Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Minor

Re-vet Biden-era Coast Guard promotions and hiring

Not started

156 5. Department of Homeland Security

“consistent with the Department of Defense, USCG should also make a serious effort to re-vet any promotions and hiring that occurred on the Biden Administration's watch”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No re-vetting of Coast Guard promotions or hiring from the previous administration has been announced or required. The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 touches officer personnel processes - designations for military justice and healthcare expertise, involuntary separation, reopening retired grade determinations, reserve selection board guidance - but none of it is a review of decisions taken in 2021-2025. DHS's press index carries no re-vetting announcement, and no Federal Register document in the window addresses Coast Guard promotion or hiring review. **Moved nearby, on the service's own personnel documents, now read.** Force Design 2028's People line says the Coast Guard "will fully align with the President's Executive Order on 'Restoring America's Fighting Force' to focus on selection and promotion by merit, prizing leadership and unit cohesion" - a rule for future boards, not a review of past ones. The Acting Commandant's **PY26 Guidance to Boards and Panels**, which is the instrument that would carry a re-vetting instruction if one existed, tells promotion boards that selection "rests on the merits of the individual" judged on demonstrated leadership, performance and potential, and directs In-Zone Reordering and Below-Zone Selection to accelerate officers of particular merit. It is entirely prospective: nothing in it reopens, reviews or re-examines a promotion or a hire made in 2021-2025. The Force Design 2028 Initial Update of January 2026 records the personnel actions actually taken - a Service-wide physical fitness assessment, and revised mandatory adverse administrative consequences following non-judicial punishment - and no re-vetting among them.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

One negative search covered the Coast Guard asks on pages 151–158 of the Chapter, this one among them.

The Quote asks the Coast Guard to act “consistent with the Department of Defense”. Whether DoD did the equivalent is a Chapter 4 question and is not evidence for this one.

Coast Guard sites read, 2026-09-05, shared with #395 and #398. The Coast Guard’s site never refused us: uscg.mil without “www” does not resolve, and www.uscg.mil opens. The service-level personnel documents are on www.dcms.uscg.mil, which also opens; the PY26 Guidance to Boards and Panels and the Force Design 2028 reports were read in full.

  • How far this negative reaches. It covers the Commandant’s published guidance to promotion boards, Force Design 2028, the Commandant’s Intent and the three Action Orders, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025, DHS’s press index and the Federal Register. It does not reach an unpublished ALCOAST: dcms.uscg.mil serves individual message PDFs at known addresses but has no index that can be listed, and news.uscg.mil’s search box returns the same page for every query, so it cannot be used to record a negative. An internal re-vetting program run entirely by unpublished message would not be visible from here.
  • The PY26 guidance carries no printed date; it is dated from its digital signature, 2025-05-29, by Admiral Kevin E. Lunday as Acting Commandant - eight months before he became the 28th Commandant on 2026-01-15.
Action
other
Object
Biden-era USCG promotions and hiring
ID
402