'Keeps me up at night': States warn Trump slashed crucial security against foreign threat

State election officials say they have lost access to federal cybersecurity support they once relied on to defend against foreign threats, leaving them increasingly on their own just months before the 2026 midterms, according to a new report.

Multiple current and former senior election and national security officials say they cannot recall a precedent for the level of federal disengagement now underway, even as President Donald Trump raises concerns about foreign election interference on social media and in a primetime address, reported MS NOW.

“If Donald Trump were truly concerned about election security, he would not have fired hundreds of federal workers whose jobs were to secure our elections,” said Cait Conley, a West Point graduate and combat veteran who served as the senior adviser to the director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration.

Conley, who is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat, warned that Trump was spreading lies and misinformation about election security with sinister intentions.

“His lies and misrepresentations are very clearly trying to lay the groundwork for calling this November’s election results into question when his party loses,” she said.

During Trump's first term, one former official said, the relationship between Washington and the states was collaborative — "carrots rather than sticks" – but that approach, the official said, has been replaced by a far more transactional posture in Trump's second term that officials said left them "flying blind."

“I’ve literally never heard anybody effectively say ‘to keep you safe, you have to give me what I want,’” said a swing state election official, referring to DHS threats to hold back resources from states that refuse to hand over sensitive voter data.

Those risks were even higher at the local level, that official said.

“Does [a clerk’s] laptop have the IT infrastructure to defend against an attack from Iran?" the official said. "That’s what keeps me up at night.”

The shift traces back to cuts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the DHS office created in 2018 to help states secure voting systems against foreign interference, according to the report.

After Trump returned to office, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency fired more than 100 CISA employees, including election security advisers, while over 600 others were placed on leave, reassigned, or took buyouts.

CISA also halted funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which had given local governments free access to threat monitoring, training, and technical support.

"We're less informed on the pattern of the attackers and are slower to respond," said one swing-state election official.

Compounding the concern, DHS is telling states they'll only receive election security resources if they submit voter rolls to a federal verification database that a judge recently ruled unlawful in its current form. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says a new "election infrastructure plan" will arrive within 30 days, tied to state participation in that program.

Tim Harper of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the breakdown extends beyond CISA, noting that counter-foreign-influence teams at the FBI, State Department, and Justice Department have also been eliminated or sidelined.

"Expecting local election officials to handle nation-state cyberattacks without federal support isn't commonsense policy," he said. "It's a national security failure."