Since Trump returned to office in January, several government programs to combat domestic terrorism from white supremacists, militias, and other radicalized far-right extremists have been curtailed or abandoned. Public safety, civil liberties, and national security will suffer.
About a month after Trump returned to the White House, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s (GPAHE) Global Extremist Symbols Database, the largest available with nearly 1,000 such symbols from around the world, disappeared from the Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL). The library, run by FEMA as part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was filled with information critical, according to the website, to government officials at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels, as well as the U.S. military. GPAHE’s symbols database, which is free of charge to all, is used by law enforcement at the local, national and international levels and by tech platforms to identify extremist groups, individuals associated with these groups, and symbols used as tattoos, and was only one of many important resources for confronting white supremacy and other forms of far-right extremism and violence that disappeared.
GPAHE filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, as is our right, with FEMA about the reasons for pulling such essential material. FEMA has yet to answer.
Purging the HSDL of materials on far-right extremism is only one of several actions taken by the administration that are undermining efforts to protect Americans from bigoted and antigovernment violence, and to preserve civil liberties.
Trump’s lack of interest in public safety was apparent on Day One when he pardoned some 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, letting back onto the streets violent members of white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and militiamen from the Oathkeepers who orchestrated the attack on the Capitol, injuring dozens of police officers. Many of those pardoned already had extensive criminal records unrelated to the assault on the Capitol for crimes including rape, manslaughter, domestic violence, and drug trafficking. Some of those pardoned have since been re-arrested for crimes including child sex charges and gun violations.
This is all part and parcel of the far-right campaign to rewrite recent history that includes glossing over the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on our democracy, downplaying the threat posed by white supremacists, and claiming groups like “antifa” are the true threat–greater than white supremacists who have killed dozens in terrorist attacks at synagogues, mosques, Walmart, and grocery stores. (Antifa is short for antifascist and is not a group itself.)
The data on the threat posed by the far right doesn’t lie. Far-right extremists have been a rising threat to Americans over the past half decade. A February 2023 Government Accountability Office report found the FBI tallied 9,049 such cases in 2021, up from 5,557 in 2020; 4,092 such cases in 2019; and 3,714 in 2018.
But the Trump administration seems not only unconcerned, but determined to deny the existence of violent far-right extremism and brush off any harmful acts. In addition to letting off criminals convicted of violent offenses with pardons and commutations, the administration is abandoning a broad range of efforts to keep Americans safe from far-right violence. These include efforts to identify and possibly expel extremists from the military; cutting DHS’s civil liberties and other staff; refocusing the FBI away from white supremacists and towards Black Lives Matter, “Antifa” and Tesla vandals; firing, demoting or reassigning prosecutors and agents focused on this threat across the departments; and gutting DHS prevention and protection programs. Even more alarming is the fact that the effort to protect Americans from domestic terrorists is now in the hands of Trump appointees with known connections to white supremacists and conspiracy movements.
FBI Shifting Away from Far-Right Extremism
At the FBI, Kash Patel, now head of the agency, has been gutting the ranks of those who worked on the January 6 prosecutions and those who have expertise in far-right extremism. In January, the Trump administration demanded the FBI provide the names of up to 6,000 of its agents who pursued January 6 attackers, something the acting directors had refused to provide until finally relenting in early February. Trump-appointed officials at the Justice Department have said they are reviewing FBI agents’ handling of those cases for potential misconduct. What Patel will do with those names remains to be seen, but indications so far point to retaliation.
The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists. FBI leadership recently transferred agents and intelligence analysts out of its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which supports investigations run from the FBI’s 55 field offices and provides information on domestic threats. It has been reported that only about 16 people had been reassigned from the section, which would have hundreds of employees if fully staffed. A different source said senior FBI officials have discussed disbanding it entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced.
These moves are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by far-right beliefs, are being eliminated or deprioritized. Patel has been a prominent critic of the effort, as have many Republicans, conflating domestic terrorism investigations with targeting “conservatives.”
The FBI has also reportedly discontinued a practice of tagging investigations with a connection to domestic terrorism. The tags were an important tool in helping the bureau identify trends and track relevant probes across the country. The Trump administration has separately directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which investigate domestic and international terrorist threats, to instead assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
None of this is surprising, given the revisionist narrative the Trump administration is pushing around January 6, and Patel’s support of Jan 6ers including the promotion of a song by the January 6 “choir” of insurrectionists. In his confirmation hearings, Patel claimed ignorance, or some say simply lied, about the choir, when he claimed he was unaware that it included individuals who assaulted police at the Capitol. Patel also has courted QAnon adherents, a conspiracy movement the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorism threat. Far from maintaining professional distance, Patel has woven himself into that conspiracy’s community. “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences,” he explained about QAnon, praising the movement’s supposed “acumen” while serving on Trump Media’s board. Patel’s children’s books arrive autographed with “WWG1WGA”—the QAnon slogan meaning “Where We Go One, We Go All.” His Truth Social posts have actively promoted Q-affiliated accounts.
New Targets for Domestic Terrorism Investigations
All of this makes it rather doubtful that Patel will adequately protect Americans from domestic terrorism coming from the far right he himself courts. Instead, groups like Black Lives Matter and “antifa” appear to be the targets of the FBI going forward.
For years, Trump has called for designating “Antifa” or antifascist activists, as an official domestic terrorist organization, even though it is not an organization nor has anyone associated with it killed the dozens that far-right extremists have (There are no murders connected to anti-fascist activists in the past 25 years). Patel has put Black Lives Matter, antifascist activists, the media, and his own FBI agents questioning his plans, on watch. While all of this has not materialized into official policy yet, Patel and Trump’s choice to head the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who has ties to white supremacists, have both talked about the left being the source of terrorism, particularly antifa and BLM.
Kent has advocated for the FBI to surveil “antifa” groups. During the racial justice protests that erupted following the police killing of George Floyd, Kent tweeted that the FBI should track “leaders & financiers of antifa,” defund them, and arrest their leaders. In 2022, after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to seize improperly retained classified documents, Kent posted that “We are at war” with a “shadowy leftist cabal.” His attacks on the FBI escalated further after the raid. In 2023, Kent called the FBI a “secret domestic intelligence agency” and argued it be defunded. He said the FBI must prioritize “antifa and cartels” over “parents attending school board meetings.”
The number two at the FBI, Dan Bongino, has similar views. A well-known, right-wing podcaster, Bongino has pushed election denialism, January 6 screeds, and racism about “illegals” to his millions of listeners. Bongino has repeatedly criticized the FBI, calling it “lost, broken” and “irredeemably corrupt.” A former NYPD cop and Secret Service agent on both the presidential details of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Bongino often calls Democrats “communists” and his enemy.
DHS Staffing Cuts
On Friday, March 21, the Department of Homeland Security announced nearly 100 more job cuts, adding to the more than 400 cuts in February, with thousands more cuts expected soon. In yet another effort to eliminate barriers to his agenda, the Trump administration dismantled DHS’ Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, functions that were statutorily mandated when the department was created in 2002 to protect individuals’ civil rights.
The Trump administration claimed that these offices were impeding the work of DHS including mass deportations, prompting Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security to say, “With Trump’s mass firing of the entire DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties workforce, he is ensuring in advance that there will be no transparency or oversight of his extreme agenda. Congress created CRCL in the aftermath of 9/11 to help ensure that the newly created Department of Homeland Security upholds the Constitution and laws that protect everyone in the country. Effectively shuttering the office… means that DHS will have carte blanche to do whatever Trump dictates, lawful or not.”
Ongoing Purge at DOJ
Trump’s administration appears to be purging “disloyal” officials in the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI. Key officials in the National Security Division have been removed from their positions, including George Toscas, a deputy assistant attorney general who was a top official in the NSD’s counterintelligence section. The purge is led by Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is a former advocate for the January 6 insurrectionists, and who has demoted, fired, or investigated scores of prosecutors in his office who worked on cases against rioters who assaulted police that day. Not long after the ink was dry on Trump’s executive orders pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, letters of termination were sent to DOJ officials, citing Trump’s words that the prosecutions were “a grave national injustice.”
Martin is a former “Stop the Steal” organizer who previously blamed the Capitol attack on “antifa,” called for “reparations” for rioters, and urged jailing people involved in prosecuting the insurrectionists. Martin has been involved in other questionable campaigns, including a seemingly overtly unconstitutional effort to dictate curriculum at Georgetown’s law school and attempting to personally prosecute Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for a 2020 speech criticizing Supreme Court justices. He has declared his office to be “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers,” thereby abandoning the traditional independence of the DOJ.
For those prosecutors who worked these cases and remain employed, Martin has moved them to low-level positions, saying, “I must assign [Jan. 6] attorneys where I assess there is need and where I believe each can contribute,” Martin wrote in an email. “Therefore, I am assigning you to Misdemeanors effective immediately.” Those demoted include Kathryn Rakoczy, one of the lead prosecutors who secured convictions for their violent actions on Jan. 6 against several members of the Oath Keepers militia.
Military Ending Efforts to Root Out Extremists
In the Department of Defense, now led by Pete Hegseth, efforts to root extremists out of the military are on the chopping block, even though the number of domestic terrorist attacks perpetrated or attempted by those with military training is on the rise. During his January confirmation hearings to head the Pentagon, Hegseth said, “Things like focusing on extremism, Senator, have created a climate inside our ranks that feels political when it hasn’t ever been political…Those are the types of things that are going to change…[Extremism in the military] was a made-up bogeyman to begin with.”
Hegseth instead asserts that transgender people, women, and so-called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) promotions are the real challenge to readiness. (Hegseth may have a personal beef on this front; he claims he was banned from serving on a protection detail during Biden’s inauguration because was identified “as an extremist” by his own unit over one of his tattoos).
Republicans have taken aim at rooting extremism from the ranks for years now, claiming wrongly that these efforts only smear the Armed Forces and make a big deal out of a miniscule issue. Now they have an ally at the head of the Pentagon. In February, the Pentagon inspector general scrapped plans to investigate the military’s training for identifying and countering extremism in the ranks, according to a memo, saying the project does not align with Trump’s executive orders. The watchdog’s directive, issued Feb. 25, abruptly halted an ongoing assessment of how military branches implement counter-extremism training, particularly efforts targeting white nationalist groups and militias such as the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and the Ku Klux Klan.
The memo was signed by Brett Mansfield, deputy inspector general for audit, and Michael Roark, deputy inspector general for evaluations. The memo — bizarrely – connected this decision to the larger push by Hegseth to eliminate programs, policies, and content such as photos and social media posts that discuss or recognize women and troops with minority backgrounds. These are viewed as part of the DEI efforts Trump has banned. As a result, information about the Holocaust, Native Americans, female, and Black servicemen has been purged from military-run websites. This twisted logic has even seen information about sexual assault and suicide disappear because of a possible link to DEI.
This recalcitrant approach to extremism in the military is dangerous for our military members, our citizens, and our national security, as the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland has consistently found that the problem is escalating. The START team determined that military service was the strongest predictor that somebody would attempt a mass casualty attack–and also that they would be successful at it.
“We’ve seen the number of mass casualty attacks continually rise year after year in the United States,” Mike Jensen of START told the American Homefront Project in January. It appears the lessons of attacks like Oklahoma City and so many others are lost on this administration. Just last month, Brandon Russell, a former National Guardsman and white supremacist group leader, was found guilty of plotting to sabotage Baltimore’s electrical grid. Two former Marines were sentenced in July for a neo-Nazi plot to attack the electric grid in the northwestern U.S., and attempted to build an arsenal of arms and explosives to do so (for a list of dozens of similar recent cases, see GPAHE’s congressional testimony on military extremism).
Violence Prevention Programs Dismantled
Tens of millions of dollars slated for violence prevention have been cut or are frozen pending review as Musk’s DOGE makes its way through the national security sector. DOGE’s actions reportedly show that the government’s backing of prevention work on urgent threats to our people and our national security is at an end.
The projects addressing prevention issues are diffuse, but the government’s central clearinghouse for this work was in DHS’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3). The office houses a grant program that since 2020 has awarded nearly $90 million to community groups and law enforcement agencies working at the local level to prevent terrorism and targeted violence such as mass shootings. Now the office is imploding. Nearly 20 percent of its workforce was cut through the dismissal of probationary employees on March 3. CP3 Director Bill Braniff, an Army veteran who recently and fiercely defended the office’s achievements in LinkedIn posts, resigned the same night. “It is a small act of quiet protest, and an act of immense respect I have for them and for our team,” Braniff wrote in a departing message to staff that was obtained by ProPublica. In the note, he called the employees “wrongfully terminated.”
Among the projects at risk is a national compilation of threats to public officials, including assassination attempts against Trump; research on the violent misogyny that floods social media platforms; and a long-term study of far-right extremists who are attempting to disengage from hate movements. The studies are underway at research centers and university labs that, in some cases, are funded almost entirely by Homeland Security. One federal grant recipient was ordered this week to cease work on projects including a database used by law enforcement agencies to assess threats. It seems impossible for scholars to continue tracking the threat without running afoul of the administration’s ban on terms related to race and racism, part of Trump’s DEI purge.
Another effort with frozen funds is FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which is meant to provide protection to faith communities and has helped Jewish institutions across the country install security cameras, train staff, and add protective barriers. DHS also cut around $20 million for more than two dozen programs from another wing of DHS, including efforts aimed at stopping terrorist attacks and school shooters.
DOGE Congressional Subcommittee Going After “Antifa,” Tesla Vandals
Meanwhile far-right members of Congress have piled on, calling for domestic terrorism investigations of leftist movements. Last month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a bill that would designate antifa, which is not an organization by the FBI’s own assessment, as a domestic terrorist group. Republican House DOGE subcommittee members also sent a letter to the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate and potentially prosecute attacks targeting Elon Musk and Tesla properties as “domestic terrorism.”
“Attacks on Tesla must be investigated as domestic terrorism!” Greene posted on X, sharing a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “Today, my @DOGEcommittee colleagues and I sent a letter to @AGPamBondi and @FBIDirectorKash asking for an investigation into the wave of organized attacks targeting @elonmusk, @Tesla, and the @DOGE effort.” Greene’s letter was co-signed by all eight Republican members on the DOGE subcommittee, but none of the six democratic members signed on.
These changes will devastate efforts to counter and investigate the movements that are most connected to domestic terrorism and political violence in the U.S., meaning white supremacists and other far-right extremists. These moves by the Trump administration will leave Americans less safe when the next domestic terrorist attack, sadly and inevitably, occurs.
