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

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable

Remove all DHS personnel who participated in censorship activity

Partially done

161 5. Department of Homeland Security

“The department should remove all personnel who participated in any of this activity.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    DHS's own year-one review states that CISA “was used to censor and target Americans” and is now “back on-mission”. It is the department's Primary confirmation that the activity has stopped, and it is the closest thing to an official account of the removals -- but it names no personnel action, and no allowlisted source records a departmentwide removal of everyone who participated. `partial`, not `done`.

  2. Partially done

    The President's FY2026 budget request would cut CISA by more than 1,000 positions, and the Secretary attributed the cuts publicly to ending the agency's election security work “including misinformation and disinformation” -- though on Federal News Network's reading only about 14 positions and $40 million are actually attributable to that work. A budget request is a formal administration request, so this is a further step on the ask rather than a new rung; the Status stays `partial`.

  3. Partially done

    Within three weeks of the inauguration the staff who did the work the Quote objects to were taken off it: CISA employees working on countering foreign mis- and disinformation, together with a team of ten regional election security advisers, were placed on administrative leave. That is removal from the activity but not removal from the department, and it reaches CISA rather than all DHS personnel, so it is `partial`.

Research log

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

Research notes

Two independent allowlisted outlets carry the personnel action (NPR 2025-02-11 and Federal News Network 2025-05-30, both read in full), which is what we require before news reporting alone carries a Status; the note on the closing event says what the Primary record does and does not say.

  • No Primary record of the administrative leave exists: DHS does not publish personnel actions, and CISA’s own newsroom carries none.
  • Government Executive, 2025-10-08, https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/10/multiple-cisa-divisions-targeted-shutdown-layoffs-people-familiar-say/408787/ (read) records shutdown-period layoffs across CISA divisions with 176 DHS employees cut, tying the agency’s political exposure to “its prior work combatting mis- and disinformation”. It is corroboration of the direction, not of a departmentwide removal, so it is a note rather than an event.
  • The publication half of the same page is #418, which is not started.
Action
eliminate
Object
DHS personnel involved in censorship activity
ID
419