More Top Homeland Security Officials Set to Leave in Trump Purge

Randolph D. Alles, the director of the Secret Service, received instructions 10 days ago to come up with an exit plan and was expected to leave on his own timeline.

By Eileen Sullivan & Maggie Haberman @ NYTimes.com, April 8

WASHINGTON — President Trump moved to sweep out the top ranks of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, a day after pushing out its secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, accelerating a purge of the nation’s immigration and security leadership.

Government officials said three more top department leaders were expected to leave soon: L. Francis Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Randolph D. Alles, the Secret Service director; and John Mitnik, the agency’s general counsel.

The White House confirmed the departure of Mr. Alles in a statement but made no immediate comment on the other pending moves. The White House statement said that the president has selected James M. Murray, a career Secret Service official, to take over as director in May [....]

Trump’s Cabinet Is Increasingly Bare

Kirstjen Nielsen is out at Homeland Security. Don’t expect a replacement any time soon.

Op-ed by Jonathan Bernstein @ Bloomberg.com, 

President Donald Trump has lost yet another cabinet secretary. On Sunday, he forced out his second secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, without naming a successor. In fact, the official he announced as the acting secretary, Kevin McAleenan, isn’t legally entitled to that position, which instead should go to Claire Grady. Who is that? She’s currently the acting deputy secretary – because that position, too, is vacant and has been for a year. (Trump will presumably need to fire her to make way for McAleenan.)

At least there’s a nominee for Homeland Security’s chief financial officer. Granted, his name was only put forward in March, after the previous nominee was withdrawn 10 months ago.

FEMA? Trump named Jeffrey Byard on Feb. 15 after the last administrator resigned, but don’t expect Senate action any time soon: The president hasn’t gotten around to formally submitting the nomination yet, almost two months later. As for the assistant secretary for policy, Trump hasn’t nominated anyone at all – after almost 27 months in office.

All in all, of the 18 most important positions in the department subject to presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, Nielsen’s departure will leave only nine filled. This is almost entirely Trump’s fault: He has failed to select any nominees for some positions, caused other personnel to leave at unprecedented rates by making impossible demands, and done such a poor job of picking people that many have withdrawn before they could get confirmed.

One reason that Trump is constantly frustrated by the failure of Homeland Security to do what he wants is that some of what he wants is illegal. Another reason is that he’s inept at bargaining with members of Congress, so he can’t get them to advance his priorities. Yet another reason is Trump’s well-known pattern of issuing threats and then caving, as he did last week over shutting down the border. But a final and crucial reason, which Trump doesn’t seem to appreciate, is that it’s easy for permanent civil servants to resist a president who doesn’t have confirmed nominees in place. Meanwhile, there’s still no nominee for secretary of defense

[....]

.It’s not clear why the president is so negligent in this regard. Trump himself has suggested that he likes “actings” because he can bully them more easily than Senate-confirmed nominees – not seeming to realize that the same weakness those officials display to him makes them incapable of carrying out his instructions when they return to their departments. An alternate explanation is that Trump doesn’t have a firm grasp of how the federal government works or what his own job is supposed to entail