RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump picked cybersecurity expert Kirstjen Nielsen to be the next Homeland Security secretary, putting a low-profile figure into a critical job after former Secretary John Kelly was named White House chief of staff.

Ms. Nielsen, 45 years old, was Mr. Kelly’s chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. She followed him to the White House, where she serves as principal deputy chief of staff, Mr. Kelly’s top aide. Her close relationship with Mr. Kelly was critical in the decision to name her to the post, people familiar with the selection said Wednesday.

Secretaries of homeland security have traditionally been high-profile figures, including former governors and, with Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general. That isn’t the case with Ms. Nielsen. But administration officials point to her wealth of experience in many issues the agency handles and note that she would be the first secretary to have worked at the agency before.

One downside, though, is she lacks the sort of experience communicating with the public that elected officials have, and that can be important in an emergency or in the case of a terror attack. Acting Secretary Elaine Duke, another nonpolitical homeland expert, ran into trouble for indelicate comments in response to a question about one of the recent hurricanes, for instance.

But Ms. Nielsen is well steeped in the issues that the agency deals with on a daily basis, from her service during the Trump and George W. Bush administrations.

She worked at the Transportation Security Administration and for the White House Homeland Security Council during the Bush years. She then worked in the private sector—at positions including the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and the National Cybersecurity Center—before being brought into the Trump transition to help guide Mr. Kelly through his Senate confirmation process.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would succeed Ms. Duke, who was deputy secretary under Mr. Kelly and has been acting secretary since July.

DHS, created in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, is a sprawling operation with responsibilities including immigration enforcement, disaster response, the Secret Service and U.S. border and airport security.

As such, Ms. Nielsen would be thrust to the forefront of some of the administration’s most controversial initiatives. Those include Mr. Trump’s effort to build a wall on the southwest border with Mexico, increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, enforce travel restrictions on people from targeted countries, and increase vetting of travelers to the U.S. She would also take over the Federal Emergency Management Agency at a time of intense recovery efforts following a series of damaging hurricanes.

The House has been working for months behind the scenes on the most significant improvement to commercial air travel in decades: Converting Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air-traffic control into an operation governed by pilots, airlines, controllers and other industry experts. This would be good news for the economy and the traveling public, if Republicans don’t wig out.

House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster’s legislation would set up a nonprofit entity that manages air-traffic operations, while FAA continues regulating safety and certifying equipment. Instead of taxes, the services would be funded by user fees. This arrangement has allowed Canada to lower levies by about one-third and manage routes and landings more efficiently. Canada’s air-traffic outfit even sells technology to other countries.

For years the Inspector General of the Transportation Department has been the official biographer of the FAA’s failures in overhauling radar technology that dates to World War II. The tales include tech updates that are billions over budget and a decade late. One microcosm: An IG report from 2014 noted that FAA had implemented 51 initiatives to boost controller productivity, improve best practices and cut costs. Only two produced discernible savings. Six increased costs, and no one can be sure what the other 43 did.

A version of Mr. Shuster’s plan stalled in the House last year amid objections from the general-aviation community, which is now trying to shoot down this year’s draft. Yet the bill exempts hobbyists from paying user fees and explicitly bans the air-traffic operation from restricting air space. GA outfits have also pumped specious national-security concerns, even as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has welcomed the spinoff.

One overwrought objection was that the bill would be a big business giveaway to major airlines, which would have had four representatives on the governing board. The revised bill grants airlines one seat and adds representation for cargo and regional airlines, as well as airports. Robert Poole, the intellectual force behind the idea who supported the first version, calls the new bill a “big improvement.”

Another concern is that rural airports will be closed or harmed, though the bill maintains subsidies for remote areas, which is lamentable if a political reality. A Reason Foundation report details how FAA after the 2013 budget showdown put a moratorium on new contract towers that can benefit small airports, which will never beat out JFK or San Francisco International for FAA dollars. Under a new arrangement, rural airports could explore technology like remote towers, which allow controllers to manage operations with sophisticated cameras and communication equipment.

Many of these complaints come from the unprotected class of Americans known as corporate-jet passengers. The National Business Aviation Association is opposing the bill even though it exempts business jets from paying more in fees. That dispensation is regrettable. If the proletariat sitting in steerage pays for air services, so should a CEO flying across the country for lunch. The irony is that corporate-jet users are the least price-sensitive passengers and put a high value on time. Wouldn’t many executives happily pay extra for a faster landing and shorter lines on the tarmac? NetJets to its credit seems to recognize these realities and endorsed the bill this month.

The Department of Justice has been investigating DisruptJ20, a “resistance” group that plotted to shut down President Trump’s inauguration. The DOJ has demanded the IP addresses of visitors, along with any emails, photos and names it can get. But the pipeline of Dj20 funding goes back to George Soros.

And not just Soros.

Money from the Global Justice Alliance went to Refuse Fascism, a group founded by members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which staged violent protests. “Respectable” big money leftist groups like the Hill Snowdon Foundation and Ben and Jerry’s Foundation fund middlemen like the Alliance. And then the Alliance funds “direct action” groups that are willing to get their hands violently dirty.

The DOJ, better than anyone, should understand this model. It’s commonplace among criminals.

And when you go after criminals, you don’t stop with the street thugs. Instead you go after the bosses. The left’s funding pipelines launder money by moving it from respectable foundations to increasingly radical groups until they reach the thugs that mace, club and set fires. The multiple tiers buy their donors respectability and plausible deniability. But it’s nothing that the DOJ can’t easily penetrate.

It’s not all that different from the Castellano era in the Gambino crime family. And it needs to be treated the same way. Fiscal sponsorship of groups that engage in street violence is a crime. Prosecute it!

The Center for Community Change Action, another “direct action” group, recently had its donors exposed. They included Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Approximately $7 million has gone from these big donors to the “direct action” group.

The CCCA has its own groups for which it’s acting as a “fiscal sponsor”. That’s how it works.

The Ford Foundation has become notorious for its backing of Black Lives Matter through the Black-Led Movement Fund whose goal was to raise over $100 million for the black nationalist racist hate group.

There is big money behind the street violence tearing apart America from Ferguson to Berkeley.

And there are big foundations behind the big money. The DOJ took down the big crime families. It’s time for it to take down the big leftist foundations.

Many of these foundations were born in sin. And they’ve only grown worse since.

Their bid for “campaign finance reform” shifted the axis of political finance from donations to political organizations to “outside” groups that matched their agendas. We all live in the cracks of the shadowy political system created by the Ford Foundation, George Soros, Carnegie and MacArthur. The lefty foundations spent over $100 million to make “campaign finance reform” a reality. And that gave them enormous power to control national politics through unaccountable networks and soft money.

Representatives Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Scott Perry (R-PA) on Tuesday hosted a caucus meeting on the Democrats’ IT scandal, which continues to be ignored by House leadership and the mainstream media.

Investigative reporter Luke Rosiak — who has done most of the investigative reporting on the story for The Daily Caller — was also at the meeting, as was Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who lamented the fact that there have been no House hearings yet on what appears to a humongous scandal. The Capitol Police and FBI investigation appears to be going nowhere, as well.

“A proper investigation into this series of events doesn’t seem to be taking place,” said Rep. Perry. “I think many Americans feel the same way.”

Rep. Gohmert said the purpose of the meeting was “to bring out information that might be of interest or assistance to members of Congress.”

Rep. Perry began by reciting a rundown of the facts in the case as discovered by the Office of the Inspector General.

“The OIG tracked the Awans’ network usage and found that a massive amount of data was flowing from the networks,” he said. “Over 5,700 logins by the five Awan associates were discovered on a single server within the House. The server of the Democratic Caucus chairman, then-Rep. Xavier Becerra of California — 5,400 appear unauthorized. He is now the attorney general of California. According to the reports, the Becerra server was actually housing the entirety of the servers of all the member offices that employed Imran or his associates — a clear violation of House policy. This means up to 40 or more members of Congress had all of their data moved out of their office server or out of their cloud storage system and onto the Becerra server without their knowledge or consent.”

Perry said that the OIG reported their findings to “the speaker’s office, Democratic leadership, and the House Administration Committee, as well as the House sergeant at arms and Capitol Police in late September and early October of 2016.” He said, “Capitol Police began a criminal investigation into Imran Awan and his associates at that time. Capitol Police determined that the image they required Imran to provide was falsified, likely with deliberate attempt to conceal the activities that they knew were against House policy and the law.”

“These facts, standing alone, indicate a substantial security threat at the least,” Perry said. “But the events don’t end there.”

The congressman also brought up Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s mysterious laptop, which was found in a phone booth in the Rayburn Office Building on April 6, 2017, along with several pieces of ID belonging to Imran Awan.

For nearly two hours, the group discussed some of the most disturbing aspects of the scandal — including a possible kick-back scheme that could implicate congressional Democrats and the possibility that Imran Awan may have stolen the identity of a House Intelligence staffer after his own House email address was shut down.

There’s also the question of the Awan brothers’ ridiculously high salaries:

Rep DeSantis said he noticed a double standard in how the DOJ enforces the law.

“Look at the Mueller investigation,” DeSantis said. “Picking Manifort’s lock in the middle of the night and drawing guns on him and his wife for some white-collar crap from three or four years ago — I mean, that’s like scorching the earth, but yet, with Hillary … Comey exonerated her two months before she was brought in for questioning.”

He continued: “My fear on this case is that the ferocity will not be where it needs to be because … on the FBI, U.S. attorney ,DOJ side — I think you can get answers to these questions, and I think you can break it open. I have not seen that as of yet.”

DeSantis asked if anyone on the panel had seen leaks about the investigation. “I mean, we see all these other leaks. … The initial indictme