The Trump administration is trying to put the kibosh on a website that has published information exposing the identities of thousands of officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS has been key in waging Donald Trump’s deadly and racist crusade against immigrants and people who support them. The administration’s efforts to shield the mostly masked agents — often citing unsubstantiated threats of violence — have inspired activists to find ways to expose those carrying out the crackdown.

Some groups, such as the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, have used public records to spotlight DHS employees who have been charged with sex crimes against women and children. And now the Trump administration is freaking out after the transparency group DDoSecrets published leaked information identifying more than 40,000 employees at DHS, including some involved in undercover operations.

As The Guardian reported:

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked ⁠an Icelandic hosting company on Thursday to take down or limit access to data related to thousands ⁠of agency personnel, saying ⁠the content ​put them at risk, according to the request posted online by hosting company FlokiNET.

The database “places more than ⁠40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking and physical harm,” the request said.

ZeroFox, a company authorized by the US ⁠Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to pursue content removal actions, cited the figure in ​an email to FlokiNET.

FlokiNET’s ‌CEO, Kolja Weber, told ‌Reuters that his company would not remove the DHS data because it ‌included government employee work addresses and work phone numbers, not personal phone numbers and addresses.

Trump has gutted several aspects of the country’s cybersecurity apparatus and left various institutions vulnerable as a result. MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow recently discussed the problem this has created for states:

Last month, the FBI was hit with a cyberattack that current officials and outside experts described to MS NOW as one of the worst counterintelligence disasters in modern history. At the time, one FBI agent gave MS NOW their unvarnished opinion on the source of the breach: incompetency.

From Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig’s report:

“This was a vulnerability that supposedly they thought they patched, but managed to miss one of the ways to patch it,” the agent said in a text message, adding that the cause was “definitely incompetence.”

It’s unclear whether or how the Trump administration’s idiotic push to gut the nation’s cybersecurity defenses played a role in the latest DHS hack. But it seems abundantly clear that it hasn’t helped matters.

The post Trump administration freaks out over leaked data on DHS officials appeared first on MS NOW.

With Election Day approaching, backlash continues to mount against the top election official in Arizona’s most populous county — a MAGA loyalist who has used his office to promote election conspiracy theories and empower conservative activists.

I’ve homed in on Maricopa County’s Justin Heap in recent months as many Arizonans — including many of his fellow Republican election officials in the Phoenix-area county — have sounded the alarm on the county recorder’s push to give himself and Donald Trump’s allies more power to intervene in Maricopa’s electoral processes. More than half of Arizona’s residents live in the county, meaning any chicanery that occurs there could significantly affect key state races next week.

Some GOP candidates in Arizona think their chances in next week’s elections are bleak, potentially giving someone like Heap — who has encouraged the Trump administration to intervene in the state’s election processes — incentive to meddle.

Amid such concerns, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Arizona chapter has flagged disturbing reports of voters being falsely told by poll workers that they needed to show ID to drop off their mail-in ballots. Arizona law states that voters can show ID when they drop off ballots if they want to speed up the tabulation process, but doing so isn’t required.

In the video below, you can see Heap pushing back against the ACLU’s claim during a sit-down with a Phoenix television station — only to be told that one of the outlet’s reporters experienced the very same thing when trying to drop off a ballot.

Recorder @azjustinheap contradicts himself yet again.

In an interview with a local station, he said pollworkers were not instructing voters they must present ID to vote.

(This is against the law, voters still have the option to drop ballots for themselves and family members in… https://t.co/vwC216PuNE

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) October 30, 2026

Earlier this year, Heap stood alongside then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Phoenix press conference, where she said her department — which under Trump has served as a vector for white supremacist propaganda — would ensure that “we have the right people voting.”

It’s rhetoric one might expect to have heard during the height of the Jim Crow era — and Heap was right there. Which is to say, he has given Arizonans no reason to take him at his word on anything he says regarding election integrity.

The post MAGA election official in Arizona tries to downplay disturbing reports about poll workers appeared first on MS NOW.