The Trump transition team on Wednesday announced that he is nominating South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as the next head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the coming weeks, we’ll hear a lot about Noem’s personal politics and origins. We’ll also hear about how the DHS is, as the AP puts it, “one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.”

Unfortunately, all this misses the most important point about the DHS which is that the DHS was invented in 2002 to justify more government spending, to reward political allies, and to influence local governments with federal grants.

For voters who supported Trump because they thought a Trump presidency might actually reduce government waste, they should now be asking why Trump is appointing any new DHS head at all. The only thing Trump should do with the DHS is abolish it.

For younger readers, or people with terrible memories, this might sound radical or extreme. But, I can assure you, dear reader, that the United States somehow managed to get along for more than 225 years before this department was created twenty-two years ago by Congress and the Bush Administration.

Much of what the Department does today was not new in 2002, of course. The federal government already had a border patrol, and it already collected tariffs on imports. The Coast Guard was alive and well. The Secret Service already existed, as did various agencies related to nuclear energy and the inspection of agricultural projects.

But, the DHS has always been more than just a reorganization of existing agencies. The DHS has overseen new slush funds for domestic police departments. It is the DHS that has largely facilitated the militarization of local police forces. As Wired put it in 2020, “the Homeland Security Grant Program has funneled billions of dollars to law enforcement agencies to acquire military-grade equipment.”

Nonetheless, the creation of the DHS has done nothing to make the border more secure, or to facilitate the enforcement of tariffs. The DHS has never been necessary to patrol US coastal waters. Rather, federal bureaucrats and elected officials pursued the creation of this new enormous government department for political reasons.

The DHS was created to be a cabinet-level agency, and the thing about cabinet-level status is that the move makes it easier for the bureaucrats in charge of the agencies to politically agitate for more government spending in their favor, and to push bigger government in general. It’s no coincidence that as the US government has grown ever larger and more intrusive, so has the number of cabinet-level agencies. So, now we have the EPA, the SBA, and the departments of HUD, Energy, and Education all provided with more direct access to the president and the media. Everything they do is deemed “essential.” Everything they do, we’re told, is a matter of national importance.

DHS is no different. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, they exposed the sheer incompetence, laziness, and inefficiency of government security and defense organizations. Year after year, hundreds of billions of dollars were poured into these organizations — in addition to the countless billions spent on the Pentagon. But when they were shown to be asleep at the switch, what happened? Rather than have their budgets cut, and senior officials fired in droves — as should have happened — George W. Bush and his cronies decided that what the federal government really needed was a new department into which billions more in taxpayer money could be poured.

The was politically important in the sense that making DHS a department made it easier to call for every more funding for its constituent agencies.

It has certainly worked.

Prior to the creation of the DHS, “homeland security” functions were rarely funded at levels exceeding $20 billion per year. Since 2002, though, federal spending on these functions—now consolidated into the DHS—has soared. Since 2001, the total budget for these activities has nearly tripled, rising from $28 billion in 2001 to $112 billion in 2024. (That’s in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars.) Since the Cold War ended, by the way, spending on so-called homeland security has increased by more than six-fold.



Since 2001, has it really become almost three times more expensive—in inflation adjusted terms, mind you—to patrol the border, to collect tariffs, and to check luggage for guns at the airport? It is difficult to see how.

What we do know is that the DHS has become an important pass-through for government largesse. Some of this goes to local governments, and these dollars give the federal government more power by providing yet another carrot the feds can hold out to local politicians. Billions more goes into the FEMA black hole which spends prodigiously on federal agents who use DHS dollars as a means of punishing their political opponents.

While the Department was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, the Department does nothing to address anything like a 9/11-style attack. All the agencies that were supposed to provide intelligence on such attacks — the FBI for instance, which failed miserably on 9/11 — already exist in other departments and continue to enjoy huge budgets. Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration — an agency that has never caught a single terrorist—has managed to smuggle at least $100 million worth of cocaine.

Once upon a time, “homeland security” was supposed to be the job of the Department of Defense. but, it seems the Pentagon has been too busy in Ukraine or Iraq to trouble itself with the defense of the borders and airspace of the United States. In spite of having been freed of its responsibility for “the homeland,” however, the Pentagon’s budget just keeps getting bigger. In 2024, it was at a thirteen-year high and remains—in inflation adjusted terms—above the levels of Reagan’s Cold War spending spree. Pentagon spending is up by 57 percent, inflation-adjusted, since 2001.

There is no doubt, however, that heading the Department in Washington will be great for the career of Kristy Noem. She’ll get invited to cabinet meetings, go on national TV, and generally enjoy the pampered life of a high-ranking bureaucrat. Meanwhile, American taxpayers will pay more and more, in depreciating dollars, for yet another federal department.

It's not alarmist to say there are some bad actors out there who are, at this very moment, planning on disrupting next week's elections. The radical left would like nothing more than to prevent you from voting, and, failing that, will actually take the steps necessary to see that your vote goes up in flames.

For proof of that, we need not look any further than the exploding drop-off ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington. RedState reported this past Monday that three ballot boxes, and the votes held within them, had been deliberately set afire within the past few weeks. There were some early clues as to what might be behind the incidents:



Being that it's the Pacific Northwest (PNW) we're talking about here, it was likely that it was an unhinged leftist (or leftists) responsible for the arsons. Law enforcement officials almost immediately connected the three incidences – one in Portland, Oregon, and two in Vancouver, Washington – and had some information on the suspect:



Well, some additional information has been released by local officials that sheds further light on who's responsible and what axe they are feloniously grinding:



Not surprising in the least. While a suspect hasn't been named or apprehended, his or her intention is quite clear: to cause as much chaos around the election as possible. All of this was anticipated by the Department of Homeland Security, who back in July "warned Americans about “incendiary and explosive materials” being dropped into ballot boxes leading up to the November election. The intelligence report said an unidentified informant received multiple messages online about how to attack ballot boxes. Cherry bombs, lighting gel, gasoline, and other tools were suggested as possible incendiaries.

Ah, yes, the toolkit of the radical American left.

The mistake we must not make here is thinking that these are just some isolated incidences perpetrated by some leftist wackadoodle, or that the chaos will only be seen at drop-off ballot boxes in the PNW. We have more than a full year's worth of proof that the pro-Hamas crowd is rage-filled, violent and intent on silencing and punishing those they see as their enemies.

And there some is pretty solid evidence that they count Kamala Harris as one of their own. Although she pays lip service to Israel and Jewish Americans, her supporters apparently didn't get the memo.

If they're behaving this way after a so-called "unifying" speech, imagine what they'll do if Kamala Harris doesn't win. For that matter, imagine what they'll do if she does win. Let's face it, we have to be prepared for violence or chaos no matter who wins the election.

This crowd, and the paid agitators within, will use any reason to set American cities alight, and it would be dangerously misguided of us to believe otherwise. They've shown us many times who they are, so let's believe them.

Chaos is brewing, friends, so be sure you're prepared for any and all eventualities.

It's been a rough hurricane season. Between them, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have devastated many communities throughout the southeast. Rebuilding what was lost will take years.

But as devastating as these storms have been, they are sadly not unique. Property damage from storms and flooding is on the rise. Storms resulting in over a billion dollars in damages have become more frequent in recent years.

The prospect of repeatedly having to rebuild properties in storm-prone areas has led some governments to pursue an unusual solution to the problem: buy the properties themselves. Some local governments, in partnership with federal agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have developed programs that use disaster relief funds to purchase homes in flood- or storm-prone areas. This isn't the only way, or even the best way, to reduce the destruction from increasingly severe natural catastrophes. But the idea is that keeping such vulnerable properties vacant will save money in the long run because they won't need to be continually rebuilt after storms.

Such buyouts are hardly ideal and can lead to some perverse situations. In 2021, an NPR investigation revealed that HUD was selling homes in flood-prone areas to unsuspecting buyers even as it was buying out homes in the same neighborhoods under a flood mitigation program. While not ideal, in a world where government disaster relief is a given, a voluntary buyout program could make fiscal sense in some circumstances. Voluntary buyout programs have been implemented in over a thousand counties and have been used to relocate almost 50,000 households throughout the country.

The situation is very different when the buyout ceases to be voluntary. A little-known provision in the Hazard Mitigation and Relocation Assistance Act of 1993 authorizes local governments to implement a mandatory buyout program for flood-prone areas. So far, just three localities—Cedar Rapids in Iowa, Minot in North Dakota, and Harris County in Texas—have adopted a mandatory buyout program. The Harris County program is the largest of the three and is expected to forcibly purchase 585 households and 390 businesses by 2026 and turn the land into green space.

Most local governments have been wary of taking advantage of mandatory buyout authority, and for good reason. While states have the power of eminent domain and may use federal funds for this purpose under the law, the process is always fraught and ripe for abuse. With a voluntary buyout, governments must offer a purchase price high enough to entice homeowners to sell. But when the buyout is mandatory, governments have the incentive to low-ball their payments. Such programs can also raise other issues. Harris County faced accusations of discrimination since its mandatory buyout program had operated chiefly in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods while majority-white neighborhoods with similar flood risk profiles were offered voluntary buyouts or other flood mitigation options.

Instead of taking people's homes, the government should be looking for other ways to reduce flood risk. Both the federal and state governments have long encouraged development in storm-prone areas by offering below-market-rate flood insurance and other forms of assistance. These subsidies should stop, and the government should do more to make people aware of the risks faced by homeowners in vulnerable areas. Governments could also focus on increasing efforts to make vulnerable areas more resilient to storms. Research suggests that a dollar spent on resilience saves as much as $13 in avoided future losses.

Beyond these matters of dollars and cents, there is a question of values. America is a nation founded by risk-takers, where liberty and property rights are given priority. The desire to protect the lives of American citizens—as well as the public purse—is commendable, and the government should, of course, not subsidize risky behavior. But the desire for safety cannot become an excuse to force people out of their own homes.