{"id":114656,"date":"2026-01-17T17:01:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=114656"},"modified":"2026-01-17T17:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:29:00","slug":"114656","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=114656","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump admin tried to merge DEA and ATF. After pressure, it quietly abandoned the plan<\/a><\/p>\n

After pushback from both gun rights and gun control groups, the Trump administration has quietly abandoned its plan to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to people briefed on the matter.<\/p>\n

Deputy Attorney General\u00a0Todd Blanche<\/a>\u00a0announced plans last year to merge ATF into the DEA, a proposal that would require Congressional budgetary approval and is part of the early administration-wide effort to\u00a0shrink\u00a0<\/a>the size of federal government agencies.<\/p>\n

Officials involved in the proposal told CNN at the time of Blanche\u2019s proposal that the two agencies had different missions \u2014 ATF is tasked with investigating violent crime, gun trafficking, arson and bombings, while DEA agents enforce the nation\u2019s drug laws \u2014 but they naturally went hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere there are drugs there are usually guns, and where there are guns there are usually drugs,\u201d one of the officials previously told CNN.<\/p>\n

The effort was re-affirmed in June, when Justice Department officials suggested eliminating the ATF \u201cas a separate component, with its functions merged into the Drug Enforcement Administration,\u201d leaving the DEA as \u201ca single component that will address violent crime, drug enforcement, and crimes relating to firearms\u201d in their budget proposal.<\/p>\n

Administration officials\u2019 expectations that pro-Trump gun-rights groups would welcome the plans were dashed almost immediately.<\/p>\n

Some conservative and gun-rights groups have long called for the ATF\u2019s abolishment but raised concerns that a merger with another agency would empower the agency\u2019s gun-related efforts, not weaken them. The MAGA groups want ATF gone and the laws it enforces repealed. Giving its powers to another agency makes things worse, a gun rights source told CNN.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegulating guns is a hot potato. Everyone is for eradicating illegal drugs. Not everyone is for gun regulation,\u201d one person involved in the Trump administration discussions that followed the Blanche memo told CNN.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Democrats and left-leaning gun control groups also decried the plan as an attempt to sideline ATF and harm efforts to reduce gun violence. But at the White House, the backlash from conservatives froze any momentum for the merger. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, was initially in favor of merging the agencies but later came to advocate for the ATF\u2019s role in crime-fighting efforts in cities, a top priority for the president, people briefed on the matter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, no one seemed to want to own the idea of a merger,\u201d the person involved in the administration\u2019s discussions told CNN.<\/p>\n

Pro-gun groups like the Firearms Policy Coalition warned that merging the two law enforcement groups would create an \u201cauthoritarian \u2018super-agency\u2019 with the combined powers to wage the failed war on drugs and enforce unconstitutional federal gun control laws against all Americans, not just violent criminals and drug cartels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis would be a DISASTER for gun owners and the Second Amendment,\u201d the pro-gun rights group Gun Owners of America wrote on social media when the plans were initially reported early last year. \u201cCombining ATF with other federal law enforcement agencies will only supercharge its unconstitutional attacks on the right to keep and bear arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The push to merge the agencies had surfaced several other times over the years, as administrations have wrestled with what to do with an agency that is often buffeted by the politics surrounding gun rights issues. Joe Biden, when he was vice president, floated the idea in discussions about a task force that was set up to tackle mass shootings and gun crime in the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

An ATF representative declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n

The decision to abandon the Trump administration\u2019s plan comes as the White House works to secure Senate confirmation for Robert Cekada, who is nominated as director of the ATF. The agency has struggled with lengthy leadership vacuums amid the political turbulence that comes with regulating guns in the United States.<\/p>\n

If confirmed, Cekada would be only the third leader, and the first in a Republican administration, to win Senate approval in the 20 years since the post became subject to Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n

Cekada currently serves as deputy ATF director and is a 21-year veteran of the agency. The current acting director, Daniel Driscoll, also serves as army secretary, and while he was initially viewed as a skeptic of agency, he has become a champion of its violent crime work, according to people briefed on the matter.<\/p>\n

Sources inside ATF told CNN that while there was an initial panic over what would happen if the plan to combine the two agencies came to fruition, those fears quickly dissipated as time went on without any logistical updates of how, or when, the merger would take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been operating as if that\u2019s off the table for months now,\u201d one law enforcement official told CNN. \u201cEveryone is just like, \u2018that\u2019s a funny little thing they tried to do. Let\u2019s just keep moving.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trump admin tried to merge DEA and ATF. After pressure, it quietly abandoned the plan After pushback from both gun rights and gun control groups, the Trump administration has quietly abandoned its plan to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to people briefed on the … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucraps","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114657,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114656\/revisions\/114657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}