Politics

Republicans Cozying Up With Democrats To Save Liberals’ Favorite Censorship Agency

Don Bacon in 2018 (Matt Johnson from Omaha, Nebraska, United States / Wikimedia Commons)

Republican lawmakers have joined Democrats in a bipartisan effort to keep the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), an agency involved in pushing online censorship, alive.

Republican Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon and Democratic Virginia Rep. James Walkinshaw pushed back against President Donald Trump’s administration’s cuts to the agency, which had previously collaborated with private entities to censor online speech and the validity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, according to the Federal News Network. CISA has downsized by about one-third of its employees since Trump took office, including direct layoffs and relocations through the Management Directed Reassignments.

“Unfortunately, this administration has weakened CISA in the last year. I don’t think they realize the one-for-one output that they provide on defensive cyber for many of you in here, and so instead of cutting system, we should be expanding systems capabilities to protect our domestic, our non-military cyber systems,” Bacon said at the National Cyber Innovation Forum on Thursday.

Walkinshaw said restoring and expanding CISA’s capabilities should be a “top priority.”

Bacon told the Daily Caller News Foundation that while CISA’s efforts to discredit Hunter Biden’s laptop were wrong, the cuts to the agency were “harmful to the country.”

“The efforts to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story were wrong and were a significant leadership mistake. But the manpower and budget cuts we saw a year ago against CISA were harmful to the country,” Bacon told the DCNF. “CISA is responsible for defending our private sector and financial and energy grids from cyberattacks. It is the frontline defense. I also criticize the Democrat leadership for forcing a record 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, including CISA, all while President Trump was taking long-overdue action against Iran. We need an effective CISA because China and Russia are conducting cyber warfare against America every single day.”

Walkinshaw’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have opposed cuts to CISA over the past year. Senate Appropriations Committee leaders rejected the administration’s proposed cuts to CISA funding in 2026, the Federal News Network reported.

Former officials and industry leaders have worried that CISA no longer has the ability to help banks, utilities and other infrastructure operators prepare for a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) cyberattacks, according to Axios. Republican lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, including chairman Andy Ogles, warned that state and local governments are facing cyber threats because of the cuts to CISA.

Ogles stated Tuesday that Congress should not allow the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience (PILLAR) Act of 2015, which is strongly related to CISA, to expire in September.

“We should not let that happen, and we certainly should not let it happen at a moment when the threat is growing ever worse. That is why I am committed to enacting the PILLAR Act, which we passed and we sent to the Senate Homeland Security Committee,” Ogles said.

Other Republicans such as Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Andrew Garbarino of New York have also backed CISA’s cyber missions and infrastructure partnerships.

Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Democratic Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez wrote a letter to acting CISA Director Nick Anderson expressing concerns about the administration’s actions.

“We are concerned that this incident reflects a diminished security culture and/or an inability for CISA to adequately manage its contract support. Over the past year, the Trump administration has decimated CISA’s workforce, and it lost nearly 1,000 personnel,” Thompson and Ramirez wrote in a joint letter.

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has been critical of CISA and its supporters, accusing the agency of being a threat to First Amendment rights. He also stated in April 2025 that the agency has “been weaponized to silence dissent.”

“I’d like to eliminate it,” Paul told POLITICO in June 2024. “The First Amendment is pretty important, that’s why we listed it as the First Amendment, and I would have liked to, at the very least, eliminate their ability to censor content online.”

The agency, which is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), worked to discredit reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop by linking it to QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories, with one CISA employee calling the story a “convoluted web of falsehoods being spread to undermine Joe Biden,” according to documents obtained by the America First Legal Foundation in 2023. The agency also worked to crack down on “misinformation,” including through the facilitation of the “Election Integrity Partnership” (EIP), which flagged content to be removed from Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other social media platforms during the 2020 election.

The Daily Caller News Foundation verified the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop two weeks after Twitter locked the New York Post’s account for reporting on the matter in October 2020. The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets have since verified the contents as well.

Fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a letter attempting to discredit reports on the laptop. Many of these officials later ended up with roles in former President Joe Biden’s administration.

In January, the Republican-led House passed a funding package that included full-year FY2026 DHS appropriations with $2.2 billion for CISA. Senate Democrats removed the full DHS bill from the larger package over disputes on immigration enforcement, leading to a partial shutdown of DHS.

In December 2021, a CISA advisory panel repeatedly pushed to enlist outside left-wing groups and individuals linked to Democratic causes to further their efforts on addressing misinformation and disinformation, the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively reported in April 2023.