Trump appointees asked the election-security agency to obtain a voting machine secretly—and not tell its maker

Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to obtain a voting machine secretly, hack it and send the findings to the White House, according to two former officials interviewed by ProPublica. Career staff were also told not to notify the manufacturer if they found vulnerabilities, contrary to the coordinated-disclosure practices that make legitimate security testing useful.

The operation did not proceed. CISA staff said the request was infeasible, in part because the specialists capable of conducting it had been dismissed during the administration’s workforce cuts, and the appointees eventually stopped pressing. That makes this evidence of intent and institutional pressure—not proof that a machine was compromised or an election affected.

The surrounding changes make the request more consequential. More than 1,000 CISA employees have reportedly been laid off or pushed out, shrinking the agency by about a third; the administration’s proposed 2027 budget would cut another $700mn. State election officials told ProPublica that the agency was largely absent during the main planning period for the midterms. Some now hesitate to share sensitive information after the administration declassified material that states had supplied to CISA. The White House says President Trump has done more than any predecessor to ensure free and fair elections.

Testing election equipment is not inherently improper. CISA’s value has come from doing it within a trusted process: obtain authorization, reproduce the flaw, notify the vendor and help state officials mitigate it. A secret test whose result travels upward while the manufacturer remains uninformed produces political ammunition but leaves deployed machines vulnerable.

The failed request therefore matters even without an exploit. Election cybersecurity depends on reciprocal confidence among federal specialists, vendors and decentralized state administrators. Once participants suspect that disclosures may be withheld or repurposed to contest results, the information-sharing system can collapse before any attacker appears.