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The Real Reason they fired the Coast Guard Commandant [1]
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Date: 2025-01-29
The U.S. Coast Guard is the only armed service not located within the Department of Defense. That’s why the incoming Trump administration was able to have its acting head of DHS fire Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan on Trump’s second day in office. It was an effective shot across the bow for bringing the Pentagon brass to heel given that even a President can’t fire the heads of the other Armed Services, only have his new Secretary of Defense, former Fox News co-host Pete Hegseth reassign or court-martial them.
Expect a number of reassignments and likely court-martials of Pentagon leadership under Hegseth. He's already promised to get rid of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown plus, "any General, Admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go."
The list of supposed "failures" of Coast Guard Commandant Fagan, the first woman to ever head one of the 6 U.S. military branches, is a thin tissue of misrepresentations at best like the claim the Coast Guard is not dealing effectively at interdicting Fentanyl. The DEA reports that almost all Fentanyl entering the U.S. comes in by land and air.
By contrast the Coast Guard interdicts more cocaine, which is mainly smuggled by sea, than the DEA, FBI, Border Patrol and every local law enforcement agency in the nation combined, 212,000 pounds in 2023, the last year accounted for.
And while both the acting head of DHS and a 2024 GAO report say that the Coast Guard is challenged in its many missions as a result of recruiting shortfalls, the same is true for all the Armed Services. So, it’s hard to understand how Fagan’s “immediate removal” can be justified by “significant shortfalls in recruiting personnel” when in October the service met its recruiting goals for the first time in seven years (She had served the first 2 of the standard 4- year term as Commandant).
The core of the firing however is clearly ideological, including Admiral Fagan’s “failure to address border security threats” and “excessive focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.”
Last week the Coast Guard caught 41 migrants off the coast of California and returned 58 others to the Dominican Republic. Expect similar numbers this week. It interdicts an average of 3,000 migrants a year not because of some “failure” but because most illegal entry into the U.S. is, again, by land and by air. When major ‘surges’ by boats out of Cuba or Haiti happen the Coast Guard interdicts and returns people by the thousands.
The Coast Guard’s policies relating to diversity and equity are also no greater than any of the other branches of the military have been, although its daily interaction with civilians as a hybrid military and federal law-enforcement agency means more focus on specific operational needs such as recruiting more Spanish-speaking “Coasties” to reduce confusion or miscommunication when boarding vessels or responding to emergency calls.
When I was writing my book, ‘Rescue Warriors’ about this service I learned that along with interdicting migrants and drugs, the Coast Guard carries out some 20,000 Search and Rescue operations saving some 3,500 lives a year, secures our ports, inspects U.S. and foreign vessels, enforces fisheries laws, maintains our aids to navigation, prevents and responds to oil spills, patrols and extends U.S. sovereignty in the Arctic, serves and trains other coast guards overseas and carries out numerous other mission-sets despite its perennial underfunding by Congress. Admiral Fagen oversaw all of that activity with competence and commitment.
But using Commandant Fagen’s firing as an example to bring the military in line may arguably be about more than “DEI wokeness” such as the army having renamed Fort Bragg, that was named after Brixton Bragg, one of the least competent Confederate generals on the treasonous, pro-slavery side of the civil war, to ‘Fort Liberty.’ Trump wants the Confederate general’s name restored.
It may be more about assuring that the next time President Trump orders the military to shoot domestic protestors in the legs (or heads), they won’t hesitate based on constitutional restrictions expanded under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that limits a President’s ability to use the military to enforce domestic laws (Again, the Coast Guard is a different animal).
And while President Trump’s underlings will insist it has nothing to do with it, firing the first woman to lead a branch of the military and pledging to go after the 2nd African American (after Colin Powell) to head up the Joint Chiefs, can only be seen by his MAGA base as an "anti-woke victory.”
David Helvarg is a writer, Executive Director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group and author of ‘Rescue Warriors – The U.S. Coast Guard, America’s Forgotten Heroes.’
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