Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism Grants

Donald Trump ran a campaign that emboldened right-wing extremists while focusing on policing Islamic radicalism. Now some groups claim that Trump has brought that approach to the Department of Homeland Security.

Late last week, DHS released a list of organizations receiving a total of $10 million in grants for countering violent extremism (CVE) programs. Grant recipients had initially been selected just days before the end of Barack Obama’s tenure in office; but those funds were frozen and the program placed under review after Trump took office. The revised list excludes several organizations previously approved for grants, essentially stripping them of funding they had been promised under the Obama administration.

It’s another indication the Trump administration is turning away from efforts to combat far-right violence, and refocusing the CVE program to focus more on Islamic extremism.

CHAPEL HILL
The Trump Administration has backed out of a major grant promised to UNC-Chapel Hill that would have been used to create media campaigns to undermine violent radicalism on U.S. soil.

It came during a partial overhaul of a grant program, but the UNC team wasn’t given a specific reason it was dropped, said Cori Dauber, a communication professor and one of two principal investigators on the grant proposal.

The $900,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security was the largest of 31 aimed at countering activities such as online jihadist recruiting. The UNC team planned to hire teams of students to develop media campaigns that would appeal to people their own age, who are a major target of extremist propaganda.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.

Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat. The report, dated May 10, says the FBI and DHS believe that members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”