Gavin Newsom told Mullin to "try us" on California's elections.
Homeland Security answered and he ain’t limiting it to California.
Mullin is making clear to all of them that they face consequences for letting fraudulent votes stink up the polls.
DHS Is Sending Investigators Into Nine States Before the Midterms
The list reads like a greatest hits of Democrat-run election machinery.
Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are all getting a visit from Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal arm of ICE.
The Gateway Pundit broke the news of what DHS is calling a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge, running from Tuesday through the middle of October, right through the heart of midterm season.
For the officials running elections in those nine states, "shock" is the right word.
Secretary Mullin did not soften the message.
"Election security is national security," he said, adding that "only Americans should be electing American leaders."
Newsom had practically begged for this fight.
He told reporters California runs "free, fair, and secure elections" and dared Mullin to "try us."
Mullin did not wait long to answer.
A preliminary DHS review, he said, found 81,336 California voter registrations where the name, birth date, address and Social Security number matched a noncitizen on file.
Then he added the line that actually stung.
"It takes California four weeks to count ballots in a mayor's race," Mullin said. "Third-world countries do it better."
DHS says the noncitizen registration problem is not just a California story either.
Combined with New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the department claims more than 250,000 voter registrations nationwide are tied to people who should not be on the rolls at all.
Mullin has also made clear there is a price for stonewalling.
Officials who refuse to cooperate, he has warned, "can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time," and DHS is now tying FEMA homeland security grant money to whether states comply.
Minnesota Fraud Bust Set the Template for What Comes Next
This did not come out of nowhere.
Back when Kristi Noem still ran DHS, a joint investigation with the FBI, IRS and postal inspectors tore through Minnesota and made hundreds and hundreds of arrests, exposing schemes that drained Medicaid, disability services and child nutrition programs, including the Feeding Our Future scandal that produced more than 70 defendants.
Noem accused Minnesota Governor Tim Walz of ignoring state employees who tried to sound the alarm.
She did not stop at Minnesota.
"We're going to come to you, Governor Newsom," she warned at the time, "and we're going to arrest every single individual that has ties to this kind of stealing of taxpayer dollars."
Mullin has picked up right where she left off, just aimed at the ballot box instead of the benefits office.
Washington's Democratic Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs, called the new investigation "another attempt by the federal government to cause chaos and confusion ahead of the midterms," insisting the state has documented only five fraud cases out of 90 million ballots cast between 2008 and 2025.
Attorney General Nick Brown went further, saying he has "no reason to believe this is a legitimate inquiry by DHS."
That is the same defense Minnesota officials used right up until the fraud numbers became impossible to explain away.
Why Blue State Officials Are the Ones Panicking
Here is what the fraud deniers never want to admit.
You do not send Homeland Security Investigations into nine states as a political stunt.
You send them in because DHS says the numbers on the voter rolls do not add up.
Newsom has built his entire national profile on being the anti-Trump governor, and now the election system he oversees is the one absorbing a federal review weeks before voters head to the polls.
If Mullin's investigators find anything close to what Noem's team found in Minnesota, Democrats will spend the next six weeks explaining voter rolls instead of attacking Trump.
Newsom asked DHS to try him.
DHS just did.
Sources:
- Jim Hoft, "Trump Orders Shock Voter Fraud Crackdown in Nine States," The Gateway Pundit, Aug. 31, 2026.
- Catherine Salgado, "Third-World: Mullin Hammers Newsom Over Claims of Fair and Secure Elections," PJ Media, July 17, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Trump DHS threatens federal funding cutoff for states that refuse voter roll security push," Fox News, July 17, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Noem puts Newsom on notice, vows California probe after Minnesota fraud bust," Fox News, 2026.
- Washington State Standard Staff, "WA officials decry Trump administration's reported ramp-up in voter fraud investigations," Washington State Standard, Sept. 1, 2026.
