Lost in the criticism of Trump’s “all sides” remark from all parts of the political spectrum yesterday is the far more damning context of his actions.
In May of this year, it was reported that the Trump administration had frozen $10 million in grants to community-based counter-extremism programs designed to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, especially lone-wolf attacks, by far-right and Islamist extremists. (Life After Hate, one of the programs described in the article, ultimately had their grant pulled).
If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump tried to eliminate the far-right counter-extremism program of the DHS entirely earlier in the year by replacing the Countering Violent Extremism division with a “Countering Islamist Extremism” program targeting only Muslims. This program includes both community programs and social media messaging to discourage radicalization.
But wait, it gets worse. The Trump administration wants to cut a further half-billion dollars from counter-terrorism programs in their budget proposal. These cuts include cuts to emergency response teams at airports and even further cuts to community counter-terrorism programs. Instead of counter-terrorism, his budget calls for 1.6 billion dollars for...the wall. Yes, you did the math right. Perhaps there are some programs that could use some trimming, but under Trump the budget will still inflate while undeniably doing less to keep us safe.
So let’s not forget, Trump isn’t just a dog-whistling racist with multiple Nazi sympathizers in his administration, he is enabling far-right and possibly even Islamist terrorist attacks by neutering programs designed to find potential terrorists and intervene before they hurt others. Don’t let the Republican congress think we didn’t notice when they work on their budget later this year.