Trump Proposes Cutting CISA Budget by $491 Million
The Trump Administration is proposing to cut $491 million from CISA’s budget, saying the 17% reduction in spending was part of the president’s aim to refocus the core mission of the country’s top cybersecurity agency.
The proposed cut was part of Trump’s overall FY 2026 spending proposal and another shot at an agency he’s been targeting since it and its original director, Chris Krebs, pushed back at his claims that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was somehow rigged against him.
Among Trump’s criticisms has been that CISA was ignoring his allegations and censoring the opinions of right-wing conservatives. It’s a position the president has run with since returning to office in January, and that in recent weeks has included other funding and staffing cuts as well as targeting Krebs by revoking his security clearance and calling on the Justice Department to investigate Krebs’ actions during and after his time with CISA.
Trump fired Krebs in 2020.
Citing Censorship
In a letter sent to Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee this month, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), wrote that the proposed budget cut “refocuses” CISA on its mission of protecting the country against outside attacks and ensuring the security of critical infrastructure in the country “while eliminating weaponization and waste.” It also gets rid of offices that Vought wrote duplicates the work of existing federal and state-level programs.
Most of the paragraph talks about eliminating programs used for “so-called misinformation and propaganda.”
“These programs and offices were used as a hub in the Censorship Industrial Complex to violate the First Amendment, target Americans for protected speech, and target the President,” wrote Vought, who was a key author of Project 2025, a Republican blueprint for governing that Trump in many ways is putting into action. “CISA was more focused on censorship than on protecting the Nation’s critical systems, and put them at risk due to poor management and inefficiency, as well as a focus on self-promotion.”
Censorship Accusations
The comments fell in line with what Trump had put into a fact sheet when calling for ending the “weaponization” of the federal government in part through funding cuts to 10 agencies, including CISA, which he said was “conspiring against the First Amendment rights of President Trump and his supporters. CISA was more focused on cooperating with Big Tech to target free speech than our Nation’s critical systems.”
They also echo ones made last week by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the RSA Conference, where she said that “CISA is not the Ministry of Truth. … It is the job of CISA to be a cybersecurity agency that works to protect this country.”
Noem reportedly was asked this week by both Democrat and Republican House members about the budget reduction to CISA, with some worrying that such drastic cuts could further hobble the cybersecurity efforts of a country that is coming under increasing cyberattacks from such foreign adversaries.
Waiting For the Plan
Representative Lauren Underwood, D-IL and the ranking member on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, said the cuts were akin to “letting Russia, China, and Iran steal our top secrets and Americans’ personal data,” according to The Record news site.
“Last week [at RSA], you said we should, quote, ‘Just wait for the president’s grand cyber plan,’ but you have not waited to erode the department’s cyber defense capabilities by removing resources and personnel and other components,” Underwood said. “Meanwhile, bad actors are burrowing further into the critical infrastructure of this country.”
According to CyberScoop, subcommittee Chairman Mark Amodei, R-NV, told Noem the panel needed more clarity on the reasons behind the cuts.
“When somebody says, ‘Hey, you guys presided over cutting half a billion dollars to do other stuff, what was that based on?’” Amodei said. “We don’t want to be in the position of, and won’t be in the position of, ‘That’s what they said we needed.’ We need some building blocks. What’s the plan for us to be kicking China’s butt, and how we’re still OK on that civilian sector stuff?”
Noem said Trump would release his cybersecurity plan “shortly.”
Hollowing Out and Politicizing Cybersecurity
In a LinkedIn column late last month, Jen Easterly, who replaced Krebs as CISA director before leaving in January, wrote about the global ripples caused by the budget and staff cuts at CISA, the firing of leadership at the National Security Agency (NSA), and the attack on her predecessor.
“These developments do not affect just a few individuals but the entire cybersecurity community,” Easterly wrote. “And not just here in America. They matter to our many partners across the globe who look to our nation for leadership in cybersecurity and contribute to our cyber defense efforts.”
The moves by the Trump Administration aren’t being done in isolation, she added.
“They’re part of a larger drift, one that risks hollowing out – and worse, politicizing – the U.S. federal cyber ecosystem when we can least afford it, undermining the capability of our country’s most important cybersecurity agencies at the same time that Chinese state-sponsored hackers are holding our nation at risk, positioned to launch disruptive attacks on our most sensitive critical infrastructure.”
