CISA getting defunded? That’s what the trump administration wants to do in the FY 26 budget

This seems to be the lead story in today’s Cyberwire, and maybe rightly so.

I happened to spot this on Cyberscoop which does government and security stuff, so glad I saw this. There was also another article which is closely related, so let’s get started.

According to the article we’ll be linking to, the supposed budget will be slashed for CISA by $491 million and this is to make sure that they are only defending our nation from cyber threats, and nothing else.

Our president has done some very interesting things during his first few months, and some of it is questionable at best.

While I try not to make this political, there is concern about slashing budgets and making sure the people are in place to do what is needed.

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.

That’s the problem. Do you know what that could do to the way they do their job, Mr. President? I don’t think so.

“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.

The article does state that weapons and other things were hardly part of what was done anyway, but our president did not necessarily like the fact that the election was not rigged and that it was proven by the people that run this agency known as CISA.

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.”

Maybe people working together even if it duplicates things is efficient, have you ever thought about that? I guess we’ll have to see what happens here.

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.

Of course the president had issue with the disinformation and misinformation site, because he knows that what was happening was either true or not and he wanted the narritive to go his way or no way. The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Mr. President? You fired the guy that did his job and proved what needed to be proven at the time. That’s what the people wanted, wasn’t it?

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.

The trump administration has done so much stupid shit that this paragraph didn’t surprise me.

The article states that election security is only a small part of the budget, and my question now to you Mr. Trump, is who is going to fill that void now that you don’t want CISA to do this? Your answer is probably nobody.

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.

So why now is this becoming an issue then?

Congressional lawmakers and staffers for both parties have expressed concern about reducing CISA’s budget and cutting personnel.

So if that is the case, than why the hell are you even thinking about it?

Trump administration proposes cutting $491M from CISA budget is written by Tim Starks for Cyberscoop and people should at least read it.

In a related article that I also read yesterday, key people at several companies who share intel state that there are no issues doing so.

SAN FRANCISCO — Threat intelligence sharing is flowing between the private sector and federal government and remains unimpeded thus far by job losses and budget cuts across federal agencies that support the cyber mission, according to executives at major security firms.

Top brass at Amazon, CrowdStrike, Google and Palo Alto Networks said there’s been no change to interactions with the federal government since President Donald Trump was inaugurated earlier this year.

So if we tie these two together, than what’s the issue? This paragraph is similar to the last article and it says:

This broad messaging asserting that threat intelligence sharing remains as robust as ever comes amid steady cuts that would seemingly bear some impact on federal agencies’ ability to keep up in an ever-growing threat landscape. Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget calls for a nearly 17% cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a $491 million decrease from the agency’s roughly $3 billion annual budget.

So does this mean that they could continue with this reduction or not? I think time will only tell, based on the fact that some of what they did were not mainstays but were part of what they needed to do.

Cost-cutting measures, staffing cuts and strategic changes at the national and international level have created a dynamic environment that’s pushed cybersecurity companies to adapt how they communicate with their peers in government, said Wendi Whitmore, chief security intelligence officer at Palo Alto Networks

The good news, she said, is that intelligence sharing often occurs at the practitioner level with hands-on researchers and analysts in the private and public sectors. “That information sharing I don’t think has changed and been thwarted,” Whitmore said.

The staffers that have been there a long time will continue to be there, says this particular article and that may help matters.

Further down, others have said they have been able to share their data with little to no delay.

This article is titled Amazon, CrowdStrike, Google and Palo Alto Networks claim no change to threat intel sharing under Trump if you wish to read it too.

I think tying these together was a great idea. Have fun!