President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal would slash $491 million from the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to a summary released Friday.
That would amount to a nearly 17% reduction to the agency’s approximately $3 billion budget. The administration did not release a detailed itemization of the cuts, only an outline.
“The Budget refocuses CISA on its core mission — Federal network defense and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure — while eliminating weaponization and waste,” a summary reads.
In broad strokes, if approved by Congress, the budget would target for reduction what it identified as “so-called” disinformation and misinformation programs and offices; “duplicative” programs of other programs at the state and federal level; “external engagement offices such as international affairs”; and consolidate “redundant security advisors and programs.”
Neither CISA nor the Office of Management and Budget immediately answered questions about what specific programs or offices would face elimination or reduction.
The budget summary says that CISA programs were a hub of “the Censorship Industrial Complex to violate the First Amendment, target Americans for protected speech, and target the President,” and that “the Budget eliminates programs focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda.”
CISA doesn’t have any offices explicitly dedicated to combating misinformation or disinformation. During Trump’s first administration, and continuing into a stretch of the Biden administration, CISA ran a “Rumor Control” website in a bid to dispel false information about the election process. Trump took such great issue with the site that he fired then-director Chris Krebs.
But CISA under the Biden administration said it had halted communications with social media companies about election misinformation and disinformation. And the Trump administration already placed some election security officials who worked on disinformation and misinformation on administrative leave.
Election security overall appears to be a very small part of the CISA budget. In a House hearing in January, Brandon Wales, former CISA executive director, was asked how much the agency spent on its disinformation work. “Last time we looked at this it was something less than $2 million,” said Wales, adding that he did not believe the work detracted from CISA’s other missions.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that plaintiffs alleging federal censorship based on efforts like CISA’s to communicate with social media platforms on election misinformation had a “startlingly broad” definition of the term “censorship,” and rejected the bid from Republican state officials to limit such efforts.
In a briefing with reporters Friday, a senior OMB official said that the goal of the budget was to “make sure that CISA is actually in the business of cybersecurity, as opposed to disinformation funding and funding grants at the Department of Homeland Security and universities to combat and call extremist half the country who just care about normal conservative things.”
DHS had also already cut funding for programs studying online radicalization under the Biden administration. The Trump administration has been eliminating contracts related to domestic terrorism.
Congressional lawmakers and staffers for both parties have expressed concern about reducing CISA’s budget and cutting personnel.
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