BloombergLaw: “The Justice Department is curtailing election year coordination aimed at protecting state-run voting processes, increasing risks of the Trump administration interfering in the November midterms or unwittingly exposing precincts to threats, said multiple state officials and former DOJ election crime lawyers. Ahead of an election that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress, DOJ leaders have eliminated a centralized command post, discontinued mandatory election law training for prosecutors, and restricted access to threat briefings for state officials, said people briefed on the situation. To attorneys steeped in federal-state election law enforcement norms, DOJ’s information-sharing pullback is a subtler form of undermining the election integrity principles that this administration touts as a priority. It coincides with the department’s escalating push to seize state voting records and FBI Director Kash Patel’s promise of imminent arrests tied to the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump has also hinted at stripping states’ constitutional authority over election administration. The disbanded rapid response operation that had been run out of FBI headquarters, fielding calls 24 hours a day on election week, is a particular concern to law enforcement veterans. For decades, this structure supported prosecutors, agents, and police departments dealing with bomb threats, website hackings, power grid failures, and other potential wrongdoing at polling places. Rather than career officials, US attorneys appointed by Trump now oversee election security issues that arise in their districts. Last year, DOJ removed most of the attorneys and authority of a public corruption unit that traditionally spearheaded the command post, while other Main Justice offices that used to lend a hand have also lost considerable experience. The plan to disperse response teams to the 93 US attorneys—a group including Trump allies who’ve supported his unproven claims that Democrats plotted to steal the 2020 election—alarmed former DOJ attorneys who said the lack of nationwide consistency can make states more vulnerable to partisan intrusion. “That is now a significant risk—that the political ideology of US attorneys may stymie election enforcement in a way that department guidelines have tried to avoid,” said Mark Blumberg, who left the department in February after spending the last 20 years leading the centralized election response on civil rights threats..”