Politics
Big changes to the agency charged with securing elections lead to midterm worries
Since it was created in 2018, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency has helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments, showed officials how to protect polling places from attacks and gamed out how to respond to the unexpected, such as an Election Day bomb threat or sudden disinformation campaign.
The agency was largely absent from that space for elections this month in several states, a potential preview for the 2026 midterms. Shifting priorities of the Trump administration, staffing reductions and budget cuts have many election officials concerned about how engaged the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will be next year, when control of Congress will be at stake in those elections.
Some officials say they have begun scrambling to fill the anticipated gaps.
“We do not have a sense of whether we can rely on CISA for these services as we approach a big election year in 2026,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who until recently led the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State.
The association’s leaders sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February asking her to preserve the cybersecurity agency’s core election functions. Noem, whose department oversees the agency, has yet to reply.
“I regret to say that months later, the letter remains very timely and relevant,” Simon said.
CISA, as the agency is known, was formed under the first Trump administration to help safeguard the nation’s critical infrastructure, from dams and power plants to election systems. It has been undergoing a major transformation since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January.
Public records suggest that roughly 1,000 CISA employees have lost their jobs over the past years. The Republican administration in March cut $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.
That was a few weeks after CISA announced it was conducting a review of its election-related work, and more than a dozen staffers who have worked on elections were placed on administrative leave. The FBI also disbanded a task force on foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections.
CISA is still without an official director. Trump’s nomination of Sean Plankey, a cybersecurity expert in the first Trump administration, has stalled in the Senate.
CISA officials did not answer questions seeking specifics about the agency’s role in the recently completed elections, its plans for the 2026 election cycle or staffing levels. They said the agency remains ready to help protect election infrastructure.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, CISA is laser-focused on securing America’s critical infrastructure and strengthening cyber resilience across the government and industry,” said Marci McCarthy, CISA’s director of public affairs.
She said CISA would announce its future organizational plans “at the appropriate time.”
Christine Serrano Glassner, CISA’s chief external affairs officer, said the agency’s experts are ready to provide election guidance if asked.
“In the event of disruptions or threats to critical infrastructure, whether Election Day-related or not, CISA swiftly coordinates with the Office of Emergency Management and the appropriate federal, state and local authorities,” she said in a statement.
California’s top election security agencies said CISA has played a “critical role” since 2018 but provided little, if any, help for the state’s Nov. 4 special election, when voters approved a redrawn congressional redistricting map.
“Over the past year, CISA’s capacity to support elections has been significantly diminished,” the California secretary of state’s office said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The agency has experienced major reductions in staffing, funding, and mission focus — including the elimination of personnel dedicated specifically to election security and foreign influence mitigation.”
“This shift has left election officials nationwide without the critical federal partnership they have relied on for several election cycles,” according to the office.
CISA alerted California officials in September that it would no longer participate in a task force that brought together federal, state and local agencies to support county election offices. California election officials and the governor’s Office of Emergency Services did what they could to fill the gaps and plan for various security scenarios.
In Orange County, California, the registrar of voters, Bob Page, said in an email that the state offices and other county departments “stepped up” to support his office “to fill the void left by CISA’s absence.”
Neighboring Los Angeles County had a different experience. The registrar’s office, which oversees elections, said it continues to get a range of cybersecurity services from CISA, including threat intelligence, network monitoring and security testing of its equipment, although local jurisdictions now have to cover the costs of some services that had been federally funded.
Some other states that held elections this month also said they did not have coordination with CISA.
Mississippi’s secretary of state, who heads the national association that sent the letter to Noem, did not directly respond to a request for comment, but his office confirmed that CISA was not involved in the state’s recent elections.
In Pennsylvania, which held a nationally watched retention election for three state Supreme Court justices, the Department of State said it is also relied more on its own partners to ensure the elections were secure.
In an email, the department said it was “relying much less on CISA than it had in recent years.” Instead, it has begun collaborating with the state police, the state’s own homeland security department, local cybersecurity experts and other agencies.
Simon, the former head of the secretary of state’s association, said state and local election officials need answers about CISA’s plans because officials will have to seek alternatives if the services it had been providing will not be available next year.
In some cases, such as classified intelligence briefings, there are no alternatives to the federal government, he said. But there might be ways to get other services, such as testing of election equipment to see if it can be penetrated from outside.
In past election years, CISA also would conduct tabletop exercises with local agencies and election offices to game out various scenarios that might affecting voting or ballot counting, and how they would react. Simon said that is something CISA was very good at.
“We are starting to assume that some of those services are not going to be available to us, and we are looking elsewhere to fill that void,” Simon said.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
A House panel is on board with legislation that aims to increase regulations of electronic bikes and scooters in Florida.
Rep. Yvette Benarroch, a Naples Republican and co-sponsor of the House bill (HB 243), presented it before the House Government Operations Subcommittee. She offered a committee substitute bill, which the panel unanimously approved.
It’s identical to a measure that was approved by the Senate Transportation Committee Tuesday.
E-bikes especially have gained unflattering attention in recent years as they have been involved in more and more accidents. Benarroch during her presentation provided a list of about a half-dozen fatalities involving e-bikes on Florida roads recently.
“Unfortunately, this bill was inspired by tragedy,” Benarroch said during her presentation. “Young people have been seriously injured.”
She added that the number of e-bike accidents is not going down and there needs to be more data collected to understand how profound the issue is. She said she’s been working on the bill for about the past half-year.
“There are many others whose stories do not make the headlines,” Benarroch said. “The call to act is immediate.”
Benarroch’s bill is identical to Sen. Keith Truenow’s measure (SB 382). The Tavares Republican amended his original bill to include provisions establishing an “electric bicycle task force,” which are also included in the House proposal.
That task force would collect data on e-bike and scooter accidents, provide recommendations on enforcement, and submit a report to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
The bill would also limit e-bikes to operating at 10 mph on sidewalks if a pedestrian is within 50 feet.
Several law enforcement organizations, hospitals and School Boards supported Benarroch’s bill Wednesday.
Rep. Linda Chaney, a St. Petersburg Republican and Chair of the House subcommittee, said she was thankful for Benarroch’s work on the measure because local municipalities have approached the e-bike issue with inconsistent measures.
“There are a lot of different areas in our state with different laws, depending on how fast the bike goes, how you peddle it if you have a motor (and) there’s a lot of confusion out there. … This is going to have far-reaching impact,” Chaney said.
Two actions in North Florida in 2024 demonstrate the wide range of approaches to dealing with e-bikes.
Two 15-year-old boys were seriously injured in St. Johns County alone last year. The St. Johns County Commission passed a resolution in August to join forces with the Sheriff’s Office and the St. Johns County School District to promote more awareness and safety for the operators of e-bikes, as well as e-scooters and other electronic motorized devices.
The County Commission’s measure promised joint education with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and the St. Johns County School District.
St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick said the resolution’s timing was right.
The Palm Coast City Council in 2025 also passed an ordinance that makes it illegal for e-bike owners to modify their vehicles so they can exceed state-defined speed limits on streets, sidewalks or paths.
An annual day to remember fallen conservative icon Charlie Kirk is closer to becoming law after meetings of the Senate Education Postsecondary Committee and the House Governmental Operations Subcommittee.
The panels voted on party lines to devote Oct. 14 to remember the activist and commentator who spoke for a generation on the Right before he was gunned down while addressing a Utah university crowd.
Under bills from Sen. Jonathan Martin and Rep. Yvette Benarroch (SB 194, HB 125), the Governor would be compelled to issue a proclamation every Oct. 14 — Kirk’s birthday — for the “Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance.”
“This bill would have this day be a day of remembrance and recognition of Charlie Kirk’s influence on civic engagement, youth leadership, and constitutional education. It does not create a state holiday or mandate closures,” Martin said Wednesday.
Martin extolled Kirk’s “alternative viewpoint” and willingness to debate, saying “what he was doing when he was assassinated goes to the very core of who we are as Americans.”
“The First Amendment does not exist to protect comfortable speech,” Benarroch said. “It exists to protect speech we disagree with. It exists to protect debate, House Bill 125 is not about asking anyone to agree with Charlie Kirk. It is not about endorsing every statement he ever made. It is not about elevating a personality. This bill is about what happens when violence replaces debate.”
Ahead of the Senate vote and after numerous members of the public cited various racially provocative things Kirk said into live microphones, an amendment from Sen. Shevrin Jones creating the gubernatorial option for a George Floyd day of remembrance was rejected, saying his killing, like Kirk’s, changed “public consciousness.”
Jones noted that when he was in the House, legislation like the main bill wouldn’t have advanced, which he framed as a measure of how far to the right discourse in the Capitol has moved in just the last few years.
“We’re passing days of remembrance of an individual who … probably wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire,” Jones said, before his amendment was turfed.
These bills are part of several efforts to remember the founder of Turning Point USA.
A proposed road renaming in Miami-Dade, an honorary naming of the Florida Civics and Debate Initiative championship trophy, and Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Combat Violent Extremism Portal all exemplify state leaders’ effort to pay tribute to a leading advocate for the kind of unapologetic conservatism Florida Republicans embrace.
House subcommittee backs bill to regulate e-bikes in Florida, establish task force
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