CNN ONLINE

The Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against alleged voter fraud, taking new steps toward building a national citizen database and ramping up its hunt for suspected noncitizen voters — all under the banner of “election integrity.”

The latest escalation — including an executive order, a newly empowered prosecutor and a growing raft of lawsuits — has drawn fresh warnings from critics who say the administration’s push to amass vast troves of voter data from across the country could be used to block eligible Americans from voting and stoke fresh doubts about the legitimacy of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Justice Department has finalized a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to give DHS sensitive voter-roll data the administration has demanded from states to be checked against a citizenship verification program that has been criticized for its inaccuracies.

Trump officials floated a new potential pressure tactic on states that so far have refused to hand over their full voter rolls: Conditioning hundreds of millions of dollars in homeland security grants on sharing voter data, requiring states to run their registration rolls through the federal immigration records system or lose the funding.