House Democrats Push Back at Reassignments, Firings of CISA Employees
Democrats in Congress continue to try to pressure Trump Administration officials to stop cutting or reassigning the workforce of the country’s top cybersecurity agency, saying the moves are decimating protections at a time when China is ramping u
House Democrats Push Back at Reassignments, Firings of CISA Employees
Democrats in Congress continue to try to pressure Trump Administration officials to stop cutting or reassigning the workforce of the country’s top cybersecurity agency, saying the moves are decimating protections at a time when China is ramping up its efforts to cripple U.S. defenses.The latest effort came this week, when U.S. representatives sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem urging her to rehire employees of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who have been let go during the ongoing government shutdown and to return others who have been reassigned to roles that are part of Trump’s widening immigration and deportation operations.
In the letter signed by Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) and four other Democrats, it said the Administration’s moves were illegal, politically motivated, and put the country at significant risk.“The decision to dismantle CISA’s workforce exposes the political nature of these actions,” the representatives wrote. “Firing CISA employees during a shutdown while warning of escalating cyber threats reveals these RIFs [reductions in force] for what they are: A political maneuver designed to pressure Congress rather than protect the country. The result is a government with a hollowed out federal workforce, diminished cybersecurity readiness, and that is ill equipped to defend the American people from immediate threats.”Also signing the letter were Reps. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), and Shontel Brown (D-OH), and Eleanor Holmes Norton, a delegate from the District of Columbia who serves in Congress.CISA in the CrosshairsCISA, whose leaders at the time disagreed with Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election had been compromised in Joe Biden’s favor, has been a target of his since his return to office in January. Since then, the agency’s workforce has been cut, its budget threatened, contracts cancelled, and programs allowed to lapse. Noem in April said she planned to refocus CISA’s mission, claiming that under the Biden Administration, it had become the “Ministry of Truth.”The administration also had targeted ex-CISA officials, including former directors Chris Krebs and Jen Easterly.This comes as China has accelerated its years-long efforts to compromise the United States’ government and critical infrastructure, with the recent hack of F5’s corporate networks being the latest incident to surface.‘Stripping Resources’The U.S. representatives wrote in their letter that the firing of some CISA employees and reassigning others into roles helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) implement Trump’s far-reaching deportation program makes the country more vulnerable to cyber threats.“At exactly the time when the federal government is shut down, employees are being furloughed or forced to work without pay, and hostile nation-state actors are actively probing U.S. infrastructure, it is unconscionable that the Administration is stripping resources from the nation’s frontline cyber defenders,” they wrote. “Rather than reinforcing national security, the Administration has chosen to weaken it from within by diverting trained experts away from critical cyber defense operations to serve political aims.”Tricia McLaughlin, assistant Homeland Security Department (DHS) secretary, has told news organizations that the agency “routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas. Any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous, especially given the abject failure at the hands of CISA in the last administration.”Playing a Weak HandGiven that Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, Democrats have little power to make changes, so they’re writing letters and pushing back at what they see as Republican partisan attack to try to pressure the Trump Administration to change how they’re dealing with CISA.The most recent letter comes a week after another Democrat, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), wrote a similar letter to CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala and raising the same concerns that politics is trumping security.“Amid reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS or the Department)is now forcibly transferring CISA’s cybersecurity employees to other DHS components, it has become apparent that the Department’s exclusive focus on its mass deportation campaign is coming at the expense of our national security,” Swalwell wrote, noting that some transferred employees worked at CISA’s Cybersecurity Division and its Stakeholder Engagement Division, whose duties include collaborating with other countries to combat global cyber threats.Swalwell is demanding that Gottumukkala detail by October 24 the number of CISA employees who have been reassigned to other agencies within DHS or let go as part of the RIF operation.
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