James Carafano: Cancel culture's next target: defunding Department of Homeland Security

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DHS chief: We will remain in Portland to protect our facilities

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf reacts to the continued riots and looting in Portland, Oregon.

So now, the ACLU wants to abolish the Department of Homeland Security. If that sounds like an idea out of left field, why, it most certainly is.

First, there were calls to defund the police. Then, demands for steep cuts in defense. Now, the left wants to abolish the department created — with overwhelming bipartisan support — to make us safer after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Of course, the ACLU learned long ago that championing far-left fantasies was an express pass to fund-raising bonanzas. After 9/11, the ACLU made attacking the Patriot Act their cause célèbre — and an aroused left cheerfully opened its wallets.

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Of course, the organization’s claims that the law would undermine the Constitution and destroy the Republic never played out. The Patriot Act is still with us, and so is are our democratic freedoms.

No matter — the ACLU is working the same fund-raising formula yet again.

Watching all the usual progressive Big Money Boys pour resources into the Black Lives Matter network, the ACLU must have set its cap at can getting part of the action. With “Defund the Police” and “Defund Defense” already taken, the ACLU set its sights on Homeland Security.

Exactly why DHS needs to go is not really clear. “President Trump has converted DHS into our government’s most notable badge of shame,” the organization declared in a tweet. Just how he did that and why the department is now a “badge of shame” is not explained. Its list of alleged abuses amounts to just a list of stuff — all perfectly legal — that far-left groups and radical outfits like Antifa don’t like.

The logic appears to be that, since DHS is a government agency being run by a president they don’t like and pursuing policies they don’t like, it should be eliminated. If conservatives had called for abolishing the State Department after Benghazi, the left would have laughed. This complaint makes as little sense.

Another ACLU criticism is the lack of “oversight.” That’s absurd. Homeland Security has oversight from more congressional committees and subcommittees, than any other federal department. At last count, the number was more than 100.

DHS has never represented a real threat to the Constitution. Virtually every authority and responsibility vested in the department stems from functions the Congress assigned to other federal agencies before 9/11 — and those authorities had been tested in the courts for many decades.

In creating the DHS, Congress basically just decided to fold all of the existing federal agencies with responsibility for homeland defense and emergency response into one department, so they could work better together. That’s exactly what the department has done since its inception — under Democratic and Republican presidents.

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At its root, the ACLU’s beef with the department is that it is doing its job too well — protecting federal property in our cities, securing the border and going after radical, criminal extremist violence.

It is perfectly understandable that the organization wants to cash in on the current crisis in our streets. What remains to be seen is how far the ACLU’s campaign penetrates into the progressive national agenda. This matters because abolishing DHS is not just an issue of partisan politics — it’s a matter of public safety.

The department was created so that is could better muster resources to respond to public safety emergencies at the national level and to backstop state and local governments dealing with severe, localized threats. That is exactly what it is doing now.

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To be against the department is to not want federal property protected; not care if law enforcement officers are attacked, injured, blinded or killed; not fear for equal protection under the law in our cities; and not worry that our citizens can’t safely walk our streets or open their doors for business without being harassed or extorted.

The campaign against the Department of Homeland Security will be revealing. It will let us see how far the left is willing to go to embrace an agenda that undermines public safety and leaves America more vulnerable to real threats to our liberty from without and within.

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