The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention isn’t the only Biden-era project staffed (at least in part) by gun control advocates to feel the effects of the new administration in the first days of Donald Trump’s second term. According to Education Week, the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse External Advisory Board, which was created last year, has also been put on ice.
At first glance, the move to halt the work of the advisory board doesn’t appear directly targeted at this particular working group. Instead, it’s part of a broader effort to trim the fat and bureaucratic bloat at the Department of Homeland Security.
Three board members confirmed they’d received notice that the Department of Homeland Security planned to terminate current members of the board under an inauguration day directive that applies to all external advisory committees that work with the agency. Other DHS external advisory committees deal with issues like cybersecurity and infrastructure safety.
A memo the members received, from acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman, said the broad decision was part of the agency’s commitment to “eliminating misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”
“Future committee activities will be focused solely on advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities,” reads the memo. “To outgoing advisory board members, you are welcome to reapply, thank you for your service.”
The Federal School Safety Clearinghouse itself, which was established during Trump’s first term, appears to be intact for now. It’s only the advisory board that’s been been impacted, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is still crying foul over the move.
The Democratic Senate minority leader claims that the move by Trump is likely illegal as the board’s existence was passed into law as part of the 2022 bipartisan gun safety bill, following mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. He said the president’s decision “reeks of NRA pressure.”
“The gun lobby wants the School Safety Board shut down, and today I’m saying the Trump administration should not bow down to the NRA because their views are not where America is at with gun safety,” Schumer said.
Schumer—joined by Parkland school shooting survivor and gun safety advocate Cameron Kasky—demanded that Trump and newly-confirmed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem immediately restore the board, which met for the first time in October.
“It’s important for us to come out and talk about this so we do not establish a precedent that Trump is going to be able to go in, do whatever he wants, and never have to face the music,” Kasky said.
I doubt that the NRA had anything to do with this, to be honest. Again, according to the DHS memo every extermal advisory committee operating under the DHS umbrella has been put on ice, at least temporarily, not just the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse External Advisory Board. And even though there were some gun control advocates who were a part of the board, the focus of the clearinghouse isn’t based on gun control. Instead, it’s meant to serve as a central hub for DHS to “share resources and best practices related to school safety”.
My guess is that the Trump administration is eventually going to replace those board members appointed by the previous administration with their own candidates. As the memo states, current members are “welcome to reapply” for their position, so Schumer’s claims that Trump has “shut down” the board appear unfounded.
This is really a nothingburger, but Schumer and his allies in the gun control lobby are intent on making it seem like Trump is completely uninterested in protecting students and staff from the threat of violence on campus, and they have no issue promoting fiction over facts. It’s going to be a long four years countering the lies of the anti-gun crowd, but the truth matters, and in this case there’s no evidence that the NRA, Second Amendment advocates, or the Trump administration are playing politics with school safety. Schumer, on the other hand, most certainly is.
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