Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic – POLITICO

Yet Trump has churned through officials overseeing the very intelligence that might have helped understand the looming crisis. At Liberty Crossing, the headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the government will have been without a Senate-confirmed director for eight months as of next week; last summer, Trump accepted the resignation of Dan Coats and forced out the career principal deputy of national intelligence, Sue Gordon. Coats temporary stand-in, career intelligence official Joseph Maguire, then served so long that he was coming close to timing out of his rolefederal law usually lets officials serve only 210 days before relinquishing the acting postwhen Trump ousted him too, as well as the acting career principal deputy. In their place, at the end of Februaryweeks after the U.S. already recorded its first Covid-19 caseTrump installed U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as his latest acting director, the role that by law is meant to be the presidents top intelligence adviser. Grenell has the least intelligence experience of any official ever to occupy directors suite.

This Friday, the role of Homeland Security secretary will have been vacant for an entire year, ever since Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out over Trumps belief she wasnt tough enough on border security. DHS has numerous critical roles in any domestic crisis, but its acting secretary, Chad Wolf, has fumbled through the epidemic; in February, Wolf couldnt answer seemingly straightforward questions on Capitol Hill from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana about the nations preparednesswhat models were predicting about the outbreak, how many respirators the government had stockpiled, even how Covid-19 was transmitted. Youre supposed to keep us safe. And you need to know the answers to these questions, Kennedy finally snapped at Wolf. Wolf has been notably absent ever since from the White House podium during briefings about the nations epidemic response.

Actings often struggle to be successful precisely because theyre temporarytheir word carries less weight with their own workforce, with other government agencies or on Capitol Hilland they rarely have the opportunity to set and drive their own agenda, push for broad organizational change or even learn the ropes of how to be successful in the job given the usually brief period of their tenure. Anyone who has ever changed jobs or companies knows how long it can take to feel like you understand a new organization, a new culture or shape a new role.

And yet up and down the org chart at DHS, there are people still learning the ropes. DHS is riddled with critical vacancies; according to the Washington Posts appointment tracker, just 35 percent of its top roles are filled. Its chief of staff, executive secretary and general counsel are all acting officials, and theres no Senate-confirmed deputy secretary, no undersecretary for management, no chief financial officer, no chief information officer, no undersecretary for science and technology, nor a deputy undersecretary for science and technology.

Even as we face a global crisis with complex travel restrictions and health guidelines, there are no Senate-confirmed leaders of any of DHS three border and immigration agenciesCustoms and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nor is there a deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as the airline industry faces an existential cutback to global travel.

Matthew Albence, acting head of ICE, which faces a growing Covid-19 problem in its national network of detention facilities, has been acting for so long that hes surpassed the 220 day-statutory limit for the role and instead is now technically the senior official performing the duties of the director, a legal term of art thats become all too common around the federal government as vacancies linger in the Trump era. Ken Cuccinelli, the similarly titled senior official performing the duties of the USCIS director, who is simultaneously also DHS temporary No. 2, the senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary, is currently appealing a court ruling that hes not even legally serving at DHS.

When Trump turned to DHS Federal Emergency Management Agency last month to oversee the federal governments coronavirus response, the agency lacked Senate-confirmed officials in either of its deputy rolesincluding its deputy overseeing preparedness and continuity of government planning, a function that may become all-too-important in the days ahead if the virus sickens government leaders, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already been hospitalized.

And the assistant secretary for countering Weapons of Mass Destructionthe person who oversees DHS chief medical officer, the doctor designated to advise the DHS secretary and the head of FEMA? That job is vacant, too. Meanwhile, in addition to its role serving the nation, DHS itself faces a growing number of Covid-19 infections in its own workforceup to 600 cases as of Mondays numbers, including 270 TSA employees and 160 CBP employees.

The effect of these vacancies ripple further than most people realize. Since vacant roles awaiting either an official appointment or a Senate-confirmed nominee are always filled by acting officials pulled from other parts of the organization or broader government, even more offices are understaffed as people do double-duty and as their own positions are filled with other actings behind them. Grenell, even as he fills in as director of National Intelligence, continues technically to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany, meaning that amid the huge economic uncertainty around Covid-19 epidemic the U.S. is without a high-level envoy to the largest economy in Europe. For the 14 months he was acting White House chief of staff, up until March 31another horse Trump changed midstream in the epidemicMick Mulvaney was still technically serving as the director of Office of Management and Budget, a normally critical role itself overseeing the nations spending. In Mulvaneys absence, Russell Vought, OMBs deputy, filled in as the acting directorleaving his own job, normally its own full-time role, to be filled in by others, and so on.

In government agencies, deputies are not like the vice presidenta spare role kept around, if needed. Often, the deputy role is the most important figure in the day-to-day operations of the department or agencythe person who runs the bureaucracy and organization while the principal (the secretary or director) attends to the policy and the politics. Robbing an agency or department of a principal and forcing the deputy to fill in means the organization will be running at reduced effectiveness, with less guidance, direction and oversight.

The vacancies at DHS and ODNI are hardly the whole story of how Trump has hampered the very jobs meant to protect the nation in crisis. While much attention has been focused on Trumps decision to shutter the National Security Councils pandemic unit, less attention has focused on an even more critical change in the NSCs structure. Another key post-9/11 reform was the creation of a White House homeland security adviser, a domestic equal to the national security adviser, a post created just days after 9/11 by President George W. Bush and filled at first by Tom Ridge, who would go on to be the first Homeland Security secretary. Presidents Bush and Obama for years had at their beck and call senior, sober homeland security advisers like Fran Townsend, Ken Wainstein, John Brennan and Lisa Monaco; Monaco helped oversee the nations response to Ebola and led the incoming Trump administration through a pandemic response exercise in the days before the inauguration to highlight how critical such an incident could be.

Over the course of his administration, Trump effectively has done away with the role of homeland security adviser; when John Bolton took over as national security adviser, one of his first acts was to fire Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert and downgrade the role in rank. Ever since, the Trump NSC has sidelined the officials who filled the role. In February, as Covid-19 loomed domestically, Trump actually even shuffled the Coast Guard official then filling the post out to a new job, overseeing Puerto Ricos disaster recovery.

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Trump Broke the Agencies That Were Supposed To Stop the Covid-19 Epidemic - POLITICO