On July 13, in Butler, Pa., a beloved father and husband, a girl dad, died protecting his wife and daughter from an assassin’s gunfire. His family played his favorite song, “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe, at his funeral. The Secret Service failed.
The inadequacies are too lengthy to list. As detailed in the 133-page interim Senate report, the lead agent failed to flag she had credible intelligence of a threat, which would have caused the event to be moved indoors. At least eight Secret Service agents knew of a “suspicious” person with a rangefinder a half-hour before the shooting.
And yet Trump found himself on stage. Worse still, not a single person interviewed by federal investigators took responsibility for any of the security failures.
This mess is characteristic of an organization lacking mission focus. And sure enough, the first sentence of the Secret Service strategic plan is that the Service achieves “excellence through talent, technology, and diversity.” That’s the Secret Service’s “Vision,” meaning “what success will look like.”
Ah. No wonder the Secret Service lacks mission focus. Its definition of success isn’t protection, it’s an intangible that centers around what people look like. Confusion isn’t the Secret Service’s problem, it’s the central goal.
As part of this diversity-driven vision, the Secret Service committed to a 30% female force by 2030. In a recent Secret Service podcast attempting to flesh that out, an agent merely described that it’s “important to have female representation, if you don’t, it’s a failure on that department’s part.”
Former Director Kim Cheatle recognized she had a massive retention problem, losing 48% of her force, but decided to focus on diversifying the agency with women. The lead advance agent herself apparently failed one or more training exams, was known not to be a top-quality agent, and was promoted anyway.
This is no good.
As a woman’s organization, IWF is developing a lawsuit against the Secret Service for sex discrimination. Agents and retired agents can anonymously share their stories with us at iwf.org/secret-service.
But shouldn’t we cheer for girl power? We are.
Sex discrimination is illegal, under both the Fourteenth Amendment (for the government) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (for employers). Enforcing this principle, whether for men or women, helps women.
And remember, the hero of July 13, Corey Comperatore, is dead. Girl power means thinking about his daughters and his wife, not the aesthetics of law enforcement.
But also, we care about women in the workplace, who deserve to be treated and viewed as equals. In the wake of the first assassination attempt, the women of Secret Service faced tremendous criticism.
Then-Director Kim Cheatle, we are told from inside leaks, was viewed as a “DEI hire” and buddy of Jill Biden’s, not the best person for the job. She quit.
The female agents who accompanied Trump that day, including one woman who put herself in the line of fire, faced endless public concerns of competency and physical strength. None of this is good for women.
Doubt is common, and unfortunate, for women in the workplace generally and male-dominated fields especially. In Big Law, I’ll never forget strenuous interviews requiring me to share unique perspectives on specific trends in the law, when the same interviewers asked male applicants about their favorite summer concerts. (I still wonder whether wearing my hair up or down, I chose down, made me appear too feminine and cost me an offer.)
We should fix that. But the way to push women into an under-class is to establish quotas. It becomes nearly impossible to be treated as an equal by colleagues, because your employer has not.
Moreover, quotas prioritize numbers over the harder job of considering female-unfriendly practices. Employers should think, does advancement require late-night drinking with clients and hours on the golf course?
Can I start an on-campus day care? Do employees have to linger around after 5 p.m. pointlessly, when work would just as easily be done at home? Do agenda-less meetings give rise to unmitigated mansplaining? But this is hard. It’s easier to just hire a set number of women and pat yourself on the back.
And quotas establish a rigid societal expectation for what women “should” be doing. Instead, women should be supported in their different career choices, even if that means that fewer women than men become agents.
Many women make career choices that lead to greater flexibility, irregular schedules, or physical safety, instead of climbing the law enforcement ladder.
We should celebrate those choices and work to ensure equal opportunities for all women, not equal outcomes.
Diversity, for the sake of diversity, is not excellence. It does not increase presidential protection. It does not save lives in a hurricane. And it does no favors for those it purports to help.
IWF is proud to join Mountain States Legal Foundation to bring this pernicious practice to a close.
May Mailman is the director of Independent Women’s Law Center (iwlc.org).
