‘WOKE-UP’ CALL
Dr. Jill-friendly director’s ‘DEI’ recruit agenda
Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has unabashedly embraced woke initiatives at the agency ever since she took over two years ago — including recruiting at Pride events, hosting seminars on pronoun use and bringing in a popular female YouTube daredevil to attract a more diverse workforce.
Cheatle, 53, unveiled her marching orders in the Secret Service’s 2023-2027 strategic plan, demanding agents to be “focused on achieving excellence through talent, technology and diversity,” documents reviewed by The Post show.
“We must embrace diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) across the agency,” wrote Cheatle, a longtime friend of First Lady Jill Biden who was plucked in 2022 from her job as global security boss at PepsiCo by President Biden to be the second woman to lead the federal agency. “DEIA must be demonstrated by all employees — leading by example — through ‘every action every day.’ ”
Part of the diversity effort to attract women included letting YouTube influencer Michelle Khare — known for posting videos of herself training to become everything from an astronaut to a bomb-squad officer — give the Secret Service academy a try.
Khare’s “I Tried Secret Service Academy” 41-minute segment has scored more than 12 million views since posting in November 2022.
“I’m very conscious as I sit in this chair now, of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” Cheatle told CBS News last year, saying she set a target of 30% female recruits by 2030.
Other examples of the Secret Service’s increasingly woke turn include:
■ Hosting a seminar on the “respectful use of pronouns” during the agency’s annual “Unity Day,” where diversity is celebrated.
■ Having a recruiting brochure that boasts the agency is “striving to be the gold standard” of DEIA.
■ Forming an “Inclusion Engagement Council,” which the agency’s website defines as “game changers” helping the Secret Service mold a workforce “where diversity and inclusion is not just ‘talked about’ — but demonstrated by all employees through ‘Every Action, Every Day.’ ”
■ Setting up recruitment booths at Pride events around the US.
On pronoun patrol
During a 2022 agency podcast, Andrew “Drew” Cannady of the Secret Service’s Office of Chief Counsel, revealed recruitment efforts targeting the LGBTQ community has resulted in more transgender people joining.
He also said the “pronoun” seminar was needed “to try and educate the workforce . . . because some of this stuff, you know, is cutting-edge and new, and people just may not be familiar with it.”
Cheatle has faced calls to resign since the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Butler, Pa., rally punctuated by a series of critical agency blunders.
Video from media outlets and on social media show some female agents having difficulty trying to fully shield the much-taller 6-foot-3 ex-commander in chief after he was fired on by a gunman from a nearby rooftop and hit in his right ear. One agent later appeared to struggle trying to holster her firearm as a wounded Trump was whisked into an SUV.
“Both the Obama and Biden administrations have populated federal departments and agencies with bureaucrats more concerned with DEI than carrying out their organizations’ mission,” Rep. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Post.
“As a result, it is not unreasonable to assume Director Cheatle has taken the same approach with the Secret Service. The spectacular security failure that almost resulted in the assassination of President Trump would indicate that is exactly what has happened.”
Secret Service agents are tasked with protecting — and even using their own bodies as shields — current and past presidents, their families and some Cabinet officials.
The agency first began hiring women as special agents in 1971, and in April 2021, women outnumbered men in a graduating class for agents for the first time. Women now make up roughly 24% of the agency’s 7,800 employees.
As was the case before Cheatle’s appointment, women go through the same training as men, but are held to lower standards than men for physical fitness.
For instance, men ages 20-29 seeking “excellent” marks must do 55 pushups in a minute and 47 situps. Women the same age receive the same grades if they do 40 pushups and 44 situps.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said its agents and officers “are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions,” adding “it is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender.”