25 years later, President Trump has discarded the lessons of 9/11

After the horrific assault on our country on Sept. 11, 2001, Congress came together to confront the failures that left our nation vulnerable and build a stronger homeland security system to prevent another attack. During his second term, President Donald Trump has dismantled and politicized our national security programs and federal law enforcement to such a degree that he is leaving us vulnerable to another large-scale terrorist attack. At the same time, he has recklessly launched an illegal and failing war in Iran — drastically increasing threats to the nation.

As leaders in Congress who have overseen — and helped create — many of our national security programs over the past 25 years, we know we need to focus on plugging real security gaps — not senselessly creating new ones while turning agencies created to protect us against the American people.

After 9/11, Congress, with bipartisan support, created anti-terrorism grants to help cities and states protect themselves from future attacks. Yet the Trump administration has wasted time and resources by making these critical grants the subject of political handwringing and litigation, while withholding, reducing or delaying hundreds of millions of dollars in security funding for our communities.

For example, the Trump administration attempted to cut New York state and New York City’s grant funding last year by $187 million and only retreated after political blowback and lawsuits — some of which are ongoing. It is an outrage that anti-terrorism grant money rightfully owed to our brave first responders, is now something communities must fight for in court.

Twenty-five years after terrorists defeated a weak aviation security system to carry out the deadliest-ever attack on U.S. soil, the Trump administration is pushing to bring back that same flawed system by moving to privatize the Transportation Security Administration — an idea straight out of Project 2025. If our aviation security is privatized, security contractors would undoubtedly carve out profits by cutting elsewhere. Going back to the pre-9/11 model would lead to weaknesses in security screening — putting traveling Americans at risk solely so corporations could make a profit.

Trump has also gone after the counterterrorism and intelligence workforces within the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center. When Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, we both worked to ensure passage of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act as one of our first acts, which, together with other reforms , mandated the integration of intelligence and bolstered information sharing across federal agencies. Trump’s purging of patriotic, career employees at these agencies has not only cost the United States deep institutional knowledge built over decades, but it has also damaged our international partnerships. Our allies are increasingly nervous about sharing information with us as Trump alienates them and cozies up to Russia.

The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that before 9/11, the U.S. government’s “most important failure was one of imagination.”

Now, with repeated warnings from the intelligence community and cybersecurity experts about China’s increased cyber capabilities and the potential cyber risks of advanced artificial intelligence, it should not be difficult for the Trump administration to imagine the growing threat of a significant cyberattack. Instead of working to prevent such an attack, Trump pushed out a third of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s staff and cut cybersecurity personnel across the federal government.

Now, with China pre-positioning on critical infrastructure networks, Iran hacking water utilities across the country, and new AI cyber risks being announced regularly, we are left with a weakened federal government that lacks the expertise and resources necessary to keep us secure in cyberspace.

Trump’s unnecessary war with Iran is making us less safe at home, too. Americans have been under a heightened threat environment since Trump picked a fight with Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism and a country that Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center Director said, “ posed no imminent threat .” By July, the State Department had issued a rare warning to all Americans that they could be targeted while abroad. This is in addition to Iran already attempting to attack our critical infrastructure that Americans rely on every day.

We’ve seen our adversaries engaging in more brazen behavior as they clearly want to see our country weakened. And, outrageously, they see Trump doing their work for them. They see the administration’s tunnel vision with Trump’s obsession with his mass deportation agenda. He has diverted thousands of law enforcement personnel from their normal duties , such as preventing terrorism and stopping terrorism financing, to instead carry out drastic immigration sweeps . Trump has also undone the work of the Justice Department and FBI to enforce our laws and prosecute violence. We can’t forget that our adversaries see that Trump has already let extremists who launched an attack on our democracy off the hook, pardoning over 1,500 involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Instead of strengthening our efforts to stop America’s adversaries from conducting attacks on our country, President Trump is opening the door to potential new attacks by creating security gaps in almost every area of national security. With Republicans in charge of Congress unwilling — or unable — to stop Trump from weakening the nation, Democrats must be prepared to lead, hold this administration accountable for the damage it has done, and rebuild the homeland security apparatus so it protects Americans from terror threats while preserving Americans’ constitutional rights.

It is essential that our Republican colleagues wake up to the risks we face before it’s too late.

Nancy Pelosi represents the 11th District of California and is a former House Speaker. Bennie Thompson represents Mississippi’s 2nd District and is ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.