Questions are being raised about the Secret Service, after it failed to protect former president Donald J. Trump from an assassination attempt. Influential Americans, from lawmakers to commentators, have drawn a link between the almost-catastrophic security breach and the Service’s new DEI policies—specifically, the attempt to increase the number of women it employs. Two videos in particular have drawn ire on social media—much of it directed at female agents who appear to be incompetent.
One shows a group of agents huddling around the former president after the bullet grazed him, trying to protect him. The human chain is mostly made up of male agents as tall as or taller than the former president, who are therefore able to shield him. From the front, however, Trump is exposed—because of a female agent, who is much shorter and smaller than her male colleagues. It doesn’t help that she can be seen adjusting her sunglasses.
Another video shows female agents fumbling with their firearms, rearranging their jackets, looking around with uncertainty, and moving around shambolically, as they’re attempting to safely evacuate Trump from the scene.
These signs of incompetence have been linked to the policies of the agency’s current director, Kimberly Cheatle, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022. Last May, she claimed in a CBS interview that she would aim to “attract diverse candidates,” and particularly wanted to increase the number of women in the Secret Service. Today, 24 percent of agents are female; she wants to raise that figure to 30 percent by the year 2030.
The day after the foiled assassination attempt, the House launched a “full investigation” into the shooting, led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He has already formally requested Cheatle testify, on July 22.
But at the time of the shooting, his committee had already begun investigating the Secret Service. Concerns that a focus on DEI is damaging effectiveness and morale have been swirling for months now—and were brought to a head by an incident that took place on April 22 of this year.
It involved a female Secret Service agent, identified as Michelle Herczeg, who was part of Vice President Kamala Harris’s protective detail. While on duty, Herczeg became erratic and assaulted a superior. She was subsequently removed from her duties, but it then emerged that not only did Hercezg lack the experience expected of agents who protect the vice president, she had also been mired in controversy.
In 2016, Herczeg—then a Dallas police officer—had filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the city, claiming more than $1 million in damages, which was dismissed by a trial court. (An appellate court subsequently affirmed the decision and denied her a rehearing in 2022.) After her assault of a superior officer, Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter who has written extensively on the Secret Service, claimed her failed lawsuit should have disqualified her from being hired by the agency, because her record wasn’t “pristine.”
Not coincidentally, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee launched its investigation into the Secret Service a month later, on May 30, 2024. In a letter to Director Cheatle, informing her of the investigation, Rep. Comer referenced the incident. In it, he cites concerns that there are “potential vulnerabilities” within the agency, which may be “preventing it from fulfilling its mission to ensure the safety and security of its protectees”—including the president, former presidents, and major presidential candidates.
Comer’s letter also cited an anonymous petition dated May 6, 2024, which appears to have been written by Secret Service agents, and alleges “double standards between males and females.” It criticizes “the Agency’s false narrative that promotions are based on a ‘merit based system,’ when in reality the promotions have been based on alleged ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).’ ”
This, according to the anonymous petition, has led to a “number of serious breaches in security.” It calls on Director Cheatle to resign, or be fired.
After the news of the petition became public, Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi trashed the concerns raised, slamming the anonymous petitioners for not embodying the agency’s “values of service over self.”
To be fair, the Secret Service’s struggle with recruitment and retention goes far beyond DEI. A 2021 report highlights a high attrition rate, related to how stressful the work is, with about 8 percent of the workforce quitting every year. As a result, 16 percent of special agents—the type of agents protecting Trump—have less than three years’ job experience.
But whatever the cause of its crisis, the Secret Service needs to sort it out, and fast. The Americans who have sat, or are campaigning to sit, in the White House must be able to safely speak to the public. That they do so is nothing more than a foundation of our democracy.
Rupa Subramanya is a reporter for The Free Press. Follow her on X @rupasubramanya and read her piece “They’re Voting for Trump to ‘Save Democracy.’”
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As a woman, I don’t want a job I’m not qualified for just because someone has a quota to fill. DEI hiring undermines every qualified person of color, woman, lgbt person, or disabled person who got their job because they are damn good at what they do. Every under-qualified, under-performing DEI hire makes people question the qualifications of all people who share some identity feature with them, but earned their place.
Make America Merit-Based Again!
Oh boy, I could say a lot about this. Years ago I worked in Law Enforcement and at the end of my five-year career, I had the additional job of being a defensive tactics and use of force instructor. I think a lot of the criticisms online are valid, like the video of the female officer who can't reholster her gun. That should be muscle memory, she should have drilled it a thousand times over. If I ever moved something on my duty belt I spent hours building muscle memory for the item in its new location. Reaching and drawing my handcuffs from the new spot .etc
Take the taser, for example it's an electrical device. It can't be on 24/7, or the battery will slowly drain. You have to drill over and over and over again, drawing the taser while simultaneously turning it on with your thumb. There's plenty of videos out there of cops who don't put in the work when training and then during a real use of force try to fire a Taser that isn't turned on, and nothing happens. These basic things should be automatic and if they aren't it's a sign of horrible training. Isn't the Secret Service supposed to be the best?
This also goes back to Thomas Sowell's book Social Justice Fallacies. Where he talks about the flaw in the assumption that unequal outcome = discrimination. Are most Law Enforcement Officers men? Yes. Are most Kindergarten Teachers female? Yes. There is no grand conspiracy keeping things this way that DEI needs to overthrow. It is simply the natural order of things. Most men would rather stick a fork in their eye than manage a room full of five-year-olds by themselves, while somehow trying to teach the kids to read. Most women would rather not get shot at. The problem is when people try to forcibly change the natural order of things with DEI. Women were allowed in the Secret Service before if they were able to meet the same standards as a man. Trying to artificially inflate the number of female agents leads to what we saw, confused, bumbling, poorly trained people. People who might like the idea of being an agent better than the reality of it when bullets are flying. DEI also makes sexism worse. This incompetence also provides ample fodder for those that already have the belief that women should be kept of out these lines of work. A bit ironic that this is the end result of DEI.