Chapter 5, Part 1: The Department of Homeland Security
Day 23 of reading and sharing my notes on Project 2025 (the long title is Mandate for Leadership 2024: The Conservative Promise, in case you're searching for it).
Here's my approach and why I’m doing this.
A LITTLE ASIDE
Why am I doing this today—the day after the election, when literally no one, Republican or Democrat, wants to read it? Because it matters. According to the Bezos (Washington) Post, a group funded by the Heritage Foundation (which put out Project 2025) released a blacklist of federal employees who should be fired, some for simply giving a Democratic candidate $10 or saying something nice about someone gay. That’s not the United States I want to live in, but here we are. If you agree with them, fine. But either way, you should know what they are doing and what their agenda is because I guarantee Project 2025 will affect your life in one way or another.
SUMMARY
I’m going back to reading the document in order. We’re in Chapter 5, The Department of Homeland Security. It’s written by Ken Cuccinelli. He was acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019, and then he served through the end of the Trump Administration as acting deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and he was its “chief regulatory officer.” Before that, he was a Virginia state senator and Virginia attorney general.
MY OPINION
Once again, when Donald Trump says he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, that may be true. But the people close to him wrote it, and they are motivated to enact it.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli wastes no time getting to the point. He recommends dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and and merging several agencies into one giant border and immigration agency, “making it the third largest department measured by manpower.”
Those agencies he wants to merge:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement
Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review
DOJ Office of Immigration Litigation.
MY OPINION
Some of this makes sense, but putting refugee resettlement under border patrol instead of Health and Human Services is a human rights flag. And having the last two under the same office as enforcement doesn’t seem like a good idea if you want independent oversight. And creating the third largest agency doesn’t seem like smaller government. It just seems like shuffling.
SUMMARY
There’s a lot of moving agencies around. Cuccinelli says it will cut costs. Here are a couple of examples: the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency moved to the Department of Transportation; the Federal Emergency Management Agency moved to the Department of the Interior or Transportation.
**-The Transportation Security Administration be privatized.
MY OPINION
I don’t want safety and security to be privatized. I don’t trust corporate interests.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli concedes that in the meantime, DHS needs reforms. He says that the department, which was created after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, has become “bloated, bureaucratic, and expensive.”
“DHS has also suffered from the Left’s woeness and weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as its political enemies,” he said.
He ties preventing terrorism to “prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement …”
He says “the Left” has used cybersecurity to “censor speech and affect elections …”
MY OPINION
Yes. Clearly the “Left,” whatever he means by that, is affecting elections and censoring speech. (That was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell.)
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli clarifies that he wants to privatize TSA screening.
He also wants to privatize the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program. And he wants to shift emergency preparedness responsibilities and response costs “to states and localities instead of the federal government, eliminating most of DHS’s grant programs, and removing all unions in the department for national security purposes.”
MY OPINION
Federal response seems critical for natural disasters, since the states and localities are often affected by the disasters. Plus disasters don’t recognize borders, so having centralized response seems more efficient than parceling it out. And this might cut federal income taxes, but it will increase state and local taxes.
And I think it’s better to keep the profit motive out of the National Flood Insurance Program. Because we know that private insurance is more interested in denying claims than actually helping people.
SUMMARY
The next section is the Office of the Secretary.
Cuccinelli wants more political appointees to serve the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Like other writers of the other chapters, Cuccinelli advocates appointing people into “acting” positions until they can get Senate confirmation. He also says the department “should also look to remove lower-level but nevertheless important positions that currently require Senate confirmation from the confirmation requirement …”
Cuccinelli says the line of succession for positions should be “political only,” and that it should be clearer and “more durable.”
MY OPINION
As before, I want experts in leadership wherever possible, not political appointees.
SUMMARY
He says until DHS is eliminated, “the Secretary … can and should use his or her inherent, discretionary leadership authority to ‘soft close’ ineffective and problematic corners of the department.”
He says “the Secretary should make major changes in the distribution of career personnel” to “strengthen political decision-making …” and to save money. He says anyone with “law enforcement capacity” should be sent to the field immediately.
He says that except for post-disaster and nonhumanitarian funding, FEMA grant recipients have to comply with federal immigration “including the honoring of all immigration detainers,” and they have to use E-verify.
**-”If the applicant is a state or locality, commitment by that state or locality to total information-sharing in the context of both federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement. This would include access to department of motor vehicles and voter registration databases.”
MY OPINION
This is scary. Trump has said he would go after “the enemy within,” and he has been clear that that includes political opponents, NOT criminals.
Cuccinelli says in order to get Federal Emergency Management grants, states and cities would have to give any information asked for to the federal government, including voter registration databases (which happen to include your political party).
SUMMARY
“To stop facilitating the availability of cheap foreign labor in order to support American workers,” the secretary should not use their “existing discretionary authority” to increase seasonal non-agricultural visas above the set cap. And they shouldn’t support having an H-2 eligible country list.
MY OPINION
Immigration is a thorny subject, and the exploitation of immigrants for cheap labor is a true injustice. But if you think capping immigration is going to create good-paying jobs for “poor and middle class American workers,” like Cuccinelli suggests, I think you’re going to be very disappointed. And prices are going to go up.
SUMMARY
Cuccinelli says the secretary should be transparent with Congress and public information requests and should “plan to quickly remove all current member so the Homeland Security Advisory Committee and replace them as quick as is feasible.” (emphasis on “all” Cuccinelli’s)
MY OPINION
I’ve been through transitions and found continuity extremely helpful. This seems even more so for an agency tasked with keeping the United States secure.
SUMMARY
I’ll stop there. Next up U.S. Customs and Border Protection.