Google and White House Discussed 2026 Midterm Keyword List, Documents Show

Internal Documents Describe Feb. 24 Meeting

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2026. Google executives and White House officials met on Tuesday, Feb. 24, to review a draft list of election-related keywords and YouTube metadata triggers intended for use ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The Alamo Post and three people familiar with the meeting.

The meeting took place at 2 p.m. EST in a fourth-floor conference room at Google's Washington office at 25 Massachusetts Avenue NW, the documents show. Attendees included staff from Google's Trust and Safety division, the White House Office of Digital Strategy, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to a meeting agenda dated Feb. 21 and circulated to participants the following morning.

The meeting followed a Feb. 10 company blog post in which Google described its 2026 election integrity plans as 'voluntary product improvements.' The documents reviewed by The Alamo Post show that the Feb. 24 discussion included government input on specific terms, a level of coordination not described in the public post, the employees said.

The draft document, titled 'Civic Integrity Keyword Review, Midterm 2026,' is part of a project internally called 'Civic Signal,' according to two Google employees who have worked on the effort. The document lists dozens of search terms and phrases that the company may flag, downgrade, or label, including 'ballot harvesting in [state],' 'voting machine failures,' 'drop box fire,' 'poll hours extended,' and 'voter roll purge,' the employees said.

A separate slide deck, labeled 'Confidential' and dated Feb. 20, describes potential product responses for each category of term, the employees said. The responses include reducing the visibility of YouTube videos containing certain metadata, attaching information panels to Google Search results, restricting advertising revenue on affected videos, and forwarding high-confidence signals to a shared dashboard used by CISA and state election officials, they said.

The documents show that the company considered applying the keyword list to Google Search, Google News, YouTube, and the Google Discover feed on Android devices. One chart compares expected traffic impact across products and estimates that labeled search results would see a 12 to 18 percent drop in click-through rates, according to one Google employee who reviewed the analysis.

The meeting agenda lists action items for the Feb. 24 session, including a request that Google provide CISA with a preliminary timeline for pilot deployment by March 3 and a decision on whether the keyword list would apply to Google News, the employees said. The pilot would initially cover queries related to federal races in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to the documents.

Coordination with Federal Agencies

An email sent at 11:47 a.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 23, from a Google Trust and Safety director to a CISA official whose name appears in the documents, asked the agency to confirm its attendance and to bring 'any updated threat actor lists' to the meeting, according to two employees who viewed the message. The email was sent from a Google corporate account and copied to two White House Office of Digital Strategy staffers, the employees said.

The same email chain includes a message from a White House official sent at 4:12 p.m. on Feb. 23 that thanks Google for 'the prep materials' and requests a one-page summary of the keyword list for distribution to other agencies, according to the employees. The employees said they could not determine whether the summary was delivered before the meeting began.

A former Google content moderator who reviewed materials from the project said the keyword list goes beyond the company's public election-integrity policies because it includes general search terms that do not violate Google's rules on their own. The former moderator said the documents describe a system in which government requests could influence ranking decisions before any user content is reviewed for policy violations.

Two congressional investigators working on separate oversight inquiries said staff on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee received anonymous tips about the meeting late on Feb. 25. The investigators said both committees are preparing document requests to Google and to CISA that could be sent as early as Friday, Feb. 27. One investigator said the committees are particularly interested in whether CISA provided the keyword suggestions or merely reviewed a list drafted by Google.

A lawyer involved in ongoing litigation against Google over content moderation practices said the documents, if authentic, could become evidence in at least two pending cases in federal district courts in California and Texas. The lawyer said plaintiffs in those cases have argued that government pressure on private platforms violates the First Amendment, and the Feb. 24 meeting could support claims of coordination. The lawyer noted that a federal judge in Louisiana is already overseeing discovery in a related case that names CISA as a defendant.

Pilot Launch and What Comes Next

Google employees expect the pilot phase of Civic Signal to begin on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, according to the documents and two people familiar with the schedule. The pilot would run through the end of May and would be evaluated based on click-through rates on information panels, the volume of flagged content, and feedback from state election officials, they said.

The documents indicate that Google plans to use a new internal dashboard called the 'Election Integrity Console' to track flagged terms and share select data with CISA. One document states that the console would log the time a term is flagged, the product where it appeared, and whether the company took action, but would not include the names of individual users who searched for the terms.

White House officials have not publicly disclosed the meeting, and Google did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. A CISA spokesperson declined to comment on what the agency described as 'internal deliberative discussions.' The Alamo Post is withholding the names of the Google and government employees because the documents are not public and the employees are not authorized to discuss them.

Free speech advocates and several Republican members of Congress have raised alarms about the documents. A congressional investigator said one committee staffer described the meeting as 'a level of coordination we have not seen in writing before.' The investigator said lawmakers are likely to request that Google preserve all communications related to Civic Signal by Feb. 28.

Watch for four developments in the next 48 to 72 hours: whether Google confirms or denies the existence of Civic Signal, whether CISA issues a public statement about coordination with tech platforms, whether House committees send document requests, and whether any state election officials object to being named in the pilot program. The Alamo Post will publish additional details as the documents become available.