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Project 2025Chapter 5 › Proposal

Soft close parts of DHS pending a decision to shrink or dismantle it

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, chapter 5, p. 137. Written by Ken Cuccinelli.

Soft close parts of DHS pending a decision to shrink or dismantle it

The document says “shouldWho acts: Secretary of Homeland SecurityHow: internal managementp. 137 in the PDF
What the document says

“The Secretary therefore can and should use his or her inherent, discretionary leadership authority to “soft close” ineffective and problematic corners of the department.”

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, p. 137

The chapter says this is pending a possible presidential decision to shrink or eliminate DHS itself. The Secretary would shift personnel, funding and operational responsibility away from the offices being closed and into what the chapter calls mission-essential components. It states that doing so would support a legislative move to shrink or dismantle the department by showing the agency can perform critical functions without its current bureaucracy.

What the document actually says

“The Secretary therefore can and should use his or her inherent, discretionary leadership authority to “soft close” ineffective and problematic corners of the department.”

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, p. 137
That sentence, in plain words

So the Secretary can and should quietly shut parts of the department down. The parts that do not work.

What this is about

This department is very large. The book says parts of it should be closed down quietly. Staff and money would move to other parts. The book says this would help make the case to shut the whole department later.

No action is recorded against this proposal. That is not evidence that none has been taken. See what the tracker does not yet cover.

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The quotation is the document's own words, exactly as printed, and we check the page number against the book itself before publishing. The paragraph underneath is our summary, not the document's words. So is the plain English version, which is why it sits beside the quotation rather than replacing it.

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