Arizona’s Democratic U.S senators sent a letter to the Trump administration, calling on the federal government’s cybersecurity agency to improve its relationship with the state’s top election officials.
In the letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego expressed concern about how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is working with states in the wake of a cyberattack against the candidate portal maintained by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.
“While Arizona election officials moved swiftly to contain the breach, it is deeply troubling that the state did not feel it could rely on CISA for rapid, coordinated support in responding to the incident,” Kelly and Gallego wrote.
After the cyberattack, Fontes said he intentionally did not reach out to CISA.
“Up until 2024, CISA was a strong and reliable partner in our shared mission to protect America’s digital infrastructure. But since then, the agency has been politicized and weakened by the current administration,” Fontes said in a statement. “I personally reached out to Secretary [Kristi] Noem in a letter several months ago and was dismissed outright.”
That marks a change in the relationship between CISA and the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, which has soured since President Donald Trump came into office. Under the Biden administration, Fontes collaborated with CISA and other agencies to host election security training exercises for officials, journalists and other stakeholders.
Kelly and Gallego sent the letter as the current administration has cut back on support for state and local election officials, including shrinking CISA’s workforce as part of the president’s broader efforts to shrink the size of the federal government.
That includes millions of dollars in funding for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or MS-ISAC, which serves startle, local and tribal governments, Votebeat reported in March.
And NPR reported DHS could withhold millions of dollars in election security grants to states that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s voting policy goals.
“Cybersecurity must remain a nonpartisan, whole-of-government priority — especially when it comes to securing our elections,” the senators wrote. “The apparent politicization of CISA and withdrawal of essential resources comes at a time when threats to election infrastructure, disinformation campaigns, and foreign interference efforts are growing in both sophistication and scale.”
Kelly and Gallego specifically asked Noem to address several questions, including how the agency will rebuild trust with state and local election officials and the current funding status of MS-ISAC.
DHS and CISA spokespersons did not respond to a request for comment.
