Washington is on edge as election officials and cybersecurity pros warn that a sweeping overhaul of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has hollowed out key staff and programs that once helped states safeguard their voting systems. The shakeup lands just as campaigns and secretaries of state gear up for the 2026 midterms, when control of Congress could hinge on a handful of razor-thin contests. Former CISA staffers and current officials say a slimmer federal presence could leave local jurisdictions more vulnerable to hacks, ransomware and precision disinformation.
Internal documents and interviews reviewed by The New York Times show that the agency’s election-focused work has been sharply scaled back during President Trump’s second term. Veteran election-security staff have been reassigned, several programs paused and field support reduced. According to the Times, those moves have made some state officials hesitant to ask Washington for help, even after confirmed incidents.
Axios has reported that roughly 1,000 CISA employees have left in recent months, nearly one-third of the agency’s workforce, and that the White House’s fiscal 2026 budget blueprint would eliminate about 1,083 positions, further shrinking its footprint. Cybersecurity Dive and other trade outlets say many of those departures hit front-line cyber advisers and rapid-response teams that states had relied on for vulnerability scans and emergency incident support.
In March 2025 the administration halted funding for two cybersecurity initiatives, one of them focused on election support, and placed more than a dozen election specialists on administrative leave during an internal review, the Associated Press reported. That freeze led several outside organizations that had partnered with CISA to pull back election-specific services, forcing states to assemble replacements on their own.
Why state officials are on edge
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said his office alerted federal partners after a 2025 intrusion that briefly defaced the state’s candidate portal, but he chose not to lean on CISA because the agency had become uncommunicative, according to Arizona PBS. Votebeat detailed that candidate-portal breach and the subsequent scramble to contain it. In the upper Midwest, local lawmakers have been sounding similar alarms about federal staff shakeups, as highlighted when Minnesota lawmakers decry staff changes and warn of election-security fallout.
CISA’s response and a fraught history
CISA officials say the agency remains committed to protecting critical infrastructure and insists it will continue carrying out its statutory mission, even as critics argue that its on-the-ground election work has clearly narrowed. The agency was created in 2018 to pull together the federal government’s civilian cybersecurity efforts, Government Executive notes. Its role became politically combustible in late 2020, when President Trump fired CISA director Christopher Krebs after Krebs publicly rejected false claims about the 2020 vote, according to CBS News.
What experts say this could mean for November
Democratic and nonpartisan analysts caution that with less federal coordination, states will face tougher choices about where to put scarce dollars for cybersecurity and counter-disinformation work, according to research from the Brennan Center for Justice. The Los Angeles Times has reported that some states already had to hustle to replace services CISA once offered, with the shortfall especially painful for smaller counties that have thin or part-time IT staffs.
That leaves election officials with a blunt question: who steps in to run vulnerability checks, deliver classified threat briefings or coordinate a rapid response if a county system is hit in the final weeks before a big race. Several officials told reporters they are shoring up local and regional partnerships, but many concede there is no true one-to-one substitute for certain federal tools and expertise.
Senate scrutiny of CISA’s leadership has become part of the backdrop. President Trump’s nominee to run the agency fielded sharp questions in confirmation hearings last year over CISA’s election-security responsibilities, and lawmakers have pointed to workforce cuts and shifting funds as reasons to keep the agency on a short oversight leash, the Associated Press reported. Until leadership, money and field staffing settle into something more predictable, state and local election administrators say they are planning as if federal backup could be thinner than in past cycles.
