Exposing ICE and Trump-proofing elections
Maine’s Secretary of State is fighting one battle after another
Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.
Good news: The nurses strike could soon be over at three major private hospital systems here in NYC. On Monday, the New York State Nurses Association reached a deal with Mount Sinai and Montefiore, winning improved contract terms — better pay, preserved benefits, safer staffing — after nearly a month on the picket lines. NewYork-Presbyterian, the third system, says it also accepted an offer from the NYSNA, though the union has yet to confirm an agreement. More than 15,000 nurses have been on strike since early January, and should they vote to approve the contracts, they’ll return to work on Saturday. I don’t know the terms of the deal, but as I wrote last month, the nurses deserved everything they asked for, at minimum.
Quick reminder: I’ll be joined live by Run for Something co-founder and president Amanda Litman at 8:30 pm EST on Thursday, right here on Substack. We’ll be talking about progressive Democrats’ recent huge upset victories and Run for Something’s big strategic plans for a blockbuster 2026.
And now on to tonight’s interview!
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Just about every aspect of American civic life and government has been profoundly altered by Donald Trump’s decade of political dominance, turning even the most mundane government bureaucracy into ideological flashpoints and high-stakes war zones. Take the state secretary of state position: what was once a largely nonpartisan administrative job now demands a defiant, outspoken brawler with the niche legal and policy acumen to combat what have become endless attacks from the federal government.
The role has made a resistance star — or conservative pariah — out of more than a few election administrators, and this winter, the spotlight is on Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Now in her second term, Bellows has spent the last year dealing with one federal incursion after another, playing defense and fortifying her state on multiple fronts.
In January, the Trump administration began flooding Maine with ICE and Border Patrol agents in what it called “Operation Catch of the Day,” a campaign that Bellows sought to thwart through her role overseeing the state’s bureau of motor vehicles. Her administrative acumen led to her being doxxed, and drew both GOP ire and threats of impeachment — the partisan furor not necessarily a bad thing if you’re running in a gubernatorial primary, as Bellows is — but as we discussed earlier Tuesday, helped set a precedent that other states can follow going forward.
I spoke with Bellows about the many battles on her plate — below is an edited and condescended version of our conversation.
Progress Report: You refused to issue unmarked license plates to ICE vehicles last month, drawing a lot of criticism from Republicans. Why did you do that and where does it stand now?
Bellows: With regards to the license plates, I felt strongly that we should not be providing undercover license plates to federal agencies to be complicit with abuses of the law and the constitutional rights of Mainers.
About a week prior to the surge when the rumors were strong that this was going to happen, US Customs and Border Protection asked for undercover license plates. And I made the decision to pause all issuance of undercover license plates to federal agencies until we had more information and some guarantees that Maine plates wouldn’t be used to violate the law.
We have subsequently updated our forms so now every law enforcement agency — federal, state, and local — has to certify that the plates won’t be used for civil immigration enforcement. Including but not limited to the grotesquely named Operation Catch of the Day.
Did the feds agree to that?
The federal government didn’t sue to challenge it. As the head of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Secretary of State, I have the authority to decide who does and who doesn’t get undercover license plates. Now, there are legitimate reasons that law enforcement needs those undercover plates; you can imagine if they’re trying to intercept a drug trafficking ring or a human trafficking ring. We work with law enforcement agencies every day.
And in fact, I oversee a law enforcement agency through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles that investigates stolen identities, vehicle theft, and other crimes. That partnership is very important to us and we didn’t make the decision lightly.
But if federal agents are arresting people in the streets and imprisoning them, they should be marked as government vehicles because given the violence that we’ve been seeing, how else can you distinguish between armed vigilantes and federal authorities? Additionally, people in a democracy have the right to hold law enforcement accountable. If there are abuses of people’s constitutional rights, that makes it impossible for observers to seek recourse and hold law enforcement accountable for what they’re doing.
So you’re more discerning now.
We’ve increased the criteria. We’ve always been discerning in terms of requiring that the requests come from law enforcement, that it be authorized by the agency’s chief, that there be a level of scrutiny and oversight. Now we’re going a step further and saying these license plates can’t be used for civil immigration enforcement. And that’s important because civil immigration enforcement is kind of like enforcement of traffic tickets or other misdemeanors. It is not a crime to be in violation of the immigration law.
Steve Bannon recently said that Trump is planning to have ICE “surround the polls” on Election Day. Did you take it seriously? How do you deal with that?
It’s stupid to have ICE at the polling places because non-citizens are not voting. Only citizens vote in federal elections in this country. That is clear in the Constitution. It’s clear in the data. We have safe, free, and secure elections in America.
It is unconstitutional. It’s also illegal: There’s a federal law that prohibits armed federal officers from being in polling places on election day. And there are also state laws here in Maine, for example. It is the civil service, election wardens who are in charge of the polling places. And actually, no member of law enforcement can enter without their permission and their consent. So for a variety of reasons, this is an unlawful, unconstitutional action that the President and the White House and Bannon are threatening.
So they are barred from entering the polling places during voting hours. How else could they interfere with elections?
My concern is ICE may choose to roam the streets on Election Day. What we saw in Maine, the operation conducted by Homeland Security with the surge of ICE in our streets, it was brief but violent and chaotic, people were afraid to go to work. They risked eviction from their homes because they were so scared. They were afraid to go to school. We saw over 20% absenteeism in the greater Portland school districts. They were afraid to go get groceries or just go about their daily business.
If people are afraid to go to work, or school, or get groceries, they’re going to be afraid to go out and vote. It’s going to be really important for election officials to fight back, to proactively safeguard our elections from federal interference.
What does that look like, to proactively safeguard elections from the federal government?
We need to fight back in the courts. We need to fight with the legal protections in state statute. We need Congress to step up, although I’m skeptical that they will.
I also think it’s about administration itself. Unfortunately, not only do I need to think about how we do scenario planning around safeguarding from natural disasters and — increasingly in the last few years — swatting or bomb threats or other physical security threats and attacks by foreign adversaries or criminals, now I have to start thinking about how we put in place procedures and checks and balances that help protect us from federal interference.
And honestly, I can’t even believe I’m having to say that. Because that should be a given that the United States of America, that elections are free, safe and secure, run by the states, free of federal interference.
You’re also fighting with the federal government over their request for Maine’s voter rolls, right?
The Department of Justice has been trying to get the voter rolls from all 50 states. They want to create a national voter database because they want to control who votes in the 2026 and 2028 election. And we’ve said no; I told them to go jump in the Gulf of Maine.
When Trump talks about “federalizing” elections, what does that mean to you? What do you think they want to do?
I can’t speak to their motivations. I can’t speak to their plans. What I can speak to are their actions thus far. One year ago, they zeroed out funding for election security and cybersecurity through the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. It’s a federal, state, local security partnership that I chaired in 2024. It’s bipartisan. It’s comprised of election officials and cybersecurity officials all across the country. They zeroed out funding for actual cybersecurity and election security.
Then last summer, they came after our voting rolls. They sued Maine first and then they sued about two dozen other states, most of which have Democratic governors, which seems like an odd coincidence. Now, the good news is we’ve built a coalition of 27 states that are fighting back. That includes Republican states like Utah and New Hampshire. And we’re winning in court. We’ve just won in Oregon and California.
But they’ve been doubling down over and over again with the most recent seizure of ballots from 2020 in Fulton County and from the surge of ICE into Minnesota and Maine. Which by coincidence are two of the top states in voter participation in the nation.
What did you make of that raid?
So it was shocking to see the nation’s top domestic spy, Tulsi Gabbard, handling ballots on the ground with FBI agents and calling in the president. That is extremely unusual. The president has no role in on-the-ground law enforcement operations.
Federal law requires that ballots and ballot materials be held for 22 months. It is standard practice for election jurisdictions to then destroy ballots and ballot materials so that there’s no confusion as you prep for the next federal election. There’s no confusion between ballots. So in most jurisdictions across the country, the 2020 ballots no longer exist, they were destroyed a long time ago. But because of all of the litigation in Georgia and Fulton County, those ballots were still in the custody of the county.
What they did was completely contrary to the chain of custody protections that usually surround ballots and ballot materials. And I think election officials all across the country were shocked. They are viewing this operation with deep skepticism. Donald Trump is like the ex-boyfriend that can’t get over the breakup. The country broke up with him in 2020, and he just can’t get over it. I think everybody’s tired of it. He lost. He needs to get over it and we need to focus on 2026.
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