Merve Gül Aydoğan Ağlarcı20 October 2026•Update: 20 October 2026Political appointees at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pressed the country’s cybersecurity agency to quietly buy a voting machine and try to hack it shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term, ProPublica reported Monday.Two former administration officials told the outlet that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was to pass its findings to the White House and keep any discovered vulnerabilities from the machine’s manufacturer, a break from normal procedure.Career staff saw the request as a possible step toward political interference, as one former official told the outlet that “my thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any (election) results they don’t like.”CISA employees repeatedly said the task could not be done, partly because the specialists able to carry it out had been dismissed under billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The appointees eventually dropped the matter, according to the report.Since Trump returned to office, more than 1,000 CISA employees have been laid off or pushed out, cutting the agency by roughly a third. His 2027 budget proposal seeks another $700 million reduction, which could mean 900 further job cuts.Several state election offices said they received no help from CISA while planning for the midterms.”There is a difference between deprioritizing and being nonexistent,” Ryan Macias, an election security expert who has consulted for the agency, said in the report.States also say the administration’s release of declassified 2020 election records, which included sensitive information they had given CISA in confidence, has damaged trust.Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said he told acting CISA Director Nick Andersen in an August call that he did not trust him.”What they’ve done is basically cut us off and left us on our own,” Fontes said.CISA released a 13-page election security plan on Sept. 24. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the offer of support came “too little, too late.”White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Trump “has done more than any other president to ensure we have free and fair elections.”
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