Looks like Trump got exactly what he wished for. L
Post# of 123686
I'm growing to like the phrase 'online extremists'.
Some far-right militia groups, including in Washington state and Idaho, have canceled planned events.
Amid the escalating tension, state and local efforts are also being hampered by the consequences of the Trump Administration’s decision to gut federal programs and grants meant to combat far-right extremism, according to two former officials who worked on them. At the Department of Homeland Security, an Obama-era task force focused on domestic extremism was slowly dismantled over the course of the Trump Administration, which redirected resources to combat Islamist terrorism.
“This profound dip and reduction in staffing and funding happened at a time when the homegrown threat was expanding,” says Ryan Greer, a former DHS official who now works on extremism issues for the Anti-Defamation League. “The dismantling of that office over several years overlapped with the years of attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway and El Paso…tied to these movements we’ve seen commit violence over the last week.”
Despite the recent push to focus federal resources on domestic extremism, the lost time will have a significant impact for years to come. Elizabeth Neumann, who resigned from leading the DHS office that oversees responses to violent extremism last April, says the U.S. needs to force local officials and law enforcement to rethink how they assess credible threats that emerge in the form of political vitriol, conspiracy theorists and online extremists.