FILE PHOTO Gen. Tim Haugh, right, is promoted to lead the 25th Air Force in this 2019 photo. On Thursday the Trump administration fired Haugh from his position as director of the National Security Agency.

Congressional Democrats on Thursday protested the reported firing of Gen. Tim Haugh — originally from Hughesville — as director of the National Security Agency.

“I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first — I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The Intelligence Committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”

Haugh and his spouse of more than 30 years, the former Sherie McCallus, grew up in Hughesville, graduating from Hughesville High School in 1987 and attending college together in Bethlehem — Tim Haugh at Lehigh University and Sherie Haugh at Moravian College.

Haugh still has family residing in Lycoming County, the Sun-Gazette reported in 2019 when he was selected to lead the 25th Air Force. His father, Bob, served in the Marine Corps as an enlisted navigator. He died in 2009.

Haugh took the reins of NSA and Cyber Command in 2023, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that came a day after activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.

Loomer during her Oval Office conversation with Trump urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.

“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he made his way to Miami on Thursday afternoon. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”