Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has doubled down on threats United States President Donald Trump made against states that defy his demands for election reform.

Mullin’s latest speech on Friday largely reiterated what Trump said the night before: that the administration would pursue a hardline agenda to reshape US elections.

Borrowing a term from Trump’s foreign policy platform, Mullin pledged to pursue a campaign of “maximum pressure” to ensure compliance.

He also hinted at repercussions for those Trump accused of misleading the US public during the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claims he won.

“This isn’t about rehashing the 2020 election. This is just exposing what took place and to make sure it never happens again,” Mullin said.

He added that his department is looking at individuals within the intelligence community and the administration of former President Joe Biden as possible targets.

“Everybody that purposely misled the American people, abused their power and their authority and decided not to continue doing their job will be held accountable,” Mullin explained.

Intensifying pressure on states

But while Trump repeatedly alleged a “deep state” cover-up about election vulnerabilities in Thursday’s primetime speech, the declassified documents his White House released failed to substantiate his sweeping claims.

Like Trump before him, Mullin zeroed in on four states as the target for the administration’s immediate efforts: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.

All four are considered either critical swing states or left-wing strongholds. They are also fairly populous states, each endowed with an above-average number of votes in the Electoral College, the system that decides US presidential elections.

Those four states combined have 250,000 non-citizens on their voting rolls, according to Mullin, who offered no basis for the statistic.

Mullin also reiterated Trump’s claim that the government had uncovered nearly 278,000 foreign nationals in total who are registered to vote.

There is no indication of how the Trump administration arrived at that figure, and experts warn that just because someone registered does not mean they were actually able to successfully cast a ballot.

Funds to be withheld

States screen voters for eligibility requirements like citizenship, and instances of non-citizen voting are exceedingly rare.

An analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, for instance, studied 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 elections, when Trump made his first successful bid for public office. It found that non-citizen voting accounted for .0001 percent of the ballots.

Trump has a long history of election denial. Even in 2016, Trump won the Electoral College system but lost the popular vote — a fact that he tried to explain away by falsely claiming millions of people “voted illegally”.

Election experts have widely dismissed claims that non-citizen voting is a threat to the outcome of the US elections.

Still, Mullin threatened to withhold federal funds from states that fail to comply with Trump’s demands about election security.

“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 or to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security issues,” Mullin said.

“Just security issues. We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed.”

Raising doubts about electronic voting

Trump has long voiced unsubstantiated concerns about the security of electronic voting, pushing instead for a return to paper ballots. He has also called for restrictions on mail-in ballots, though he himself has used such methods to vote.

His administration has also repeatedly pressured states to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. Several federal courts, however, have blocked Trump’s efforts to create a federal voter database.

Furthermore, the tool the Trump administration plans to use to consolidate voter information, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, has been criticised for erroneously flagging foreign-born citizens as non-citizens.

Still, earlier this month, the Trump administration sent letters to election officials across the country, threatening prosecution if non-citizen voters are found in their states.

Critics have accused Trump of seeking to nationalise election administration, though the US Constitution grants the power to organise elections to the states alone.

Already, leaders in some states have responded to Mullin’s remarks with hints of further legal action.

“California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on his social media feed, linking to a video of Mullin on Friday. “Try us.”

A clash with TV networks

Mullin, meanwhile, also took aim at the major television networks that did not broadcast Trump’s primetime speech live on Thursday.

The White House had requested airtime for the address, whose contents were shrouded in mystery beforehand.

But critics urged networks not to give Trump a platform to make baseless election claims that could undermine confidence in the upcoming 2026 midterm vote.

Ultimately, companies like ABC, NBC and CNN did not air the half-hour speech in full on their main channels, while others like Fox News did — but with caveats.

Trump used his primetime slot to denounce the channels that opted out.

“They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going,” Trump said.

“You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licences.”

Mullins echoed that assessment when asked about Trump’s threat, calling the networks “shameful” and implying they were part of a broad cover-up.

“What are they trying to cover up? Why wouldn’t they want to inform the American people? Why are they calling themselves a news outlet if they’re not actually trying to get the news out there?” Mullins asked.

Thursday’s speech was not the first time the Trump administration has threatened to revoke broadcast licences from channels he disagrees with. It did so last September, for instance, amid a feud with late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

In light of Trump’s latest remarks, the sole Democratic commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Anna Gomez, took to social media to reject the threat as unconstitutional.

“The FCC has no authority to punish a station for refusing to air a blatantly political speech. This is a naked attempt to bully broadcasters, and the FCC should have no part in it,” Gomez wrote.

“It is ridiculous to call for broadcasters to lose their license simply for making the same editorial decisions they’ve made under presidents of both parties, especially when the remarks were still available to anyone who wanted to watch them online.”

The First Amendment of the US Constitution offers broad protections for free speech and the news media.