The Trump administration is abusing Americans’ personal information in ways that endanger our fundamental rights. Several federal agencies have attempted to create national databases of Americans’ private data, violating the law and the Constitution—all to consolidate power under President Trump, taking it away from states so that they can more aggressively pursue their political priorities, including mass deportation and creating more barriers to vote. 

CREW is filing lawsuits, public comments and amicus briefs every chance we get to fight back against the Trump administration’s sinister attempts to illegally consolidate Americans’ private information. 

The American people should be able to trust their government with sensitive information—not have to worry that agencies will collect it and abuse access to it. That’s why Congress passed the Privacy Act in 1974 after the COINTELPRO and Watergate scandals, which limits a state’s ability to share sensitive information with federal agencies and limits data sharing between different federal agencies. 

The Trump administration has repeatedly violated the Privacy Act by compiling state voter files, and pooling and repurposing unreliable data from different federal agencies and including it in the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, which the administration unlawfully transformed into a flawed tool for mass “voter verification” and potentially the primary tool for benefits eligibility checks. 

CREW sued to challenge the Trump admin’s data abuse.
Read more: CREW sued to challenge the Trump admin’s data abuse.

These efforts threaten to disenfranchise eligible voters, subject Americans to unwarranted investigations and create unprecedented security risks by placing sensitive, personal information in target-rich systems. The data involved in these schemes often includes social security numbers, birthdates, and current home addresses; pooling data like this in one place may raise the risk of identity theft and fraud and could even put people’s physical security at risk.

The Trump administration has not earned the public’s trust when it comes to data protection. The creation of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” last year raised countless concerns about who had access to what data and why—concerns that have since been borne out, including by reports that a former employee of DOGE allegedly accessed highly sensitive Social Security Administration data and planned to bring the data with him to his next job, reports that DOGE accessed and may have taken sensitive data from the National Labor Relations Board and reports that DOGE accessed 19 different Department of Health and Human Services databases, in one case without proper training. 

The concerns go beyond DOGE: A federal judge found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” by sharing confidential taxpayer addresses with DHS. DHS also recently sought access to the Federal Parent Locator Service from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is meant for finding people who owe child support. This is just the tip of the iceberg: the Treasury Department also recently announced that it was planning a database to consolidate the personal data of every person associated with any financial assistance program supervised by the agency, including emergency rental assistance, homeowners assistance and small business credit. HUD recently also proposed a rule requiring new applicants and current recipients for housing assistance programs to sign a consent form to use the SAVE database for benefits eligibility checks, which CREW opposed.

The Trump administration’s most expansive effort to compile Americans data is its unprecedented demand for state voter rolls. It has already sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for refusing to comply. Compiling state voter files would violate not just the Privacy Act, but also America’s constitutional framework that gives states the right to administer elections, as well as the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act which confirm states’ authority over voter roll list maintenance and election management. 

Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s data consolidation and weaponization efforts are escalating: on March 31, 2026, Trump signed an executive order requiring states to use the SAVE database, which is notoriously flawed, and risks millions of people’s data—all to purge voter rolls.

CREW is challenging the consolidation of voter files.
Read more: CREW is challenging the consolidation of voter files.

We won’t stop fighting back against the Trump administration’s abuse of people’s personal data to take control of elections until Trump stops violating Americans’ rights and our country’s founding principles.

CREW’s efforts to challenge Trump admin data consolidation 

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