CISA Budget Cuts Weaken US Election Security, Officials Warn

Budget cuts targeting U.S. federal cybersecurity teams have left state and local governments vulnerable to escalating digital threats against elections, state and former federal security officials warned Thursday.

See Also: Use Cases: Censys for Federal Agencies

White House-led cuts to election security funding at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have led to the “effective demise” of the agency election information security and advisory council and other federal initiatives, said Suzanne Spaulding, senior advisor for homeland security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Sadly the election security-related work at CISA seems to have stopped,” said Spaulding, who led CISA’s predecessor agency at the Department of Homeland Security.

Spaulding told reporters in a virtual briefing that cuts to two hubs supporting state and local election offices have “crippled their efforts more broadly on foreign interference.” Closure of CISA’s foreign malign influence task force has left “federal officials and folks across the country without the tools and information they need to understand the nature of foreign threats.”

Her comments follow two months of budget cuts and staff reductions affecting CISA and other federal cybersecurity teams, leaving hundreds of employees in limbo as they await court rulings on whether the White House can push forward with the cuts (see: CISA Rehires Fired Employees, Immediately Puts Them on Leave).

Other top state and local security officials sounded the alarm Thursday over the lack of federal election security under Trump, including Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who said that “no state on their own” can “replicate what will be lost if CISA does not continue to provide these sorts of resources.”

“Just months ago in late 2024, there were bomb threats from a foreign source targeting our county election offices,” Schmidt told reporters. CISA provided support at the time and played a key role in countering disinformation campaigns, including exposing fraudulent videos falsely showing election workers destroying votes, he said.

“Protecting our election infrastructure is a matter of election integrity,” Schmidt said. “If you truly care about election integrity, then you really ought to care in making sure that our election administration in the United States is safe and secure and prepared to defend itself against foreign and other interference with the process.”

Experts previously told Information Security Media Group that the administration’s overhaul of the federal government has made the nation’s critical infrastructure more vulnerable to cyber threats.

Michael McLaughlin, a former naval intelligence officer and senior counterintelligence advisor for U.S. Cyber Command, told Information Security Media Group that CISA’s “uncertain future” under Trump is creating widespread security challenges across critical infrastructure sectors, which includes the nation’s complex and sprawling network of election systems (see: CISA Cuts Expose US Critical Infrastructure to New Threats).

Beyond CISA, experts warned that foreign adversaries are seeking to influence and gain greater control over cyberspace under Trump, potentially exploiting the U.S.’s lack of international engagement over cybersecurity. Former Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, who led U.S. negotiations for the United Nations Cybercrime convention, said Thursday that countries like Russia, China and Iran “clearly see the information space – including media – as an area where their governments have legitimate control and view what they do overseas to influence events as legitimate.”

“These cutbacks that we’re seeing in funding for critical support … is something that is quite unnerving, to say the least,” McCarthy said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.