporter for USA TODAY. Sarah, nice to see you again.
Sarah Wire:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Thank you for listening to USA TODAY’s The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Make “The Excerpt” part of your weekday routine. New episodes are released every weekday morning.
