New House Homeland Security Committee Chair perfect for Trump’s anti-liberty agenda
When Trumpist Republican Representative Mark Green resigned from Congress to pursue “an opportunity in the private sector,” his job as the House Homeland Security Committee Chair was quickly filled by another Trumpist Republican Representative, Andrew Garbarino, a man who is a perfect fit for Trump’s anti-liberty agenda.
It took two ballot votes for him to get the gig, but he eventually beat out his competitors due to his background in cybersecurity policy along with the role he played in the impeachment of former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (via Politico.com):
He beat out Reps. Michael Guest of Mississippi, Carlos Giménez of Florida and Clay Higgins of Louisiana for the gavel, after Rep. Mark Green announced his retirement earlier this year.
Garbarino, who focused his pitch around his background in cybersecurity policy, is likely to put the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as a top priority for the panel. Garbarino is currently the chair of the panel’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection subcommittee and will hit the ground running with a subpanel hearing Tuesday.
Garbarino pointed to his experience as an impeachment manager against former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in his pitch to the steering committee. He also touched on his experience representing New Yorkers affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (Emphasis mine)
Garbarino replaced Rep. Peter King — another post-9/11 anti-liberty Republican — in 2021, but it was his cybersecurity background after arriving in Congress that made him a perfect fit for Donald Trump’s liberty-killing agenda.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was created in November 2018 by Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to operate under the umbrella of DHS and be “responsible for protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure from physical and cyber threats.”
With that foundation in place, Rep. James Langevin (D-RI) introduced the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Identification and Notification (CVIN) Act in January 2020, a bill that required data-sharing between DHS and CISA anytime government deemed it necessary to prevent a cybercrime:
“The Internet was not created with security in mind, and in a world that is more interconnected each day through technology, critical systems used to deliver essentials like water and power are at risk of being compromised. This legislation is based on a simple premise we’ve all become familiar with: if you see something, say something. We are taking a proactive step that gives CISA the ability to say something when they see something.
“While CISA analysts work diligently to monitor and uncover risks, current policy impedes them in their efforts to warn at-risk critical infrastructure operators. There have been numerous instances where CISA has not been able to identify the owner of a vulnerable system and warn them of their exposure.” (Emphasis mine)
The CVIN Act was designed to be a “workaround” of the Constitution by making it easier for government to ignore the privacy rights of Big Tech consumers. At the time that this legislation was presented, whenever CISA identified what it considered a vulnerable system, it was limited in its response because telecommunications companies possessing “relevant” subscriber information were prohibited under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act from disclosing it to the U.S. government, absent of a compulsory legal process.
CISA’s threat to liberty didn’t go away during the Joe Biden years, either. In August 2021 — Garbarino was in Congress at this time — an initiative was launched to team up Big Tech companies with big government in a partnership that would make it easier for our private information to be shared between the public and private sectors:
Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon and Lumen all agreed to work on the new initiative with CISA. The group’s work would initially focus on combatting ransomware — when hackers encrypt information and threaten to withhold it until a ransom is paid — and creating a framework to respond to incidents impacting cloud providers.
The big-government assault on liberty greatly intensified in the Age of Trump as he and the Republican Party worked hand-in-hand with Democrats to target Big Tech while simultaneously creating a government/private sector partnership designed to strip away our God-given rights.
At EXACTLY the same time that Rep. Langevin introduced the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Identification and Notification Act, Trump was demanding that Apple give government backdoor access to iPhones, a request that was denied by the tech giant at the time.
This wasn’t Trump’s first attack on Apple for refusing to give the government access to cell phone data. In February 2016, then-candidate Trump called for a boycott of the Big Tech giant after Apple refused to cooperate with government authorities attempting to hack into the iPhone of one of the shooters involved in an attack at a San Bernardino, CA community center.
Every one of Trump’s attacks on Big Tech companies were merely propaganda designed to make it easier for Republicans to create new ways hand DHS more control of cybersecurity and to find ways to make NSA spying on Americans permanent.
By the way, there was a Republican-sponsored Senate version of the CVIN Act in 2020 that would have given the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) greater power to subpoena internet and telecommunications companies for information on subscribers, including names, addresses, and telephone numbers.
The so-called war against terrorism has been foundational to Washington’s tyrannical goal of destroying liberty by expanding its power to spy on Americans, so we shouldn’t be all that surprised to see Big Tech and big government teaming up to take a bite out of liberty. It also shouldn’t be all that surprising to see Garbarino get the job as House Homeland Security Committee Chair because he’s a perfect fit for this part of Trump’s anti-liberty agenda.
So, as the days grow darker, let’s not allow the Republican Party’s same ol’ same ol’ behavior lull us into a state of complacency so severe that we become unaware of the serious threat facing liberty in America today. Instead, let’s prepare ourselves to do as the Founding Fathers did: pledging our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to ensure our independence from tyrannical government.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily radio feature: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | iHeart | RSS
For media inquiries or to have David speak to your group, use the Contact Us form.
