You will recall that the authorizing legislation for the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security’s Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) expired in July 2023 without the enactment of a new law to continue the program.
At the time, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) largely single-handedly blocked a bill from advancing in the Senate. In the interim, the Senate Democratic leadership and the Biden administration did not prioritize reauthorizing the law.
The primary relevance of CFATS to the fertilizer industry is its terrorism vetting program, which involves background checks.
Now, TFI and other industry groups are calling on the incoming Trump administration to resuscitate the program. The attached letter states, “During the first Trump term, over 172,000 names were vetted through the Terrorist Screening Database, and five were found to have terrorist ties. It is imperative that we prioritize the reauthorization of the CFATS program to protect our nation’s chemical sites from potential terrorist threats.”