Trump Cuts Weaken US Election, Health, Climate Defenses
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- CISA lost roughly a third of its workforce to Trump-era staffing cuts while the administration proposed slashing the agency's budget by $707m, even as Trump cast doubt on US election integrity in a Thursday address.
- The FBI lost up to 2,800 agents since January 2025, and Trump ousted the last three serving commissioners on a federal election administration panel earlier this month, pardoning roughly 1,500 people convicted in the January 6 insurrection on his first day back in office.
- State and local health departments had $11.4bn in federal funding cut roughly a year ago, hampering tracking of a five-state cyclospora outbreak linked to Taco Bell iceberg lettuce that officials warned could continue through August.
- The US is on pace for a record year of measles cases in 2026, potentially losing its measles elimination status gained in 2000, while a new world screwworm outbreak is straining ranchers and wildlife conservation efforts.
- USDA spending reviews delayed a $100m screwworm research initiative and held up construction of a facility critical to protecting the US cattle supply, according to former officials who spoke to Politico.
- The Trump administration repealed the 2009 endangerment finding that underpins all federal climate regulations, pulled the US out of the UN's main climate treaty and top climate science body, and shuttered climate and weather research offices.
- Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, warned that placing Trump's appointees over health and science funding has produced "disaster," pointing to simultaneous cuts in screwworm monitoring, food safety surveillance and vaccine programs.
Why it matters: The simultaneous erosion of election security, public health and environmental safeguards amounts to a self-inflicted capacity crisis: the administration is cutting the agencies responsible for containing the very threats it claims to address. With measles cases accelerating and Canadian wildfire smoke already spreading across US skies, Americans face growing exposure to risks the federal government is less equipped to handle.
