(The Epoch Times)—During a primetime address to the nation, U.S. President Donald Trump said that his administration uncovered profound vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system.
Trump said that these vulnerabilities had been exploited by the Chinese regime to seize American voter data.
“Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it,” Trump said.
Concurrent with the speech, Trump announced that many previously classified documents spanning from January 2020 to June 2026 that support the claims would be declassified and released to the public.
“This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy,” the president said.
Here are eight key takeaways from the address.
China Obtained 220 Million American Voter Files
According to the president, the files show that China obtained sensitive voter information for 220 million Americans.
According to Trump, intelligence assessments suggest that the Chinese regime, beginning in 2020, carried out “what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history—resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.”
The information contained in these files includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, “and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote, and engage in other nefarious activities,” Trump said.
“This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare,” he said.
“Tens of millions of voter data in 18 states have been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden.”
China Began Policy to Undermine Trump in 2018
In his speech, Trump said that China began a targeted operation to undermine his public standing and electoral prospects in 2018.
“In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection,” Trump said, citing U.S. intelligence.
At the same time, U.S. intelligence found, “China was working to influence the results of the U.S. midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself.”
According to the same report, “separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president.”
“They wanted to just make [it] sound like your president wasn’t so hot when actually your president has done a great job,” Trump said.
IC Had Private Concerns About Voting Machines
Trump also said intelligence reports indicated that the U.S. intelligence community (IC) had long-running concerns about potential vulnerabilities in U.S. voting machines.
“For years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems,” Trump said.
The president cited a declassified IC assessment stating: “We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.”
The same documents also state: “We assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes.”
IC Members Allegedly Hid Election Security Concerns
Trump alleged that some of the declassified documents indicate that IC members hid election security information, including from the president.
“Members of the Deep State in our intelligence agencies worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling—covering it up from both the President and the American People.”
Trump cited the seizure of voters’ records by China.
“U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states had been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information hidden,” he said.
“The cover-up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign.”
In its assessment of the 2020 election, which was unclassified in March 2021, the IC noted that China had “probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on US voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials.”
“We assess Beijing probably sought to use this information to predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome, as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008 and considers an acceptable tool of statecraft,” it stated.
Trump also cited intelligence that he said had been withheld from him in 2020, including raw intelligence that China was attempting “to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.”
“One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had ‘deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election.’ Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running ‘a shadow government’ to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known and to keep it away from the honorable press,” the president said.
Michigan Investigation
Trump cited a specific case in Michigan in his speech.
“Even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up,” Trump said, referencing a “large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan” disclosed by the files.
In 2020, the disclosures state, Michigan State Police raided a Democrat get-out-the-vote organization in Muskegon.
Trump said they were “so concerned by what they found, that they contacted the FBI in Detroit.”
The documents allegedly state that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter registration forms in other people’s names, submitted fraudulent registrations for people who did not exist, and received gift cards based on the number of applications they produced.
“The FBI agents working on the case believed that crimes were committed—yet the Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation for years,” Trump said. “Director [Kash] Patel is being directed to ensure that the matter is fully investigated, and to work with the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for any crimes.”
278,000 ‘Potential Non-Citizens’ Found in US Voter Rolls: DHS
“According to a DHS review of state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections,” Trump said.
In a post on X, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin—who is scheduled to hold a press conference on the issue Friday morning—clarified that these were “potential non-citizens,” contrasting with the language used by Trump and the White House.
“As @POTUS announced tonight—@DHSgov has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in just 4 U.S. states,” Mullin wrote.
During his speech, Trump said, “Since Democrat states refused to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher—yet even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.”
Investigators May Seek Criminal Charges
Trump indicated that he was directing U.S. law enforcement to investigate officials who hid information.
“Today, I’m asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the cover-up, and to file criminal charges if appropriate against these people,” he said.
The president also laid out additional steps his administration would take in response to the allegations.
“I’ve also ordered DHS to notify every state about non-citizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately,” Trump said.
He also made another push for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which Democrats have said is dead on arrival in the Senate.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
