WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s cybersecurity agency has played a critical role in helping states shore up the defenses of their voting systems, but its election mission appears uncertain amid sustained criticism from Republicans and key figures in the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has not yet appointed to lead American cybersecurity and infrastructure protection, and for the first time since his training, he is not planned to play the main annual secretaries of the nation’s collection, which took this. Week in Washington.

On Thursday, a panel on Ciber-Starts included an update of an FBI official that threats had remained consistent.

“They ask me what the FBI considers in the most sensible cyber states in the United States, and in reality the FBI reaction in recent years has been the same: China, China, China, Ransomware, Russia, Iran, North Korea” Said Cynthia Kaiser, deputy deputy director of the FBI cyber division. “

Trump’s new homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said during her confirmation hearing that CISA had strayed “far off mission.” She pledged to work with senators “should you wish to rein them in” with legislation.

The firm formed in 2018, the first Trump administration is guilty of protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, from dams and nuclear power plants to banks and voting systems. It is under the Department of Homeland Security, but CISA is a separate company with its own Senate. Director confirmed.

The firm has earned the bipartisan compliment of many state and local election officials, yet Trump and his allies remain angry about its efforts to counter incorrect information about the 2020 presidential election and the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s first director, Chris Krebs, was fired through Trump through Trump, was fired after Krebs signaled a release through an organization of election officials who called the 2020 election “the safest in American history. “

That drew Trump’s ire as he was contesting his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Republicans have claimed repeatedly since then that CISA had worked with social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints on issues related to elections and health.

The agency’s officials disputed that: “CISA not censorship, he has never censored,” said Jen Easterly of the firm last fall in an interview with Associated Press. However, Republicans continue to blame the firm and insist that adjustments are needed.

“The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of Joe Biden (CISA) more aimed at undermining President Trump of what were protectors of our own critical infrastructure,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GAGA. Eficiencia, in a publication of social networks last week. “The thugs guilty for this type of tea and abuse will be responsible!”

During the 2020 elections, firm officials worked with the states to help them tell the societies of the distelling of the social networks of the distelling on their platforms, however, they said they had never asked or tried to force those corporations to act. For the 2024 elections, the CISA and other federal agencies alerted the public with foreign distension campaigns, adding a false video connected to Russia that claims to show the poor management of the survey in Pennsylvania.

In months, meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg has echoed GOP claims and announced plans to dismantle the company’s fact-checking program.

One of the first actions Trump took after returning to the White House on Jan. 20 was a signing of an executive order “ending federal censorship” and instructing his attorney general to investigate federal actions under the previous administration and to propose “remedial actions.” There is little information about what’s next and whether CISA’s mission could change under new leadership.

The 2025 project, a conservative plan for a republican administration, which CISA moves to the transport branch and is concentrated only in protective government networks and coordinating the security of critical infrastructure.

It said the agency should only help states assess whether they have “good cyber hygiene in their hardware and software in preparation for an election — nothing more.” That’s what the agency has been doing in recent years, by providing training and security reviews.

The voting systems were designated through infrastructure after an effort through Russia in 2016 to interfere in this year’s presidential elections, which included the digitalization of the registration databases of state voters for vulnerabilities.

Some state electoral officials were first resistant to the concept of federal aid. But many now prove the company’s cash and federal for helping them the security of the presidential elections of 2020 and 2024.