President
Donald Trump moved quickly to remake the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard before their terms are up and eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group.
Trump’s
immigration policy changes drew the most attention at DHS, but he is also making changes at the rest of the massive agency.
Members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee received a memo Tuesday saying that the department is eliminating the membership of all advisory committees as part of a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”
The aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many other committees were effectively eliminated Tuesday or whether other departments will take similar actions. A similar safety group advises the Federal Railroad Administration on new rules and safety issues in that industry.
“I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk.’ But I’m not so sure,” said Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee.
The future of the committee remains unclear because DHS officials didn’t respond Tuesday to questions about the move. The memo that announced the terminations said that future committee activities will be focused on “advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities” but the group has no members.
Adding to Bernstein’s concern is the fact that TSA Administrator David Pekoske was fired even though he was originally appointed by Trump during his first term and was in the middle of what was supposed to be Pekoske’s second five-year term in the job after he was reappointed by Biden and confirmed by the Senate.
No reason was given for Pekoske’s departure. But in an unrelated news release Tuesday about the restarting of a program, which is often referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” DHS highlighted Pekoske’s role in attempting to terminate the policy at a time when he was acting secretary at the beginning of the Biden administration. Pekoske held the acting post before
Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate.
In his letter to staff Pekoske called his job the “honor of a lifetime.”
During Pekoske’s tenure he oversaw a rapid increase in the use of facial recognition technology at airports across the country which concerned privacy advocates. During his tenure, frontline TSA officers also received substantial pay raises designed to bring them in line with other federal law enforcement officers, which Pekoske credited with helping with hiring and retention.
But a
recent string of stowaways discovered onboard flights and hiding inside wheel wells of planes renewed questions about aviation security.
The firing of
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan eliminated the armed forces’ first female service chief who had served since 2022. That move was met with shock by some Democratic members of Congress. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, credited Fagan with having a commitment to fixing a decades-long culture of sexual assault within the Coast Guard and the prestigious service academy in Connecticut.
Cantwell said during a Tuesday interview on
CNN that Fagan’s firing is “appalling.”
Under Fagan’s watch, the U.S. Coast Guard apologized in 2023 for not taking “appropriate action” years ago when it failed to adequately handle cases of sexual assault and harassment at the academy. The service also acknowledged it did not widely disclose its six-year internal investigation into dozens of cases from 1988 to 2006, known as
Operation Fouled Anchor.
Last year, however, Fagan received bipartisan criticism for not being cooperative enough with congressional investigations into the abuse. She tried to assure skeptical and frustrated senators at one hearing she was not trying to cover up the branch’s
failure to adequately handle cases of sexual assault and harassment at the academy and said she was committed to “transparency and accountability” within the Coast Guard while also abiding by the constraints of an ongoing government watchdog investigation and victim privacy concerns.
Rep.
Joe Courtney, D-Conn., who district includes the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut said Fagan provided “a fundamental change in Coast Guard leadership” and has worked to rebuild trust and correct the persistent sexual misconduct problems facing the service.
“President Trump’s unprecedented decision on day one to fire a service chief ahead of her scheduled departure is an abuse of power that slanders the good name and record of Admiral Fagan,” Courtney said in a statement.
Courtney noted, under Fagan’s leadership, the Coast Guard
exceeded its 2024 recruitment goal for the first time since 2017,
interdicted over $2.5 billion in illegal drugs from bad actors in 2024 and demonstrated an aggressive commitment to countering adversaries in the Artic by championing the
ICE Pact to speed up production of new icebreaker vessels, which the US has not built in nearly 50 years.
“The Commandant’s outstanding record completely negates the President’s demonstrably false
claims and signals his enduring interest to put politics over the best interest of our servicemembers and national security.”
In addition to those firings, Trump will also appoint a new administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who he has criticized harshly for the way it responded to disasters like Hurricane Helene last fall and the California wildfires. It is customary for the head of that agency to be replaced every time a new president takes office.
