Combating Domestic Violent Extremism Is No Longer a FEMA Priority

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to direct states and tribes to immediately stop certain activities intended to combat domestic violent extremism, according to a draft of an information bulletin obtained by WIRED. These changes, according to a separate document also obtained by WIRED, appear to have been suggested following a meeting between FEMA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) where the two agencies essentially discussed how to legally stop funding dedicated to combating domestic extremism.

The move comes as President Donald Trump’s administration cuts funding and support across multiple parts of the government for domestic extremism initiatives.

The unreleased bulletin, which is undated and is addressed to a variety of state and tribal nation points of contact, orders grant recipients to immediately “pause and review” all activities using FEMA grants to address domestic violent extremism. Some of these activities, the bulletin states, should be “repurposed” in order to continue to receive funding. Activities exclusively dedicated to combating domestic violent extremism in the US—including running public awareness campaigns, hosting forums or trainings on the “identification or prevention” of domestic violent extremism, and funding organizations whose exclusive focus is on this issue—would no longer longer permitted to be funded by FEMA grants.

“All [domestic violent extremism] elements must be fully removed for the project to proceed,” the draft bulletin states. The review of the grants is intended to ensure “federal grant funds support activities aligned with current administration priorities.”

The FEMA bulletin seen by WIRED defines domestic violent extremism as “violent acts committed by domestic violent extremists, or individuals based and operating primarily in the United States without direction or inspiration from a foreign terrorist group or other foreign power and who seeks to further political or social goals wholly or in part through unlawful acts of force or violence.” That definition is footnoted with an unclassified report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2021, which found that “domestic violent extremists who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” The report explicitly references “narratives of fraud in the recent general election … the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence” as key drivers of this threat.

“The Biden administration experienced clear instances of mission creep, notably within FEMA’s grant initiatives,” says Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. “These programs are part of an ongoing assessment of grant programming and usage of funds to ensure proper use of taxpayer dollars.”

OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Domestic violent extremism attacks in recent years have focused increasingly on power grids and other infrastructure. The Department of Energy logged 185 physical and cyber attacks on power grids in 2023 alone, up from just 96 in 2020. In February, the founder of a neo-Nazi group was convicted of plotting to attack electric grids in “furtherance of [his] racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist beliefs,” according to the Justice Department. In July, the leader of anti-government extremist group Veterans on Patrol told WIRED that an attack on a weather radar system was part of a campaign from that group, which erroneously assumed that the government had used weather modification to create a “weather weapon” that caused this summer’s floods in Texas.

Still, over the past six months, government work intended to track, analyze, understand, and combat domestic violent extremism has faced significant cuts. The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, a program housed within DHS designed to prevent domestic violent extremism within the US, has lost 20 percent of its staff since the beginning of the year. It is currently being led by a 22-year-old former intern from the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing organization that authored Project 2025, the document used as a policy blueprint by the Trump administration for much of this year. In July, DHS announced it would axe “wasteful, misdirected” grants run by the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, terminating funding for “LBGTQ+ propaganda” and “biased anti-extremism initiatives.”

Initiatives and offices focused on domestic violent extremism within the FBI and the State Department have also been scaled back, while style guides sent to State Department employees earlier this year largely banned terminology associated with extremism and white supremacy. In early March, the Department of Defense gutted a program in place since 2008 that funded social science research into defense priorities.

FEMA’s decision to cut related funding “fits into a broader trend of this administration downplaying the threat from white supremacy and from far-right extremism,” says Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

“What you had before the election was a years-long effort from the outside, from Kash Patel and Laura Loomer, to spread conspiracies about the threat from the far left to downplay the threat from the far right,” he says. “Now these people have their hands on the levers of power, and they’re the ones who decide what the FBI investigates, who [the Department of Justice] prosecutes.”