With threats to midterms, states say Trump administration isn't helping

U.S. intelligence agencies are monitoring schemes by Russia and other adversaries to meddle in the midterm elections, but countering those threats has been complicated by the Trump administration's slashing of the federal government's election security infrastructure, officials say.

The spy agencies assess that Russia, as it has in past years, will use digital disinformation to sow distrust in the 2026 midterm results and foment societal divisions, according to lawmakers and other officials. U.S. intelligence, however, has detected no signs that foreign adversaries are able to interfere directly with voting machines or vote counts.

With the midterms less than five weeks away, state elections officials responsible for administering them are decrying what they say is a dearth of information on such threats and other support from Washington.

"We're in the dark when it comes to any sort of intelligence" on foreign adversaries, said Utah's Republican Lt. Gov. Deirdre Henderson. "We're not being informed if there are problems."

President Donald Trump's administration has halted intelligence briefings, trainings, systems testing and other resources for states, according to the state officials and former federal election security officials. Only in recent days have federal agencies begun offering briefings to states, and it is unclear if any have taken place.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a key election security agency under the Department of Homeland Security, laid off nearly one-third of its staff in early 2025.

Trump has yet to appoint a director for the CISA -- though there have been three acting directors -- leaving states in "a holding pattern," said Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, a Republican.

The Trump administration also shuttered the Foreign Malign Influence Center, a U.S. intelligence body that monitored adversaries' disinformation campaigns and threats to American democracy.

And Trump in July fired two Democratic members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which helps states conduct secure and accurate elections. The remaining commissioner, a Republican, resigned. The commission is now permitted to carry out only certain limited tasks with a skeleton staff.

Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, cast doubt on the accuracy of U.S. elections, claiming without evidence that he, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 contest. He personally tried to intervene in the 2020 Georgia recount, and his proxies filed dozens of legal challenges to the election results, almost all of which failed. In his second term, Trump has encouraged aides to search for evidence of election fraud.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to shape the course of the 2026 elections, widely seen as a referendum on his second term thus far. He and his administration have threatened to assert federal control over the state-run elections, pushed largely baseless claims of voter fraud and tried to restrict mail-in voting. In September, he told supporters to "try and cheat like hell, like they do," referring to his years-long unsubstantiated assertions of voter fraud that tilts elections in favor of Democrats.

In a televised July speech, Trump asserted that China interfered in the 2020 presidential campaign and alleged "shocking" vulnerabilities in U.S. election machinery. The China claim is not supported by U.S. intelligence assessments made public previously or by documents the White House declassified in connection with Trump's speech.

A U.S. intelligence report shared with Congress in recent weeks by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assesses there is little likelihood that a foreign actor will interfere directly with the 2026 vote counts, people familiar with the document say.

"The intelligence community has long assessed that no adversary has interfered or attempted to interfere with election infrastructure or vote counting, and I see no evidence to suggest any deviation from that finding," Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said after the panel received a classified briefing in mid-September.

The National Intelligence Council, a top-level analytic group under the ODNI, assessed that Russia is the most active adversary, using digital tools to sow dissent and undermine confidence in election integrity. China is targeting individual races where U.S. policy toward Beijing is an issue, rather than intervening on a wide scale, those familiar with the reports say. The report also identifies activity by Iran, but not on the scale of Russia or China.

The NIC report says that U.S. adversaries are increasingly using artificial intelligence to create and spread online misinformation and disinformation campaigns. The New York Times first reported on the spy agencies' assessments.

Geoff Hale, a former CISA election security official, said that while states are responsible for conducting their own elections, federal officials have the resources to identify security threats from foreign actors. Hale pointed to an Alaska case in 2020 in which Iranian agents accessed voter data, sent emails posing as the pro-Trump Proud Boys group and threatened them if they did not vote for Trump.

"The federal apparatus was able to, in a matter of hours, turn this around and go, 'this is Iranian activity,'" he said. "As CISA has waned in their connectivity with the election community, seeing that threat picture is not available to anyone anymore."

"CISA is implementing the newly updated and released election infrastructure security plan outlining available no‑cost voluntary services -- including threat information sharing, technical expertise, vulnerability scanning, and other risk‑mitigation support," a CISA spokesperson said in response to questions sent by The Washington Post. "CISA is committed to supporting state and local election officials to protect election infrastructure and safeguard our democracy."

Hale said that the Trump administration's election security cuts come as the midterms could see uniquely challenging AI-powered threats. "Seeing how aggressive [the Iranians] have been in past election cycles under better terms makes you wonder how aggressive they'll be amid genuine conflict," he said, referring to the U.S. war with Iran.

Federal funding for states to bolster election security declined from $55 million in 2024 to $15 million in 2025, though funding rose again to $45 million this year.

Some state officials downplayed the absence of federal support, saying they have been able to replace many of the resources with private-sector funding and direct coordination between states.

"We really take [seriously] creating our own partnerships, and those are not typically with the federal government," said West Virginia's Republican secretary of state, Kris Warner. "I don't know that we need a tight relationship with the federal government."

Other state officials -- including Republicans -- say that the greatest threat to the midterm elections is not from malevolent foreign actors.

"The threats that we're getting now are mostly from our own government," Henderson, the Republican Utah lieutenant governor, said. "The way elections are being handled by the federal government right now is dangerous, disruptive and in bad faith."

Henderson pointed to the Justice Department's attempts to compel state officials to turn over voter rolls and Trump's blaming of state officials for cyberattacks on their water systems.

Multiple Republican state election officials said they have plans in place if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up at polling sites, a scenario Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused to rule out during a congressional hearing in June. Mullin later said ICE would only be deployed to counter "specific threats" or enforce warrants.

With the midterms barely a month away, the Trump administration has taken a handful of steps on election security.

The National Security Agency, which intercepts and decodes electronic communications, only recently reconstituted its Election Security Group.

In a memo last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed U.S. Cyber Command and military intelligence to deter foreign interference in elections.

On Sept. 24, CISA released its Election Infrastructure Security Plan for the midterms, pledging to hold training exercises, risk assessments and threat briefings for states. The plan also included hiring new election security advisers, a team of CISA officials who directly liaise with state authorities, after the previous group of advisers were ousted at the beginning of Trump's second term.

"The best parts of this plan are still too late to be useful," Hale said. "Ballots are live in every state."

"While CISA claims to be changing course and offering to help state and local governments with election security, this report does not do that," Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) said in a Sept. 25 statement.

In an August call between CISA officials and state elections officials, Acting Director Nick Andersen said the agency could not do much for state officials before Election Day, according to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat and a participant on the call.

"[CISA's] focus was on 2028," Fontes said. "And they basically admitted that ... we were too far along in the election season to rebuild any of what we had for the 2026 cycle."

Other officials echoed the same frustration with the federal government.

"The trust has been so breached with ... the federal government and election officials that I don't even know if they started offering help [that] I would trust it at this point," Henderson said.

Patrick Marley contributed to this report.