Editor's note: This story has been updated to make clear that proposed election spending has not been included in enacted spending bills. It was included in proposed legislation that has not passed.
The top election officials in 14 states on Monday asked the Biden administration to include billions of dollars for election infrastructure in the next budget proposal, citing the financial strain of Covid-19, cybersecurity and a shift to voting by mail.
The request — for $5 billion in fiscal 2023 and a total of $20 billion over 10 years — would go toward equipment, facilities, training and security, according to a letter signed by 14 state officials.
All signatories are Democrats, except Veronica Degraffenried, the nonpartisan acting secretary of state in Pennsylvania. She has been nominated for the post by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.
“As the lead election officials of our respective states, we are entrusted with conducting, funding, and supporting local, state, and federal elections in jurisdictions across the country,” the letter states. “Election security and integrity are a vital cornerstone of our democracy. But because of years of underinvestment by the federal government, too many voters and election workers contend with elections infrastructure that has reached the end of its shelf life.”
While much of the letter focuses on the need to update systems and equipment, it also mentions ongoing threats against election personne l. It argues that “we’re living in a climate where election workers are routinely being besieged, attacked, and threatened,” and points to a Homeland Security Department notice warning of increased calls for election-related violence.
This request follows a similar pitch made to congressional leaders in September. But the extra funding has not been included in any enacted spending bills, so the state officials have turned to the White House.
“Secretaries of state from every part of the country are feeling a real sense of urgency around meeting the deep and growing election infrastructure needs at the local and state levels,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. “We call upon President Biden to prioritize this funding in his 2023 budget proposal and to work with us and local election officials to ensure we have the support required to run secure and accessible elections for the short and long-term.”
On Tuesday, the Election Infrastructure Initiative — which, like the letter, is associated with the nonpartisan Center for Tech and Civic Life, released a report that claims state and local governments need $53 billion over 10 years to modernize election infrastructure.
“Election administration is one of this country’s most decentralized tasks. More than 10,000 jurisdictions, nearly all at the county or city level, manage our country’s elections. Each jurisdiction is responsible for funding its own election infrastructure,” the report states. “And dangerously for our democracy, that funding has not kept up with the deep and accelerating needs posed by cybersecurity threats, physical threats to election staff, and the growing need to provide voting options across different modalities, including in-person on election day, mail voting, and early voting.”
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.