President Joe Biden’s administration continued its purge of appointees from the previous administration Friday, firing all 32 members of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) advisory council, according to Politico.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sent a letter to the council’s members announcing their firing Friday. The move follows Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s similar purge of political appointees at the Pentagon in early February. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Senior Trump Official On How Biden Caused The Border Crisis)
“In the service of an orderly transition to a new model for the HSAC, I have ended the term of current HSAC members effective March 26, 2021,” Mayorkas wrote in the letter. “I will reconstitute the HSAC in the next few weeks, once the new model has been developed.”
US President Joe Biden speaks on climate change, creating jobs, and restoring scientific integrity before signing executive orders in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on January 27, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump’s administration went to great lengths to insert political loyalists into the administrative state in the final weeks and months of his presidency. Trump began preparations for the Biden administration in October 2020 with an executive order stripping many civil servants of their job protections, allowing him to fire them and either replace them with political loyalists or remove their positions entirely.
Career government officials enjoy staunch job protections, requiring an incoming administration to prove both that the appointee is unqualified for the job and that another more qualified candidate was passed over for the role.
The emerging Biden strategy has been to fire political appointees wholesale, regardless of which previous administration appointed them–thereby avoiding protections against political firings.
Prominent Trump allies fired in Mayorkas’ move include former NSA director Keith Alexander, former acting DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Tom Homan and Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert James Carafano.