With elections on the horizon, a pair of Democratic senators are pressing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for answers on foreign threats to U.S. elections, raising concerns that she may have curtailed critical intelligence reporting on foreign election interference.
In a Sept. 15 letter to the director, Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who respectively hold leadership roles on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on Rules and Administration, said they want a congressional briefing on foreign threats to U.S. elections and the nation’s voting system security.
“As your testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in March made clear, foreign adversaries continue to conduct influence activities to undermine public confidence in our election system and potentially even shape election outcomes,” wrote the senators.
“We are concerned that you may have directed the Intelligence Community (IC) to cease its intelligence reporting on this vital topic,” added the senators.
Pointing to a report on election security in 2024, the senators cited mentions of foreign actors – based primarily in Russia, Iran, and China – that continue to undermine public confidence in U.S. voting systems and aim to incite violence among Americans.
The senators also noted that Gabbard’s claims about cyber vulnerabilities in American election systems were “puzzling,” and added that they “elicit justified skepticism, as well as concerns of politicization.”
In February, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) election security and misinformation team was placed on leave, and in March, the administration cut millions of dollars in funding to the Center for Internet Security, which supported election security and state and local government cybersecurity activities.
The White House’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 suggested?that CISA’s elections oversight helped to conspire “against the First Amendment rights of President Trump and his supporters.”
“Since taking office, the Administration paused CISA’s election security work, fired election security staff, and staff are reportedly afraid to work with state and local election officials and vendors for fear of retribution,” wrote the senators.
“To date, CISA has failed to disclose its assessment of its election security work or its plans to secure future elections to Congress or the American people,” they added.
During the November 2024 elections, CISA and its elections team worked closely with critical infrastructure operators across all sectors to ensure that the electoral process was secure and ran smoothly. Yet, foreign adversaries’ attempts to interfere with those processes were the highest they had ever been during last year’s election cycle, former CISA officials had said.
“With significant elections occurring less than 60 days away, we ask that ODNI coordinate an IC briefing before October 10,” wrote the senators.