Congressman Cline claims to be concerned that Congressional Democrats, by supposedly holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, are forcing cuts to the staff of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
In an effort to force stricter oversight of immigration enforcement and bring ICE operations under control, Democrats in Congress are refusing to support a Republican plan to fund DHS. And as The New York Times reports:
Democrats offered their own proposal to fund the department except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the office of Kristi Noem, who led the department until Mr. Trump removed her on Thursday. Democrats asked to quickly take up their proposal and pass it unanimously, without debate, but Republicans objected.
In other words, it’s Republicans who are blocking funding for CISA and other DHS functions– including the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.
But here’s the real irony in Cline’s predictable Democrat-bashing. In March 2025 TechCrunch reported:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than a hundred employees working for the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency CISA, including “red team” staffers, two people affected by the layoffs told TechCrunch.
The people, who asked not to be named, said affected employees were axed immediately when their network access was revoked with no prior warning.
The layoffs, which happened in late February and early March, are the latest round of staff cuts to hit the federal cybersecurity agency since the start of the Trump administration.
CISA spokesperson Tess Hyre declined to comment on the latest round of job cuts affecting the agency and wouldn’t say how many employees had been affected. Hyre told TechCrunch that CISA’s red team “remains operational” but said the agency is “reviewing all contracts to ensure that they align with the priorities of the new administration.”
One of the people affected told TechCrunch that CISA red team employees, who simulate real-world attacks to identify security weaknesses in networks before attackers do, were affected by the DOGE-enforced cuts.
Did Cline protest this danger to national security? Of course not.
Instead he was one of DOGE’s most enthusiastic backers. He actually believed DOGE could save the government more than $2 trillion dollars– which of course turned out to be a fantasy.
But hey– let’s remember the good times.
Cline Watch 