Trump’s FY27 budget would cut $700M from CISA and kill election security

In short: The Trump administration’s FY2027 budget proposes cutting $707 million from CISA, eliminating the agency’s election security programme entirely and shedding 860 positions, a dramatic escalation that would reduce the country’s primary civilian cybersecurity agency to a $2 billion operation after a year already defined by DOGE-driven layoffs and mass departures.

The United States’ central civilian cybersecurity agency has lost roughly a third of its workforce over the past 14 months. Its red team has been dissolved. Scores of staff working on election security, incident response, and continuous monitoring were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency in early 2025, then partially reinstated under court order, then placed on paid leave in legal limbo. Against that backdrop, the Trump administration released its FY2027 budget request on 7 April 2026, proposing to cut a further $707 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a reduction the ...