After CISA began censoring speech, the Trump administration has reviewed every Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency ( CISA ) role related to election security and alleged misinformation. CISA, initially established in 2018 to address security threats, quickly transformed into a government-run repression activity, especially during the 2020 vote.
The advertising push has been trying for a while to support CISA’s expanded capacity to restrict free speech in response.
Election officers across the country are concerned that the Trump administration’s proposed changes to CISA will not be as rigorously monitored and secured as they were in 2024, according to Jessica Huseman of VoteBeat. ” The process began with differences regarding propaganda and election safety.
Politico’s John Sakellariadis and Maggie Miller headlined their part:” Trump continues national clean, gutting computer employees who combat propaganda”.
After CISA took action to report misinformation and disinformation during the 2020 presidential election, Sakellariadis and Miller wrote,” The company became the subject of Trump’s bloodlust.” But CISA wasn’t calling out “misinformation and propaganda”.
Wired’s Eric Geller wrote,” The proceed represents the second key example of the region’s cyberdefense company accommodating President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and virtual censorship”.
During the 2020 vote, CISA— which has been described as the “nerve center” of the government’s repression operations — classified social media posts that raised concerns about uncontrolled mail-in election as “disinformation” before flagging them to become censored, according to documents obtained by America First Legal.
Privately, however, CISA was circulating a six-point record warning about the dangers to the mail-in election process.
In an interim report released in November of 2023, House Republicans revealed that CISA and the State Department’s International Engagement Center” colluded with Stanford University to press Big Tech companies to censor what they claimed to be “disinformation” during the 2020 vote, as reported by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood.
” At the request” of CISA, the Election Integrity Partnership ( EIP ) was created to “monitor and censor Americans ‘ online speech” ahead of the 2020 election, according to the interim report. ” Disinformation academics” who worked with GEC and the Department of Homeland Security make up the EIP. The EIP, according to the House statement, flagged” accurate information, jokes and sarcasm, and political thoughts” and then submitted the posts to Big Tech companies for repression.
CISA “regularly facilitated meetings ‘ between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address” mis-, dis-, and Mal-information “on social media platforms,'” as Fleetwood reported.
In a leaked email to then CISA director Jen Easterly in 2022, a Microsoft executive and former DHS official Matt Masterson wrote,” Platforms have got to get comfortable withgov’t,” according to a leaked document obtained by The Intercept. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain”. Under the Biden administration, Facebook had a portal where DHS could report “disinformation”, according to The Intercept.
Easterly once explained that the agency, which has targeted so-called “malinformation” ( the agency defines “malinformation” as anything “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate” ) wanted to secure the public’s” cognitive infrastructure“.
Last March, the DHS and CISA partnered with Pennsylvania to target election speech it deemed a” threat”, like so-called “misinformation”.
Despite this, the propaganda press is still in full defense mode, worried that the days of unchecked government control over online speech may be over.
The Federalist’s election correspondent, Brianna Lyman. With a degree in International Political Economy, Brianna received her degree from Fordham University. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
