The Biden administration plans to expand grants from the Department of Homeland Security to study and try to prevent domestic violent extremism, two DHS officials said, as part of a departmentwide effort to make combating the kind of violence seen last month at the U.S. Capitol “a top priority.”
“We have successfully advocated for additional funds. We intend to keep building on preventing domestic terrorism departmentwide,” one of the officials said.
The new grants would expand on those funded at the end of the Trump administration by DHS’ Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, which included over $500,000 for a project at American University that studies the “growing threat of violent white supremacist extremist disinformation.” The program is aimed at preventing spread of the disinformation through what researchers call “attitudinal inoculation.”