Transitions, gender transitions that is, and how to support transitioning employees. That's a quote. She banned agencies from assessing salary histories before hiring because it could exacerbate pre-existing inequality. So, let me just ask you, are you going to unwind all of that nonsense that the American people got a good hard look at in November, I might add, and said an emphatic no to? No to the trans ideology? No to men in women's locker rooms? No to critical race theory and calling this country a racist country that's systemically evil and ruined and terrible? Are you going to put a stop to that in OPM and get OPM focused back again on his core mission?
Yeah, Mr. Senator, I want to make sure that we focus on how do we create a great workforce that is responsive to the needs of the people and that does so in a way that's efficient. As you well know, of course, the president has already issued executive orders with respect to the DEI departments in government and we will fully comply with those.
Fantastic. You'll vigorously enforce those, I would assume, Mr. Senator.
Very good. Mr. Yuland, it's nice to see you again and I've enjoyed working with you over the years. Congratulations on this nomination. Thanks for being willing to do it. And the committee has a tremendous letter in your support from the Susan B. Anthony List and the National Right to Life Committee talking about your long-standing commitment to the pro-life cause, to the basic principle that every child born in this country deserves to be treated with equality and fairness, welcomed and protected. And it's a tremendous letter. It's great to see a member of the administration get this kind of support from the pro-life community. If this has not already been entered into the record, Mr. Chairman, I'd ask unanimous consent to do so.
Mr. Yulan, let me just in the remaining moments here, let me just give you an opportunity to talk about what your priorities will be and let me say again, congratulations to you on this nomination. Go ahead.
Thank you very much, Senator. I really appreciate that. Very quickly, obviously to serve with honor and dignity and effectuate the president's agenda in terms of the DDM, specifically make sure that what we're doing to protect our cybersecurity, the information of taxpayers and employees is advocated and insured. See what we can do with newer technology and ways to help downsize, rescope and reorient the federal government as the president has directed and ultimately serve at the pleasure of the director and the deputy director for any other duties that might be assigned to me.
Very good. Congratulations to you both.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Senator Slakun, thank you.
Thanks for being here today and Mr. Kapoor, meeting in my office. My concern, as I raised with you in my office, is the security of the data of the people who serve in the federal government and in the US military. We had a conversation about how when I was at the Pentagon, myself and tens of thousands of others had our data stolen by the Chinese government, a foreign actor, who hacked our system and got a ton of some of our most sensitive information from OPM, right? So, the agency that you're hoping to take over here. At the same time we have reports that the Doge folks are getting access to taxpayer information, to information for folks on Medicare, so sensitive health information. We see them now pointing their sort of sites on military and veteran information. You are the ultimate arbiter of personnel policy. Give me some assurance that you're just not going to let Mr. Musk and the Doge folks go in, take our data, put it into AI-enabled software and use it for any other way than what people have given permission for.
Yes, Senator, thank you and I enjoyed the conversation we had together. Look, I mentioned this earlier. I believe very strongly in data privacy as we talked about and when I'm running OPM, if I have the opportunity to do so, we will ensure that we protect data privacy and make sure that people who are not authorized to have access to systems will not have that access.
Yeah. The thing that I'm looking for is just a little bit of backbone that when this is happening at another agency, right? So now they go into the Veterans Administration or they go into the Department of Defense. They already went into the Treasury over the head of the Secretary of the Treasury. It's embarrassing. He came in front of Congress and said, 'I'm not going to let anyone have taxpayer information.' And then literally in the same week, Doge announced that they were taking all this information, sometimes on their own servers that they brought into the departments and agencies. So, I'm not looking for like, well, if they come to me with this specific problem, I'm going to raise my hand and do something about it. I'm looking to you as the person who will be the guardian of our policy on information on US persons that you will stick up and say, 'Hey, you know, I'm concerned that I'm hearing these reports. I'm going to go out and I'm going to proactively do something about it.' So, how do I know that you're not going to just be another Secretary of the Treasury who tells us one thing and then goes and gets his authorities just rammed over by Doge and a bunch of 20-year-olds?
Well, Senator, look, I believe OPM is a really important part of the equation in the broader personnel system. And I will do as you're describing. I mean, I don't think it's appropriate for us to give access to systems if people aren't rightly available to see those. Okay. And I certainly think OPM can play a role there.
I hope you do. We haven't seen that backbone yet, but I'm still hoping. Mr. Uland, in your role at OM, you know, I think about the movement of money and how important it can be to some of our communities. In Michigan, we just had terrible ice storms. We had 100,000 people without power. Still 50,000 people approximately right now in the northern part of our lower peninsula are without power. The governor's been up there. She invited President Trump to come and see it. We haven't filed a declaration of federal emergency request for help yet. But how do I know that if a state like Michigan asks for money from FEMA, does all the paperwork the way we traditionally do when we have an emergency? How do I know that you'll treat our state fairly? That you'll be objective about it? That you won't bring politics into it and that you will administer the funds regardless of whether the state has a Democratic governor or a Republican governor?
Senator, thanks for the question. If the state of Michigan or any other state makes an application through the appropriate FEMA channels, then they will be appropriately reviewed and the president will have an opportunity to make a decision on those applications. If Michigan has not yet elected to make a submission, then there's really nothing we can react to right now.
Of course. No, we would have to make that. My concern is that we've heard lots of rumors about the future of FEMA and the desire by the Trump administration to collapse FEMA, declare it no longer an agency, go to block grants, some other kinds of assistance. Do you have a view on the existence of FEMA since this committee oversees that body?
Great question, Senator. And I'm old enough to have been young enough to be around when FEMA went through pretty significant expansion starting in the early 1990s under then President Clinton. There is no doubt that the roles and responsibilities of FEMA as well as many other organizations, agencies, and departments of the federal government deserve a review, especially given some of the most atrocious, irresponsible, and long-lingering doubts that we've seen as examples of FEMA failures here in the past few years under the previous administration. So, it's a calling from the president to take a look at FEMA as well as a lot of other things and see whether or not it's fit for purpose here in the 21st century. What's the role of states? What's the role of communities? What's the role of the private sector in moments of disaster? And that conversation, I'm sure, will be robust both internally and with Congress. And I look forward to engaging with the committee on it.
I think we're coming up on the term of limitations when we can blame others. You now own it, right? You're going to own it over there. And so we look forward to what you're going to do to make sure that FEMA or the capabilities of FEMA endure. You're the Secretary of Homeland Security was the... Oh, I'm sorry, was the beneficiary. So in any case, we look forward to you fixing it and what you're going to do to make sure we still get that assistance out.
