The Trump administration aims at government representatives who reported foreign interference in the US elections, despite the permanent concerns that adversaries attach political and social divisions by dividing propaganda and online disinformation, current and former government officials.
The administration has already reassured several dozen civil servants working on the issue at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and have forced other people at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Ministry of Homeland Security, they said.
The cuts focused on people who were fighting not only on online false content but who also worked on wider guarantees to protect elections against cyber attacks or other attempts to disturb the voting systems. In the elections of last year, the teams followed and publicized numerous influence operations of Russia, China and Iran to blunt their impact on voters without distrust.
Experts are alarmed that the cuts can leave the United States without defense against secret foreign influence operations and embraced foreign opponents seeking to disrupt democratic governments.
Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a democrat, warned in a letter to President Trump that the cuts were comparable to the closure of the ocean and atmospheric national administration before the hurricanes season.
“This decision undermines Arizona’s electoral security,” he wrote, “at a time when our enemies around the world use online tools to push their agendas and ideologies in our homes.”
Trump and other officials said that under the guise of combat against disinformation and disinformation, the government had violated the rights to the freedom of expression of the Americans. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Internal Security, said that the cybersecurity agency “undertakes an assessment of the way he had carried out his electoral security mission with a particular accent on any work linked to the bad, said and Malinformation “and that continues, the staff who had worked on these questions” was put on administrative leave “.
Acting on one of Mr. Trump’s members First decreeThe Attorney General Pam Bondi on February 5 closed an FBI working group which had been trained after Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election and reassigned several dozen officials and agents who had been involved, said those responsible. The FBI confirmed in a press release that the agency “has respected itself” to the Ms. Bondi directive to dissolve the working group.
The CISA also forced more than a dozen officials who monitored foreign influence operations targeting the country’s elections. They were among the more than 130 positions eliminated in total at the agency, according to a press release.
Friday, an internal memorandum of the agency’s interim director, Bridget E. Bean, announced the suspension of the financing of a program that coordinated the security of elections at the federal, state and local levels.
Even before Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Republicans of Capitol Hill had refused to renew the mandate for the Department of State Global engagement centerThe most eminent government agency fighting against Russia and China propaganda. He closed in December. Many of its 125 employees have since been reassigned, while others have left their renewed contracts, said officials.
In recent years, many Republicans have been skeptical of warnings concerning disinformation campaigns. They accused Democrats of demonizing the political opinions with which they did not agree as a “Russian propaganda”, and they considered the warnings of “disinformation” as a means of putting pressure on social media societies To censor speech supporting Mr. Trump’s opinions.
In one of his first important speeches in terms of foreign policy as vice-president, JD Vance said that the Biden administration had “intimidated social media societies to censor the so-called disinformation”.
Mr. Trump’s republican supporters had telegraphed many steps from the administration before his election. But the extent and speed of efforts to abolish the teams put in place to fight against online malignant activities have surprised the people involved, including engineers from companies like Google and Meta, who have regularly exchanged information with managers government, including during which Mr. Trump. first term.
Cisa has already deleted a “Rumour v. Reality“Page on his website, which had provided advice to dispel the disinformation of the reliability of the voting process. The internal memorandum of Mrs. Bean, first reported By Wired, said that the agency would also carry out an examination to correct “all past activities identified as a previous fault by the federal government linked to the censorship of protected discourse”. Some State Department officials have been invited to stop using the word “disinformation” in memos, said an official.
The new national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, made repeated promises to depoliticize the spy agencies. US officials informed of his plans claim that this will include an examination of the work carried out by the Center for Foreign Malignant Influence of the Bureau, which was created by the Congress in 2022.
This office, as well as the FBI and the cybersecurity agency, regularly revealed foreign influence operations during the presidential campaign last year, including one from Iran who targeted Mr. Trump, who, according to the responsible, tried to prevent his re -election. Many officials involved in efforts aimed at warning the public of foreign influence campaigns at the time pointed out that work was not in a supporter and that they had avoided calling Americans who amplified foreign stories due to of the right to freedom of expression.
A recent report of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a bellicist research organization in Washington, credited the government effort To expand the impact of foreign influence before the November elections by informing voters, for example, that Many videos Online broadcast was created by Russia and has shown false people.
“The US government should continue to treat foreign malignant influence as a national security problem,” said the report, calling on agencies to receive “appropriate funding to continue their work”.
Instead, the new administration followed the recommendations of the 2025 project, the conservative plan For the restructuring of the federal government from which Trump sought to be behind the presidential campaign and has now adopted.
The 2025 project called for the closing of the electoral security unit in Cisa, as well as to the FBI working group. Republicans in Congress and several states have also led A legal and political campaign Against what they claimed, there was a radical “industrial censorship complex” within the framework of the Biden administration.
“I think they may have drank their own kool-aid in terms of belief that there is this type of industrial censure complex in which all these people were involved,” said Lawrence Norden, vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice of New Said School of Law from the University of York, referred to the officials who have now closed the teams. “I’m not sure they understand perfectly who is everyone and what they do.”
Lance Hunter, professor at Augusta University in Georgia, said that the elimination of defenses against foreign influence campaigns would leave the United States more vulnerable.
“Foreign influence operations are often carried out to try to increase the appearance of government ineffectiveness and instability in the country,” he said. “They are also carried out to disrupt the elections and increase division and polarization in the country.”
During his visit to Europe last week, however, Mr. Vance lowered the idea that a foreign opponent like Russia could influence an election in a strong democratic nation, referring to accusations This led to the overthrow of Romania the first voting series during its elections.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars in digital advertising from a foreign country,” said Vance, “then it was not very strong to start.”
Adam Goldman And Robert Draper Contributed reports.
