2026-09-10T09:00:29.401Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统的选举欺诈宣传行动有了一个意想不到的新载体：美国商务部。
这个长期以来以推动经济增长、制定贸易政策和发布联邦统计数据等日常工作著称的部门，在部长霍华德·卢特尼克的领导下，正成为特朗普在11月中期选举前重塑美国选举制度努力的得力盟友。
近几个月来，该部门发布了备受争议的人口普查局关于非公民投票的调查结果，并向美国邮政署施压，要求其采取严格的新邮寄选票规则。消息人士告诉CNN，商务部官员曾在幕后悄然推动这两项举措，卢特尼克已成为白宫选举议程的关键合作伙伴。
如今，包括政府内部部分人士在内的特朗普核心盟友，正敦促卢特尼克利用商务部对供应链的广泛权限，禁止特定投票机，理由是中国制造的组件可能使投票机易遭黑客攻击。一些人借此呼吁特朗普宣布国家进入紧急状态，加强联邦对11月中期选举的管控。
CNN审查的电子邮件显示，两名长期倡导禁止投票机的保守派活动人士去年曾与白宫办公厅主任苏西·怀尔斯和特朗普盟友埃德·马丁讨论选举安全问题。上个月，这些活动人士向卢特尼克提出了这一问题，称卢特尼克告诉他们“他会着手处理此事”。
商务部几乎从未试图对由州和地方官员主导的美国选举施加如此大的影响力。但据十多名现任和前任商务部高级官员的采访，该部门广泛的权限已成为总统重塑美国选举机制的核心杠杆。
知名民主党人、选民权益倡导者和选举官员——包括部分共和党人——警告称，这些努力正在本已紧张的选举体系中制造混乱，使11月的选举更难开展，并为特朗普及其盟友质疑他们不认可的选举结果铺平道路。
美国商务部和白宫未回应CNN的详细置评请求。
随着中期选举临近，包括政府官员在内的特朗普盟友正加大对卢特尼克的施压力度。卢特尼克曾重复特朗普关于2020年选举被窃取的虚假言论，要求其在11月前禁用特定投票机。
这一想法去年已传达到政府最高层，包括怀尔斯。
根据非营利政府监督机构“美国监督”获取并独家分享给CNN的电子邮件，怀尔斯于2025年8月与威尔·哈夫和康拉德·雷诺兹讨论了选举安全问题。这两名与特朗普结盟的活动人士长期以来一直推动禁止投票机。怀尔斯将哈夫和雷诺兹介绍给了埃德·马丁——一名保守派律师、长期的特朗普盟友，曾担任司法部“武器化调查办公室”负责人。
“苏西和我谈到了选举安全和后续行动，她同意我们需要为2026年的初选做好准备，”哈夫在安排会面时写给马丁的邮件中说道。
邮件显示，这些活动人士向马丁提出了政府可在中期选举前推行的全面改革方案，其中包括：利用卢特尼克的权限，禁止包含敌对国家零部件的“关键基础设施”——他们认为此举可有效淘汰绝大多数投票机。
“这可以立即迫使各州转向总统期望的手工标记和手工计票选票，”哈夫在一封总结会面情况的邮件中写道，“总统明确表示，他不希望投票过程中使用计算机。”
他们向马丁发送了一份“拟议禁令计划”，马丁将其转发给了另一名司法部高级官员。
邮件显示，哈夫和雷诺兹还曾与白宫自称的选举安全事务主管库尔特·奥尔森取得联系，奥尔森目前在司法部任职。
据两名知情人士透露，去年奥尔森和情报官员曾敦促商务部官员将 Dominion 投票系统公司（现更名为 Liberty Vote）生产的投票机贴上国家安全威胁的标签，从而禁止其使用。路透社今年早些时候首次报道了奥尔森的这一推动行动。哈夫和雷诺兹未回应CNN的置评请求。
消息人士告诉CNN，商务部内部的职业官员审查了相关主张，但未采取任何行动。他们得出结论称，没有足够证据推进此事。两名政府官员表示，卢特尼克当时并未直接参与。
前情报官员和选举专家表示，没有证据表明中国制造的组件曾让外国政府操纵美国选票。
“如果我们能在美国制造投票机的所有零部件当然再好不过，但国土安全部并未证明，仅仅因为投票机的某个部件是中国制造的，就能据此入侵投票机，”一名前高级情报官员告诉CNN。
尽管去年禁止特定投票机的努力陷入停滞，但这一运动如今再度升温。保守派记者约翰·所罗门近期加入白宫，负责推进总统的选举议程，他是敦促卢特尼克在中期选举前采取行动的知名特朗普盟友之一。
“商务部可以快速且简单地采取一些措施，”所罗门上月在其播客中表示，并补充道，保护关键基础设施免受外国对手威胁“正是商务部的职责范围”。
去年与白宫会面的活动人士哈夫和雷诺兹如今表示，他们已直接向卢特尼克提出了诉求。上月在他们的播客中，两人称卢特尼克在近期访问华盛顿期间与他们进行了两个多小时的会面，并听取他们“提出了一项计划”，通过将多数投票机列为国家安全威胁来禁止其使用。
“他认真倾听并做了笔记，还叫来某人帮忙记录更多细节，”雷诺兹在播客中说道，“他对我们的发言感到震惊，并表示会着手处理此事。”
“美国监督”表示，这些记录显示“选举否认论”已在特朗普政府内部根深蒂固，并直接牵连到卢特尼克。
“选举否认论者不再是敲门之人，他们已被邀请进入政府内部，”该组织执行董事奇奥玛·丘库说道，“他们的主张已在白宫最高层得到重视，并日益影响联邦选举政策。”
上月，曾吹捧与卢特尼克在选举安全方面合作的国土安全部部长马克韦恩·穆林致信白宫和司法部，称投票机中的外国制造组件可能“在供应链的任何阶段潜在破坏选举基础设施”。
今年7月，穆林表示，他与卢特尼克正合作，拒绝向拒绝采纳总统偏好的选举改革（包括放弃特定投票机）的州提供联邦选举资金。
穆尔丁信中提及的三家主要投票设备公司的代表告诉CNN，所有美国行业都在一定程度上依赖外国制造，即便真出现投票问题，选举官员也可轻松调取纸质选票并重新计票。
一名投票行业消息人士告诉CNN，该行业许多人一直在紧张关注特朗普颠覆投票程序的企图，并正准备迎接更严格的审查。
针对外国组件的担忧，该消息人士表示：“这就好比问你的手机或汽车里有没有中国产零件一样。”
作为商务部下属机构的人口普查局上月引发轩然大波。特朗普在其Truth Social账号上发文吹捧该机构最新发布的一份报告，声称研究人员已确认至少2.4万名非公民在2020年大选中投票。
“我赢得了选举，”特朗普在Truth Social上宣称——即便采信该局的调查结果，这一结论也远远无法得到证实。
就连人口普查局的高级官员也对此感到意外，CNN的报道进一步揭示了这份引发轰动的分析报告的内部生成过程。
商务部悄悄插入了几名来自“美国优先政策研究所”的研究人员。该研究所是一家与特朗普结盟的保守派智库，长期为其政府输送人才。
CNN审查的人口普查局内部文件显示，这些党派研究人员被指派对2020年人口普查进行法医审查，公开目标是在2030年人口普查前改进该局的工作流程。
表面上看，这个项目并无特别争议。但开展该项目需要获取大量联邦记录，包括国税局、社会保障管理局和国土安全部持有的敏感数据。
起初，职业官员与新团队合作，帮助其成员安顿下来并启动人口普查项目。但多名消息人士告诉CNN，今年7月，美国优先政策研究所的研究人员不再与职业专家沟通。几乎与此同时，多名高级人口普查局官员离开了该机构。
美国优先政策研究所的团队最终发布了那份特朗普用来重申其2020年大选获胜谎言的选民分析报告。这份被称为“初步分析”的报告，将2020年选民的商业数据库与大量联邦记录进行了比对。报告称，在接受审查的1.28亿名选民中，约2.4万名与非公民相关记录匹配，占比约0.019%。
“这仅仅是开始，”卢特尼克在X平台上发布公告后写道，“未来几周还将分析超过3200万选民的记录，这些记录可能会显示出数万名额外的非法选民。”
该报告未署真名。多名前该局负责人告诉CNN，报告未充分考虑选民或联邦记录中的错误、关联海量数据库时出现错误匹配的风险，以及2.4万条匹配记录可能处于误差范围内的可能性。
这项分析是卢特尼克领导下18个月改革的巅峰之作。消息人士告诉CNN，人口普查局这个本质上旨在置身党派政治之外的机构，其高层已被逐步重塑，外部监督被取消，长期以来将其工作与白宫保持距离的保障措施也被悄然移除。
https://www.cnn.com/
特朗普欲重塑邮寄投票规则 地方选举官员称其无法实施
4:00 • 消息来源：CNN
约翰·阿布德是该局前首席科学家兼研究与方法局局长，他对这份匿名发布的非公民投票分析报告毫不留情。
“允许这类毫无统计学意义的内容在census.gov网站发布，既未经过常规内部同行评审，也未提供评估结果质量所需的科学细节，往轻了说是不负责任，往重了说纯粹是利用人口普查局可靠统计产品的声誉进行党派操纵，”阿布德说道。
该局发布这份有争议的分析报告的次日，商务部悄然修订了其《科学诚信政策》，删除了承诺商务部的科学发现“不会因政治目的被压制、延迟或篡改，也不会受到不当影响”的表述。
该政策已不再将免受政治干预列为科学诚信的核心标准。
多名消息人士表示，约六名美国优先政策研究所的研究人员仍留在人口普查局。要求匿名的职业官员警告称，该团队能够获取大量敏感政府数据，且愿意利用该局职权开展带有政治色彩的调查，这意味着可能出现规模更大的行动。
此事影响重大：人口普查数据将决定各州在国会的席位数量，以及联邦资金如何流向全美各地社区。
人口普查局未回应CNN的置评请求。
最高法院即将对卢特尼克倡导的严格新邮寄投票规则作出裁决，批评人士担心这些规则可能扰乱中期选举。
这一切都源于特朗普3月签署的一项限制邮寄投票的行政命令，卢特尼克陪同签署了该命令。两名参与相关流程的消息人士告诉CNN，卢特尼克及其团队是总统各项指令的幕后设计者。
该命令促使美国邮政署制定了备受争议的新规，要求全美各地的选举官员将所有邮寄选票收件人的姓名和地址上传至一个政府门户，该门户可与联邦执法部门共享，并用于选举审计和调查。
根据新规，存在信息不符的选票将被拒收并退回选举办公室。拒绝遵守规定的州可能会失去美国邮政署提供的邮寄选票递送服务。
该命令还指示国土安全部创建各州公民名单，旨在迫使各州对其选民名册开展进一步审计。它要求美国邮政署和国土安全部直接与商务部协调此项工作。
参议院民主党人6月致信卢特尼克，措辞严厉，称他们知晓“非公开报告”显示他及其办公室在“起草和内部推进”该命令中发挥了关键作用。
上周，一名举报人指控美国邮政署秘密且仓促地搭建其新门户系统，指责政府隐瞒该系统存在极高的灾难性故障风险——这可能导致大量邮寄选票选民被剥夺投票权。该机构为其流程进行了辩护。
去年，特朗普提出剥夺邮政署的独立性，将其划归卢特尼克领导的商务部管辖。
卢特尼克近期推出了一项试点项目，由邮政工作人员协助开展人口普查，他称该项目已启动。
“我们的普查员坐着邮政卡车四处奔波，邮递员开车经过一户人家时会说，‘我们不用进去了，这里没人住’，”卢特尼克在https://x.com/CommerceGov/status/2087154702064451706的推文中解释道，“他们对各地住户情况了如指掌，因此可以为人口普查确认住户信息。这将为我们节省数十亿美元。”
CNN的马歇尔·科恩为本报道贡献了内容。
How Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department became an unlikely engine of Trump’s election agenda
2026-09-10T09:00:29.401Z / CNN
President Donald Trump’s election fraud crusade has an unlikely new vehicle: the Commerce Department.
Long known for more mundane work like promoting economic growth, shaping trade policy and producing federal statistics, under Secretary Howard Lutnick, Commerce is proving to be a useful ally in Trump’s efforts to reshape the country’s election systems ahead of the November midterms.
In recent months, the department has produced disputed Census Bureau findings on noncitizen voting and pressed the US Postal Service to adopt stringent new mail-ballot rules. Sources tell CNN that Commerce officials worked quietly behind the scenes to advance both initiatives, and that Lutnick has become a key partner in the White House’s election agenda.
Now, prominent Trump allies — including some inside the administration — are pressing Lutnick to use his department’s sweeping authorities over supply chains to ban certain voting machines, arguing that Chinese-made components could leave them vulnerable to hackers. Some have invoked those concerns to push Trump to declare a national emergency and seize greater federal control over November’s midterm elections.
Emails reviewed by CNN show that a pair of conservative activists who have advocated for banning voting machines discussed election security issues last year with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Trump ally Ed Martin. Last month, those same activists pitched Lutnick on the issue, saying Lutnick told them that “he would be getting on it.”
Commerce has rarely, if ever, sought to wield such influence over US elections that are run by state and local officials. But according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior Commerce officials, the department’s wide-ranging authorities have become a central lever in the president’s efforts to rework the machinery of American elections.
Prominent Democrats, voting-rights advocates and election officials — including some Republicans — warn those efforts are injecting confusion into an already strained system, making November’s elections harder to run and laying the groundwork for Trump and his allies to cast doubt on results they do not like.
The Commerce Department and White House did not respond to CNN’s detailed requests for comment.
With the midterms approaching, Trump allies — including administration officials — are renewing pressure on Lutnick, who has echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election being stolen, to block certain voting machines from use in November.
The idea reached the administration’s highest levels last year, including Wiles.
According to emails obtained by the non-profit government watchdog American Oversight and shared exclusively with CNN, Wiles discussed election security in August 2025 with Will Huff and Conrad Reynolds, two Trump-aligned activists who have long pushed to ban voting machines. Wiles connected Huff and Reynolds with Ed Martin, a conservative lawyer and longtime Trump ally who was previously the Justice Department’s “weaponization chief.”
“Susie and I spoke about election security and moving forward and she agreed we need to be ready for 2026 primary elections,” Huff wrote to Martin as they arranged a meeting.
The emails show that the activists pitched Martin on sweeping changes the administration could impose before the midterms. Among them: using Lutnick’s authority to bar “critical infrastructure” containing parts from adversarial nations — a move they argued could effectively sideline most voting machines.
“This can immediately force states to move to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots like the President wishes,” Huff wrote in an email to Martin recapping their meeting. “The President has been clear that he doesn’t want computers in voting.”
They sent Martin a “Proposed Ban Plan,” which he forwarded to another senior Justice Department official.
The emails suggest Huff and Reynolds were also in contact with Kurt Olsen, the White House’s self-styled election security czar, who now works at the Justice Department.
Last year, Olsen and intelligence officials urged Commerce officials to consider banning machines made by Dominion Voting Systems, now Liberty Vote, by labeling some components a national security threat, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Olsen’s push was first reported by Reuters earlier this year. Huff and Reynolds did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Career officials inside Commerce reviewed the claims but took no action, sources told CNN. They concluded there was not enough evidence to proceed.
Two administration officials said Lutnick was not directly involved at the time.
Former intelligence officials and election experts say there is no evidence that Chinese-made components have allowed a foreign government to manipulate US votes.
“While it would be great if we manufactured all the parts of a voting machine in the US, DHS hasn’t shown that just because the Chinese made a part of a voting machine, they can therefore access the voting machine,” a former senior intelligence official told CNN.
While last year’s effort to ban certain voting machines stalled, the campaign is now regaining steam. John Solomon, a conservative journalist who recently joined the White House to advance the president’s election agenda, is one of several prominent Trump allies pushing Lutnick to act before the midterms.
“There are some pretty quick and simple things Commerce could do,” Solomon said on his podcast last month, adding that protecting critical infrastructure from foreign adversaries “is the bailiwick of the Commerce Department.”
Huff and Reynolds — the activists who met with the White House last year — now say they’ve taken their pitch directly to Lutnick. On their podcast last month, they said Lutnick met with them for more than two hours during a recent visit to Washington and let them “present a plan” to ban most voting machines by declaring them a national security threat.
“He listened and he took notes, and he called in somebody to help write more notes,” Reynolds said on the podcast. “He was shocked at what we had to say, and he said he would be getting on it.”
American Oversight said the records show how deeply “election denialism” has taken root inside the Trump administration – and directly implicates Lutnick.
“The election deniers aren’t knocking at the door anymore. They’ve been invited inside,” executive director Chioma Chukwu said. “Their ideas are being elevated at the highest levels of the White House and increasingly shaping federal election policy.”
Last month, DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has touted his work with Lutnick on election security, sent letters to the White House and Justice Department arguing that foreign-made components in voting machines could “potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain.”
In July, Mullin said he and Lutnick were working to withhold federal election funding from states that refuse to adopt the president’s preferred election reforms, including moving away from certain voting machines.
Representatives for the three major voting equipment companies mentioned in Mullin’s letter told CNN that all US industries rely somewhat on foreign manufacturing, and that in the rare situation where a voting problem did arise, election officials could easily pull paper ballots and audit the tally.
An election industry source told CNN many in the business have been nervously monitoring Trump’s attempts to upend voting procedures and are bracing for more scrutiny.
On the concerns about foreign components, the source said, “That’s like asking if there are Chinese parts in your cell phone or car.”
At the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, Trump sent shockwaves last month touting a newly published report from the agency in a Truth Social post, claiming that researchers had confidently identified at least 24,000 noncitizens who voted in the 2020 election.
“I WON THE ELECTION,” Trump declared on Truth Social — a conclusion that the bureau’s findings, even if taken at face value, did not come close to proving.
Even high-ranking Census Bureau officials were caught off guard, and CNN’s reporting sheds new light on the internal process that produced the explosive analysis.
The Commerce Department had quietly inserted several researchers from the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned conservative think tank that has served as a personnel pipeline for his administration.
Internal Census Bureau documents reviewed by CNN show the partisan researchers were assigned to conduct a forensic examination of the 2020 census, with the stated goal of improving the bureau’s procedures ahead of the 2030 count.
On its face, the project was not particularly controversial. But carrying it out would require access to a sweeping array of federal records, including sensitive data held by the IRS, Social Security Administration and DHS.
At first, career officials worked with the new team, helping its members settle in and launch the census project. In July, however, the AFPI researchers stopped communicating with the career experts, multiple sources told CNN. Around the same time, numerous senior Census Bureau officials left the agency.
The AFPI team ultimately produced the voter analysis Trump would use to revive his false claim that he won the 2020 election. The report, dubbed a “beginning analysis,” compared a commercial database of 2020 voters with a vast collection of federal records. Of the 128 million voters examined, the report said, about 24,000 matched records associated with noncitizens — roughly 0.019%.
“And that is just the beginning,” Lutnick wrote on X after the announcement. “More than 32 million more voters’ records will be analyzed in the coming weeks, and these records will likely show tens of thousands of additional illegal voters.”
The report had no named author. It did not adequately account for errors in voter or federal records, the risk of false matches when linking massive databases, or the possibility that 24,000 matches fell within a margin for error, several former bureau leaders told CNN.
The analysis capped off an 18-month transformation under Lutnick in which the Census Bureau – an agency built, by design, to sit outside partisan politics – was steadily reshaped at the top, stripped of outside oversight, and quietly relieved of safeguards that had long kept its work at arm’s length of the White House, sources told CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/
Trump wants to remake mail-in voting rules. Local election officials say they are impossible to implement
4:00 • Source: CNN
John Abowd, the bureau’s former chief scientist and head of its research and methodology directorate, was unsparing in his view of the still-anonymous publication on non-citizen voting.
“Allowing such statistical nonsense to be published on census.gov without the usual internal peer reviews and without the scientific detail required to assess the quality of the results is at best irresponsible but more likely pure partisan manipulation of the Census Bureau’s reputation for reliable statistical products,” said Abowd.
One day after the bureau published its disputed analysis, Commerce quietly revised its own Scientific Integrity Policy, striking language promising that the department’s scientific findings “are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence.”
The policy no longer lists protection from political interference as a hallmark of scientific integrity at all.
The roughly half-dozen AFPI researchers remain embedded at the Census Bureau, multiple sources said. Career officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that the team’s access to troves of sensitive government data — combined with its willingness to use the bureau’s authority for politically charged investigations — raises the prospect of a much broader effort.
The stakes are enormous: Census figures help determine how many seats states receive in Congress and how federal dollars flow to communities nationwide.
The Census Bureau did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on strict new mail-voting regulations – championed by Lutnick – that critics fear could disrupt the midterms.
It all ties back to a March executive order to rein in vote-by-mail, which Trump signed with Lutnick at his side. Lutnick and his team were the architects behind the president’s directives, two sources involved in the process told CNN.
The order prompted the US Postal Service to develop controversial regulations requiring election officials nationwide to upload the names and addresses of every mail-ballot recipient to a government portal, which could be shared with federal law enforcement and used in election audits and investigations.
Under the rules, ballots with discrepancies would be rejected and returned to election offices. States that refused to comply could lose USPS delivery services for mail ballots.
The order also directs DHS to create state-by-state citizenship lists aimed at pressuring states to conduct further audits of their voter rolls. It requires both USPS and DHS to coordinate that work directly with the Commerce Department.
Senate Democrats sent Lutnick a scathing letter in June, saying they were aware of “nonpublic reports” that he and his office had “a key role in drafting and internally advancing” the order.
Last week, a whistleblower alleged that USPS had secretively and haphazardly rushed to build its new portal system. They accused the administration of hiding the system’s high risk of catastrophic failure — potentially disenfranchising significant numbers of mail-in voters. The agency has defended its process.
Last year, Trump floated stripping the Postal Service of its independence and moving it under Lutnick’s Commerce Department.
Lutnick recently unveiled a pilot program that uses postal workers to assist with the US Census, which he said is already underway.
“We’ve got census takers in the post office truck, driving around, and what happens is the postman drives by a house and says, ‘We don’t have to go in that house. Nobody lives there,’” Lutnick explained in a https://x.com/CommerceGov/status/2087154702064451706. “They have a deep knowledge of who lives everywhere, so they can confirm it for the census. It’s going to save us billions of dollars.”
CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.