Photo courtesy of Cindy Hyde-Smith
President Trump has delivered on his promise to dismantle the administrative state by cutting controversial Department of Homeland Security programs that were weaponized against American families, Christians, and patriots. The elimination of the $18 million Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program has sparked outrage from Democrats and mainstream media, but conservatives are celebrating a long-overdue end to government surveillance and political persecution.
While supporters of the Biden-era DHS programs claimed they helped prevent terrorism, there is no hard evidence to support this. The Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) initiative claimed success by tracking outputs like the number of grants awarded, trainings held, and individuals reached, but not actual outcomes like terrorist plots disrupted. Former program director Bill Braniff admitted he was “99% sure” the programs prevented attacks, but offered no data to back it up.
DHS evaluations focused on community engagement and behavioral threat assessments, not on proving that violence was averted. Without measurable results, Trumpp administration officials argue that these programs became expensive exercises in bureaucracy and political messaging rather than effective tools for national security.
The most damning evidence of political weaponization came from documents revealing how Biden’s DHS used these programs to target mainstream conservative groups. Ohio’s University of Dayton received a $352,109 grant to create a “Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization” that explicitly lumped The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, the National Rifle Association, and the Republican National Committee into the same category as neo-Nazis and terrorist organizations. As Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “President Biden’s authoritarian Department of Homeland Security is weaponizing limited taxpayer money and department resources to crush conservatives in America.”
Perhaps most egregiously, these programs were used to target American parents who dared to speak up at school board meetings. The Biden administration opened FBI investigations into fathers who opposed mask mandates, labeling one parent as someone who “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” simply for “rails against the government” and owning firearms. House Judiciary Committee investigations found “no legitimate basis” for using law enforcement and counterterrorism resources against parents exercising their First Amendment rights. Yet the Biden administration persisted in treating concerned mothers and fathers as potential terrorists.
DHS terrorism bulletins during the Biden years painted Americans with legitimate concerns as dangerous extremists. Citizens who questioned COVID-19 vaccine mandates, mask requirements for children, election integrity and voting procedures, or government overreach during lockdowns all found themselves potentially classified as “domestic violent extremists” under these programs.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) blasted the weaponization, writing: “Your Department has consistently weaponized the federal government to attack conservatives using taxpayer dollars, first by colluding with private social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints and now by funding private actors to create affirmative propaganda to ‘counter’ conservatives.”
Investigations revealed that DHS awarded a $700,000 grant to the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab to create “counter-propaganda” targeting conservative viewpoints. Under the guise of “media literacy,” these programs funded left-wing activists to write blog posts criticizing President Trump and conservative figures.
The Media Research Center’s explosive report “Exposed” documented how the Biden administration awarded 80 grants totaling nearly $40 million to organizations that systematically targeted “the entire spectrum of the political right and Christians through ‘media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives.’”
These programs exemplified everything wrong with the administrative state that conservatives have fought against for decades. Unelected bureaucrats in DHS used taxpayer funds to fund partisan propaganda against half the country, surveil and intimidate law-abiding Americans, weaponize federal law enforcement against political opponents, and undermine constitutional rights under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
As President Trump’s executive order on “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” makes clear, the previous administration “engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.”
The real threats these programs addressed were not Islamic terrorists or foreign adversaries, but American citizens exercising their constitutional rights. When “anti-terrorism” programs spend more time investigating parents at school board meetings than actual terrorist threats, they’ve lost their way entirely.
With domestic terrorism investigations having “more than doubled since 2020” according to the FBI, this likely reflects the Biden administration’s political weaponization of law enforcement against conservatives rather than any genuine increase in terrorist threats. The elimination of the $18 million Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program will not be missed by Americans who value constitutional rights. The swamp is finally being drained, one corrupt program at a time, and protections for Americans who dare to oppose the liberal narrative are being restored.
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