A joint release from the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on securing the election infrastructure against the tactics of foreign malign influence operations is photographed Sept. 1, 2024. (Jon Elswick/AP)
The Trump Administration is gutting the federal agency in charge of combatting foreign election interference, increasing the likelihood that foreign actors could successfully meddle in US elections.
Bridget Bean, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, announced on Friday in a memo obtained by WIRED that she was ordering “a review and assessment” of all positions at the agency focused on election security and countering disinformation and misinformation. Bean, a former Trump official at FEMA, said that CISA would “pause all elections security activities” until the review is completed in early March.
The administration has already placed 17 staffers at CISA who work with local election officials to prevent cyber-attacks and other forms of foreign and domestic election interference on administrative leave. Separately, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded an FBI task force charged with combatting foreign election interference by the likes of Russia, China and other countries.
Taken together, election security experts warn these moves will put US elections dangerously at risk of foreign interference.
“Every cut made to our election security and foreign malign influence operations is like handing a gift on a silver platter to our foreign adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran,” Kathy Boockvar, the former secretary of state for Pennsylvania and co-chair of the Elections Committee of the National Association of Secretaries of State during the 2020 election, told NPR this week. “It directly strengthens their ability to invade our national security and interfere in our elections, leaving every American citizen more vulnerable.”
CISA coordinates cybersecurity efforts across the US government and helps election administrators secure voting machines from hackers and prevent other threats to US elections while countering the increasing spread of disinformation and misinformation from foreign and domestic actors. In December, it revealed that Chinese hackers were targeting US telecom records and trying to steal information from high-ranking politicians and government officials.
Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told the Associated Press recently that the agency’s work with local election officials was particularly important. “The most value that we’ve got from CISA has been the people that they have on the ground in our state that build direct relationships, not just with us but with the individual county clerks,” he said. “They’re teaching them and helping them check their physical security and their cyber hygiene, and that’s been extremely popular.”
After Russian actors interfered in the 2016 election, Congress passed a bipartisan bill creating CISA in 2018, designating election security as critical infrastructure. Trump signed it despite calling evidence of Russian interference in the election “a hoax.” But he turned on the agency after it combatted his false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. He fired CISA’s first director, Chris Krebs, after he called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
House Republicans subsequently accused CISA of being “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.” The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report called for gutting the agency, a blueprint the administration appears to be following.
The effort to dismantle the federal government’s role in combatting foreign election interference comes at a time when such threats are increasing. Foreign adversaries are “more active now than they ever have been” in election interference and disinformation efforts, Jen Easterly, CISA’s director under the Biden Administration, warned in advance of the 2024 election.
