Rep. Jim Jordan Wants To Fix The FBI By Moving Its Headquarters To Alabama

What’s happening: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has proposed withholding funding for a new FBI headquarters in an upcoming budget unless the bureau relocates about 700 miles away from Washington, D.C., to Huntsville, Alabama. Jordan aims to decentralize the FBI by moving it out of the Washington “swamp.”

Reasons Republicans like Jordan are attacking the FBI:

→ Its criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s foremost political rival

→ Its investigations into parents who protested liberal school boards using a terrorism threat tag

→ Its leaked plans to spy on traditionalist Catholics

→ Its arrests of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

→ Its collusion with social media platforms to censor the Hunter Biden story and refusal to investigate his laptop

→ Its proven abuse of surveillance tools to spy on private data, which even Democrats are concerned about.

→ The involvement of FBI informants in the January 6, 2021, Capitol protest

Between the lines: This is part of a larger Republican strategy to decrease the deep-seated Democratic influence in federal institutions. The FBI says forcing it to relocate would cause many employees to resign. But that works just fine for Republicans who want the bureau to have less influence from Washington-based staff.

The why: Being situated in a strongly liberal city where over 90 percent of voters supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden for president creates a partisan skew in the leadership of crucial federal agencies. Whistleblowers have specifically blamed Washington FBI leaders for politicizing the bureau. Republican presidents face a perpetual challenge of resistance from the entrenched bureaucracy unless there’s a change. Trump wants to bring back an executive order that makes it easier to fire federal employees, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has his own elaborate plans to address the imbalance.

• Remember: Trump tried to shift power away from Washington by moving the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado. The Biden administration reversed the move.