Trump’s mass ‘extortion’ plot reeks of unprecedented 'desperation': expert

Security expert and ex-Homeland Security official Miles Taylor sounded the alarm Wednesday after the Trump administration “just issued” a series of new rules – changes that he bluntly compared with putting a “gun to the heads of noncompliant states by putting the literal lives of their residents at risk.” Those rule changes – which Taylor referred to as a form of "extortion" – would require states to enact a “sweeping set of election changes,” including running their voter rolls through a “ controversial ” federal citizenship verification database . States that do not comply would lose significant federal funding, totaling to more than $1 billion in 2026 grants largely earmarked for counterterrorism and disaster preparedness, according to CNN . “You've got the administration attempting extortion at one end and dangling handcuffs at the other, with a gun to the head of any state that hesitates in between,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published on his Substack on Wednesday. “Under that kind of pressure, a dozen states have already caved. I’ve been warning for years and years that this would happen – that Trump 2.0 would use federal money as a tool of coercion. I can tell you, firsthand, that those are the funds used to protect you against terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, mass shootings, weaponized drones, and more.” Taylor also warned that the new rules – which include a mandate requiring states to move to hand-marked paper ballots and away from certain electronic voting machines – posed a major and ongoing threat to Americans' privacy. “I will say it again. If you live in a Blue State, Donald Trump and his team are threatening to put your life in danger if your state doesn’t give him control over elections,” Taylor wrote. “And by the way, if your governor caves and complies, that voter information will be fed into a database that a federal judge just said ‘ trampled on the privacy rights ’ of American citizens. Don’t take my word for it. Maine’s secretary of state said this whole scheme “endangers American lives and democracy itself.”