14 Aug 2017 6:15 pm
Trump cuts funds to fight anti-right wing violence.
The Trump administration's decision to cut federal funding for groups fighting right-wing violence has come under new scrutiny following his controversial response to violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.
Trump, who faced a firestorm of criticism for not initially calling out white supremacists, the KKK and neo-Nazis on Saturday, explicitly denounced the hate groups by name on Monday and vowed to fight against violent extremism.
But the botched immediate response has some critics questioning the White House's commitment to the issue, and they point to the funding cuts as evidence.
"It's a disgrace that Trump is cutting out Countering Violent Extremism funds for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
We know that the domestic terror threat from them is as great as it from Islamic radicals.
It's a very serious situation," said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"I find the pattern of cutting this money to be typical for the Trump administration's unwillingness to take seriously the threat posed by these people, whether they're doing it intentionally or not."
Even before Charlottesville, critics were slamming the administration for making changes to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant program that is aimed at supporting community efforts to stop violent extremism and recruitment efforts.
In the final days of the Obama administration, $10 million in Countering Violent Extremism funding was awarded to 31 different applicants, including several groups dedicated to combating white supremacy and de-radicalizing neo-Nazis.
But the Trump administration froze funding for the grants while it reconsidered the applications, re-examined the goals of the program and altered how the grant program would measure efficacy.
Reuters reported at the time that the White House was considering retooling the program to focus more on radical Islamic extremism than on white supremacist groups.
Trump also proposed entirely eliminating the program in his 2018 budget request.
When the administration finally released its revised list of grant recipients this summer, funding was pulled for a total of 12 grant recipients - including $400,000 for a group called Life After Hate, which was one of the only original grant recipients focused on fighting far-right extremism.
The nonprofit organization, which was touted by then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson in a press release, is one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.
The Trump administration also cancelled a $900,000 grant that would have gone toward the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to counter jihadist and white supremacist recruiting.