Kristi Noem wants to shrink cyber agency that pushed back on Trump 2020 election conspiracies
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Conservative critics have long accused agency of pushing left-leaning censorship. Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security wants to rein in a cybersecurity agency that took a high-profile public stand and refuted the Republican’s false claims of a compromised 2020 election.
During a confirmation hearing on Friday, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told the Senate the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) had “gotten far off mission” and “needs to be much more effective, smaller, more nimble to really fulfill their mission.”.
CISA has long been a target of conservatives, who criticized the agency’s past work liaising with social media companies about hoaxes and disinformation. “The misinformation and disinformation that they have stubbed their toe into and meddled with should be refocused onto what their job is, and that is to support critical infrastructure … to have the resources and be prepared for those cyberattacks that they will face,” Noem added during the hearing.
Prominent Republicans have gone further in recent months, suggesting CISA should be eliminated. It wasn’t always this way for the agency. It was created in 2018 during the first Trump administration, and the then-president called establishing CISA “very, very important.”.
Things quickly soured, though. In 2020, the agency pushed back against Trump’s claims of a rigged election, calling the contest the most secure in U.S. history. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," a statement from CISA read.
