Heritage-Funded Group Publishes ‘Target’ List of ‘Subversive’ Bureaucrats
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
A group funded by the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank published a list of federal officials it referred to as “targets.” Targets for what? The site, titled “DHS Watchlist,” does not specify.
The site and the list featured on it are the handiwork of the American Accountability Foundation, which is “Funded by the Heritage Foundation Innovation Award,” according to the site. Mediaite is not linking to it.
Readers are told that the government officials named are “America’s Most Subversive Immigration Bureaucrats.”
Seven agencies are shown, on which users can click via a dropdown menu. They are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation, Department of Justice immigration judges, Ombudsman Offices, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Each list features officials’ names, photographs, and titles. Users can click on each person to be taken to a biography that contains each official’s government salary, any political donations they have made, screenshots of their LinkedIn profile, and screenshots of any social media posts they may have made that the American Accountability Foundation finds objectionable.
The website also has a “Tipline” where people can submit the names of other bureaucrats.
“If you have additional information on individuals profiled on this site, or suggestions for additional targets, please share that information below,” it reads. “Please be as detailed as possible and when possible include sources.”
The site was amplified in an article published in the New York Post on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security addressed the matter in a statement to Mediaite.
“We strongly condemn any effort to harass government officials, or any American, in this heightened threat environment,” the statement read.
Former President Donald Trump has long railed against various government agencies, particularly in DHS and the DOJ. Toward the end of his term, he signed an executive order called Schedule F, which would have reclassified thousands of federal officials as at-will employees. That would give their department heads the ability to dismiss with or without cause. President Joe Biden rescinded the order after taking office.
If elected, Trump has pledged to reinstitute the order and fire bureaucrats he deems insufficiently loyal.
“Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state,” he said at a rally last year.
The former president recently attempted to distance himself from another Heritage enterprise in Project 2025, a 900-something page agenda laying out what a second Trump term could look like. That includes Schedule F. After Trump tried to disavow Project 2025, its director was fired.
