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Election security is the latest target in Trump's rampage [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-02-12
Workers at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who focused on misinformation have been placed on administrative leave, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Tuesday—a move that leaves state election officials on their own as they seek to protect Americans from attempted intrusions on elections.
"CISA needs to refocus on its mission, and we are starting with election security," a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Tuesday, seemingly confirming an Associated Press report that said 17 election security officials at CISA had been placed on leave.
"The agency is undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” the spokesperson continued. “While the agency conducts the assessment, personnel who worked on mis-, dis-, and malinformation, as well as foreign influence operations and disinformation, have been placed on administrative leave."
Then-candidate Donald Trump and future Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem dance to the song "Y.M.C.A." at a campaign event in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 14, 2024.
Hobbling CISA—a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that was formed during President Donald Trump's first term in office—was a goal of Project 2025, the right-wing screed that Trump distanced himself from during the campaign but that his administration is now implementing since he won office.
"Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts," Project 2025 read. "The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth."
Project 2025 railed on CISA's efforts to combat mis- and disinformation, citing the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
"CISA began this work because of alleged Russian misinformation in the 2016 election, which in fact turned out to be a [Hillary] Clinton campaign 'dirty trick,'" Project 2025 falsely stated, adding that “CISA has devolved into an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political Left” and that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day 1.”
Other Republicans have also attacked CISA.
In late January, Trump sycophant Marjorie Taylor Greene, who moonlights as a representative from Georgia, flagged the agency to co-President Elon Musk for cuts.
"Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was more focused on undermining President Trump than they were protecting our own critical infrastructure. The thugs responsible for that kind of waste and abuse will be held accountable!" she wrote in a post on X.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia screams on July 27, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
After he won the 2024 election, multiple reports said that the future of CISA was in doubt because of Trump's anger that the agency wouldn’t substantiate his lies about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. In 2020, Trump fired CISA director Chris Krebs after Krebs said that the election that year was secure and not rife with fraud.
As for the recent firings of CISA election staffers, secretaries of state from both parties who run elections have praised CISA's efforts to help them protect election security.
“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,” Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, said in January. “They’re teaching them and helping them check their physical security and their cyber hygiene, and that’s been extremely popular.”
And election officials in states across the country are warning that getting rid of these CISA officials will make elections less secure.
“Any step to weaken CISA will make it harder to keep our elections secure,” Aghogho Edevbie, Michigan’s deputy secretary of state, wrote in a post on X. “CISA has simply been an invaluable partner for our department and local clerks across Michigan.”
And Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes wrote a letter to Trump on Monday urging him to reinstate the staffers.
“This decision undermines the integrity of Arizona’s election security at a time when our enemies around the world are using online tools to push their agendas and ideologies into our very homes,” Fontes wrote, adding that getting rid of CISA election personnel is “akin to dismissing national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration … staff ahead of hurricane season.”
“I urge you to reconsider these decisions and to reaffirm the federal government’s commitment to securing our elections,” Fontes added.
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