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On a frigid winter morning in 2022, a stranger knocked on the door of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, throughout Shabbat service.
Quickly after he was invited in for tea, the customer pulled out a pistol and demanded the discharge of an al-Qaida-linked detainee from a close-by federal jail, seizing as hostages a rabbi and three worshipers. The standoff lasted 10 hours till the rabbi, drawing on intensive safety coaching, hurled a chair on the assailant. The hostages escaped.
“We’re alive as we speak due to that schooling,” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker mentioned after the assault.
The averted tragedy at Congregation Beth Israel is cited as a hit story for the largely unseen prevention work federal authorities have relied on for years within the battle to cease terrorist assaults and mass shootings. The federal government weaves collectively partnerships with tutorial researchers and group teams throughout the nation as a part of a method for addressing violent extremism as a public well being concern.
A specialised intervention crew at Boston Kids’s Hospital treats younger sufferers — some referred by the FBI — who present indicators of disturbing, violent conduct. Eradicate Hate, a nationwide prevention umbrella group, says one in every of its trainees helped thwart a faculty taking pictures in California final 12 months by reporting a gun in a fellow pupil’s backpack. In different packages, counselors information neo-Nazis out of the white-power motion or assist households of Islamist extremists undo the results of violent propaganda.
The throughline for this work is federal funding — a reliance on grants which are quickly disappearing because the Trump administration guts billions in spending.
Tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} slated for violence prevention have been minimize or are frozen pending overview as President Donald Trump’s Division of Authorities Effectivity steamrolls the nationwide safety sector. Barring motion from Congress or the courts, counterterrorism professionals say, the White Home seems poised to finish the federal government’s backing of prevention work on pressing threats.
“That is the federal government getting out of the terrorism enterprise,” mentioned one federal grant recipient who was ordered this week to stop work on tasks together with a database utilized by legislation enforcement companies to evaluate threats.
This account is drawn from interviews with practically two dozen present and former nationwide safety personnel, federally funded researchers and nonprofit grant recipients. Besides in just a few instances, they spoke on situation of anonymity for concern of retaliation from the Trump administration.
Dozens of educational and nonprofit packages that depend on grants from the Division of Homeland Safety, the Justice Division and different companies are in disaster mode, mirroring the uncertainty of different elements of the federal government amid Trump’s seismic reorganization.
“We’re on a precipice,” mentioned the chief of a big nonprofit that has obtained a number of federal grants and labored with Democratic and Republican administrations on prevention campaigns.
The Division of Justice has collected details about FBI staff who labored on instances associated to the Capitol riot as a part of a purge of FBI personnel, which can be forcing out officers with terrorism experience.
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Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg through Getty Photographs
Program leaders describe a chilling new working setting. Students of white supremacist violence — which the FBI for years has described as a predominant driver of home terrorism — marvel how they’ll be capable to proceed monitoring the menace with out operating afoul of the administration’s ban on phrases associated to race and racism.
The coaching the rabbi credit with saving his Texas synagogue in 2022 got here from a broader group initiative whose federal funding is in limbo. One imperiled effort, FEMA’s Nonprofit Safety Grant Program, has helped Jewish establishments throughout the nation set up safety cameras, prepare employees and add protecting limitations, in keeping with the nonprofit Safe Group Community, which provides safety recommendation and screens threats to Jewish communities nationwide.
In July 2023, access-control doorways acquired by means of the grant program prevented a gunman from coming into Margolin Hebrew Academy in Memphis. In 2021, when gunfire struck the Jewish Household Service workplaces in Denver, grant-funded protecting window movie stopped bullets from penetrating the constructing.
“These usually are not hypothetical eventualities, they’re actual examples of how NSGP funds stop accidents and deaths,” Michael Masters, director of the Safe Group Community, wrote this month in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Publish calling for continued funding of this system.
What We’re Watching
Throughout Donald Trump’s second presidency, ProPublica will concentrate on the areas most in want of scrutiny. Listed below are a number of the points our reporters shall be watching — and tips on how to get in contact with them securely.
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Now the safety grants program has been shelved as authorities and Jewish teams warn of rising antisemitism. The beneficiant studying, one Jewish program chief mentioned, is that the funds have been inadvertently swept up in DOGE cuts. Trump has been a vocal supporter of Jewish teams and, as one in every of his first acts in workplace, signed an government order promising to sort out antisemitism.
Nonetheless, the freeze on grants for synagogue protections has revived discuss of discovering new, extra impartial funding streams.
All through Jewish historical past, this system director mentioned, “we’ve discovered you want a Plan B.”
The White Home didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“Tsunami” of Cuts
For greater than 20 years, the federal authorities has invested tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in prevention work and tutorial analysis with the purpose of intervening within the essential window generally known as “left of increase” — earlier than an assault happens.
The tasks are diffuse, unfold throughout a number of companies, however the authorities’s central clearinghouse is at Homeland Safety within the Middle for Prevention Packages and Partnerships, usually known as CP3. The workplace homes a grant program that since 2020 has awarded practically $90 million to group teams and legislation enforcement companies working on the native degree to stop terrorism and focused violence reminiscent of mass shootings.
As of late, CP3 is imploding. Almost 20% of its workforce was minimize by means of the dismissal of probationary staff March 3. CP3 Director Invoice Braniff, an Military veteran who had fiercely defended the workplace’s achievements in LinkedIn posts in latest weeks, resigned the identical night time.
“It’s a small act of quiet protest, and an act of immense respect I’ve for them and for our crew,” Braniff wrote in a departing message to employees that was obtained by ProPublica. Within the be aware, he known as the staff “wrongfully terminated.”
A few of this 12 months’s CP3 grant recipients say they don’t know whether or not their funding will proceed. One awardee mentioned the crew is taking a look at nightmare eventualities of shedding employees and paring operations to the bone.
“Everyone’s making an attempt to outlive,” the grantee mentioned. “It looks like it is a tsunami and also you don’t know the way it’s going to hit you.”
Present and former DHS officers say they don’t anticipate the prevention mission to proceed in any significant means, signaling the tip to an effort that had endured by means of early missteps and criticism from the left and proper.
The prevention mission developed from the post-9/11 progress of a discipline generally known as countering violent extremism, or CVE. In early CVE efforts, critical students of militant actions jostled for funding alongside pseudo-scientists claiming to have found predictors of radicalization. CVE outcomes sometimes weren’t measurable, permitting for inflated guarantees of success — “snake oil,” as one researcher put it.
Worse, some CVE packages billed as group partnerships to stop extremism backfired and led to distrust that persists as we speak. Muslim advocacy teams have been incensed by the federal government’s concentrating on of their communities for deradicalization packages, blaming CVE for stigmatizing law-abiding households and contributing to anti-Muslim hostility. Among the many most influential Muslim advocacy teams, it’s nonetheless taboo to just accept funding from Homeland Safety.
Defenders of CP3, which launched in 2021 from an earlier incarnation, insist that the previous ways based mostly on profiling are gone. Additionally they say there at the moment are extra stringent metrics to gauge effectiveness. CP3’s 2024 report back to Congress listed greater than 1,000 interventions since 2020, instances the place prevention staff stepped in with providers to dissuade people from violence.
The probationary staff who have been dismissed this month represented the way forward for CP3’s public well being method to curbing violence, say present and former DHS officers. They have been terminated by e mail in boilerplate language about poor efficiency, a element that infuriated colleagues who seen them as achieved social staff and public well being professionals.
There have been no consultations with administration officers or DOGE — simply the ax, mentioned one DHS supply with information of the CP3 cuts. Promised exemptions for nationwide safety personnel apparently didn’t apply as Trump’s Homeland Safety agenda shrinks to a single challenge.
“The vibe is: use DHS to go after migrants, immigrants. That’s the vibe, that’s the solely vibe, there isn’t any different vibe,” the supply mentioned. “It’s wild — it’s as if the remainder of the division doesn’t exist.”
This week, with scant warning, Homeland Safety minimize round $20 million for greater than two dozen packages from one other wing of DHS, together with efforts aimed toward stopping terrorist assaults and faculty shooters.
A Homeland Safety spokesperson confirmed “sweeping cuts and reforms” aimed toward eliminating waste however didn’t handle questions on particular packages. DHS “stays targeted on supporting legislation enforcement and public security by means of funding, coaching, elevated public consciousness, and partnerships,” the assertion mentioned.
One grant recipient mentioned they have been advised by a Homeland Safety liaison that focused packages have been positioned in locations named on a Fox Information listing of “sanctuary states” which have resisted or refused cooperation with the federal government’s deportation marketing campaign. The grantee’s mission was given lower than an hour to submit excellent bills earlier than the shutdown.
The orders have been so sudden that even some officers throughout the authorities had bother arising with language to justify the termination notices. They mentioned they got no rationalization for the way the focused packages have been in violation of the president’s government orders.
“I simply don’t imagine that is in any means authorized,” mentioned one official with information of the cuts.
Members of the far-right group the Proud Boys rally outdoors the U.S. Capitol in 2025. In one of many first acts of his second time period, President Donald Trump pardoned practically 1,600 individuals convicted of crimes associated to the 2021 assault on the Capitol and commuted the sentences of a handful of others, together with former Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio, left.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photographs
Menace Analysis in Limbo
Cuts are reshaping authorities throughout the board, however maybe nowhere extra jarringly than within the counterterrorism equipment. The administration began dismantling it when the president granted clemency to almost 1,600 defendants charged in reference to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The pardons overturned what the Justice Division had celebrated as a watershed victory within the battle in opposition to home terrorism.
Senior FBI officers with terrorism experience have left or are being pressured out within the purge of personnel concerned within the Jan. 6 investigation. In different instances, brokers working terrorism instances have been moved to Homeland Safety to assist with Trump’s mass deportation effort, a useful resource shift that runs counter to the federal government’s personal menace assessments exhibiting homegrown militants because the extra pressing precedence. The Justice Division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
With out analysis backing up the enforcement arm of counterterrorism, analysts and officers say, the federal government lacks the capability to guage quickly evolving homegrown threats.
Researchers are getting whiplash as grant {dollars} are frozen and unfrozen. Even when they win short-term reduction, the prospect of getting new federal funding within the subsequent 4 years is minimal. They described strain to self-censor or tailor analysis narrowly to MAGA pursuits in far-left extremism and Islamist militants.
“What occurs while you’re self-silencing? What occurs if individuals simply cease pondering they need to suggest one thing as a result of it’s ‘too dangerous?’” mentioned one extremism scholar who has suggested senior officers and obtained federal funding. “Plenty of concepts that could possibly be used to stop all types of social harms, together with terrorism, might get tossed.”
Among the many tasks in danger is a nationwide compilation of threats to public officers, together with assassination makes an attempt in opposition to Trump; analysis on the violent misogyny that floods social media platforms; a long-term examine of far-right extremists who’re trying to disengage from hate actions. The research are underway at analysis facilities and college labs that, in some instances, are funded virtually solely by Homeland Safety. A stop-work order might disrupt delicate tasks midstream or take away findings from public view.
“There are each nationwide safety and public security implications for not persevering with to review these very sophisticated issues,” mentioned Pete Simi, a criminologist at Chapman College in California who has federally funded tasks that could possibly be minimize.
One mission by no means bought off the bottom earlier than work was suspended.
Six months in the past, the Nationwide Institute of Justice, the analysis arm of the Justice Division, introduced the Home Radicalization and Violent Extremism Analysis Middle of Excellence as a brand new hub for “understanding the phenomenon” of extremist violence.
Work was scheduled to start out in January. The web site has since disappeared and the way forward for the middle is in limbo.
Different prevention initiatives in jeopardy on the Justice Division embody grant packages associated to hate crimes coaching, which has been in demand with latest unrest on school campuses. Within the first weeks of the Trump administration, grant recipients heard a freeze was coming and rushed to withdraw remaining funds. Grant officers instructed work ought to stop, too, till directives come from the brand new management.
Anne Speckhard, a researcher who has interviewed dozens of militants and works intently with federal counterterrorism companies, pushed again. She had round 200 individuals signed up for a coaching that was scheduled for days after the primary funding freeze. Slides for the presentation had been authorized, however Speckhard mentioned she wasn’t getting clear solutions from the grant workplace about tips on how to proceed. She determined to go for it.
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“I believe the anticipated response was, ‘You’ll simply cease working, and also you’ll wait and see,’ and that’s not me,” mentioned Speckhard, whose Worldwide Middle for the Examine of Violent Extremism receives U.S. funding together with backing from Qatar and personal donations.
Because the digital coaching started, Speckhard and her crew addressed the murkiness of the Justice Division’s help in a second that drew laughter from the group of legislation enforcement officers and college directors.
“We mentioned, ‘We expect it is a DOJ-sponsored coaching, and we wish to thank them for his or her sponsorship,’” Speckhard mentioned. “‘However we’re undecided.’”
