Warner Presses DHS Over CISA Election Security Supports Failures

WASHINGTON – Following threats by the Trump administration to “take over” and “nationalize” elections as well as budget cuts and mass firings carried out at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is raising the alarm on the security of the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. Sen. Warner is pressing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin on recent reports that CISA is not providing critical election security support to states and localities.

Since President Trump created the agency in 2018, CISA has been tasked with the responsibility of empowering states and territories in their election administration work, working directly with election officials to provide them education, training, and other election security services, as well as sharing information about real time threats and incident-response reports.

“Over the last several years, CISA’s outreach has been well-received by state and local election officials and participation in CISA’s election security programs has been consistently present in all 50 states, largely due to CISA’s acknowledgement that their role is supplementary and that the agency has no constitutional, legal, or regulatory authority over the administration of elections. According to state and local election officials, CISA is not providing election security training, resources, and information that it provided in previous years. While the states are taking valiant and expensive measures to protect their elections, it is impossible for states to independently obtain intelligence, subject-matter expertise, and real-time incident reporting, and information at the scale and speed required to protect state elections from physical and cyber threats. As such, it is vital that CISA be permitted to respond to election threats, vulnerabilities, and foreign interference or influence, and they must do so without the risk or threat of decontextualized or misrepresented threat intelligence from the Trump administration. CISA’s work must never be used as fodder to limit states’ constitutional authority to administer elections. CISA, and DHS broadly, must refrain from participating in or supporting unconstitutional, unilateral efforts to ‘nationalize’ or ‘take over’ elections,” Sen. Warner wrote in the letter.

Calling out recent cuts to CISA’s budget, he continued, “Despite the Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to the upcoming midterm elections, DHS’ April 7 Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Proposal recommends further decimation of CISA’s election security mission by cutting fourteen CISA election security employees and the entire budget for CISA’s election security program, including the information sharing program to support state election officials, as well as the removal of election security advisors, who have served as critical nodes for election security issues to the states. Between the $191 billion allocated to DHS in the One Big Beautiful Bill and Senate Republicans poised to deliver yet another $79 billion for ICE, Border Patrol, and the White House ballroom, zeroing out CISA’s election security work is an indefensible repudiation of DHS’ mission and your responsibility to safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our democracy.”

Sen. Warner concluded the letter with a list of questions regarding CISA personnel, trainings, procedures, and communications with state and local election officials. He requested a response to his questions by May 15, 2026.

Read the full letter here.