Civil war erupts as red state GOP leader blisters Trump: report

U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor Angel Families at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026. REUTERS

KUTV reports Utah Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson has apparently had enough of President Donald Trump and his threats. On Friday, Henderson demanded the Trump administration "stop threatening states and filing frivolous lawsuits."

The order comes one a day after Trump slammed the US election system as worse than that of “third-world” nations, and also heavily hacked by China, without evidence.

“It's Republican vs. Republican in the election drama,” reports KUTV.

"We call on the federal government to restore the election security resources that have been cut over the past several years, and to rescind all currently proposed cuts," said Henderson in a statement. "In the meantime, Utah election officials will continue to deliver secure, free, and fair elections for the voters of our state."

KUTV reports Trump’s politicized U.S. Department of Justice Henderson has sued her and other states for refusing to surrender voters' Social Security numbers and drivers' licenses.

For months, Trump’s administration has demanded states provide copies of their voter lists, calling the information necessary for election integrity efforts. While some red states have turned over lists that withhold sensitive personal data, most states have declined to offer all the information on their lists. Utah, for example, is one of the red states that did not.

Earlier in July, the Justice Department menaced state election officials with threatening letters, asserting that they could “face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting.” According to NBC, the letters are the latest move in President Donald Trump’s effort to promote his false claims of widespread noncitizen voting and “assert more federal control over state elections.”

Trump claimed more recently, on Thursday, that there are 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections, and he argued — again without evidence — that there are serious threats to election security from China.

Republican Utah political activist and former local school board member Michael Clara may have complicated Trump’s claims by accusing Utah leaders of withholding information concerning signers of petitions that won Gov. Spencer Cox the Republican primary ballot two years ago. The resulting audit from Clara’s accusation revealed signatures for Cox and two other then-candidates only found "some errors," and the audit declared that "verification standards would benefit from further clarification and transparency."

But KUTV reports the audit also determined that "candidates fulfilled the requirements that were given to them."

Henderson herself has said in a recent audit that only 27 people — out of more than two million registered voters — should not have been on state voter rolls.

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