Before the 2026 midterms, the federal offices that tracked foreign attempts to influence American elections were closed or cut. On February 5, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered that “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded,” ending the FBI unit created after Russia's 2016 interference, NBC News reported; Sen. Chuck Grassley praised the decision. That month, 17 election-security employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), including staff who worked on foreign disinformation, were put on administrative leave, CBS News and the AP reported. In April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced “the closure of the State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).” At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's restructuring cut the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which Politico described as a trim and CBS as gutting it.
CISA itself lost nearly 1,000 people, “nearly one-third of the agency's workforce,” by mid-2025, CBS reported, and the fiscal 2027 budget proposes a further $700 million cut that “could necessitate 900 additional layoffs,” ProPublica reported on October 19, 2026. ProPublica also reported that the administration, in reviving 2020 election claims, declassified records that included sensitive material state officials had shared with CISA on the understanding it would be kept confidential. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said CISA had “basically cut us off and left us on our own”; Maine's Shenna Bellows said a promise from CISA to help with the 2026 election now is “too little, too late.”
ProPublica, citing two former officials, also reported that a few months into the term, DHS political appointees asked CISA to “Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it,” and not to alert the manufacturer about any flaws; staff said the people able to do it had been laid off, and the request was not carried out. One former official said, “My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don't like.” That account is single-sourced and anonymous. A White House spokeswoman said, “President Trump has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections.” DHS and CISA did not respond. See also ProPublica Finds Nearly All of the 75 Officials Who Protected the 2020 Election Are Gone, Replaced by About Two Dozen Trump Picks Tied to Election Denial.