FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Homeland Security is targeting conservative Americans and must answer for funding a college program that has explicitly lumped the Republican Party, as well as Christian and conservative groups, into the same category as Nazis, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., wrote in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.
Biggs, along with 15 House Republican co-signatories, sent the letter to Mayorkas on Friday, asking him to stop the alleged DHS targeting of political opponents of the Biden administration.
“Under your leadership, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly targeted conservative Americans to legally express their First Amendment rights,” the letter states. “The Constitution prohibits the federal government from suppressing the free speech of Americans, by any means, including using third parties to engage in unconstitutional attacks on free speech. But this illegal federal regime of regulation of speech remains the norm under the Biden administration.”
Biggs highlights a DHS grant program that he says provides funding to organizations that “openly demonize and equate mainstream conservatism with domestic terrorism,” adding that “it’s Mayorkas’ duty to stop this politically non-Northern orientation of ideas -American”.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, left, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., right. (JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
THE UNIVERSITY PROGRAM THAT LINKS CHRISTIANS, REPUBLICANS WITH NAZIS DHS FUNDS WITH “ANTI-TERROR” INITIATIVE
The letter refers to a story first published by Fox News Digital in May showing how DHS is doling out taxpayer dollars through an anti-terrorism grant initiative to a university program whose work has been explicitly targeted to the right. American politics.
The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, obtained documents through Freedom of Information Act requests highlighting the controversial recipients of the DHS’s Terrorism and Violence Prevention Grant Program (TVTP). The government initiative provides funds to various public, private and nonprofit institutions, such as universities and county governments, “to establish or enhance capabilities to prevent targeted violence and terrorism.” Grant applicants must be based in the US and implement a US-based program.
The Biden administration has awarded 80 grants through the TVTP totaling just under $40 million. DHS named one of its TVTP goals as “online media literacy and critical thinking initiatives,” which many grantees listed as the mission of their projects.
One of the grantees was the University of Dayton PREVENTS-OH programthat DHS awarded $352,109 to “leverage the expertise of University of Dayton faculty” to fight “domestic violence extremism and hate movements.”
College grant application submitted to DHS linked in a footnote to a controversial Dayton conference where an academic researcher presented a chart titled “Pyramid of Far Right Radicalization”.
The “Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization,” as presented at the University of Dayton’s 2021 “Extremism, Rhetoric, and Democratic Precarity” seminar. (Screenshot from the University of Dayton YouTube channel)
Among the organizations and movements shown in the pyramid were the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, Fox News, Breitbart News, the National Rifle Association, PragerUniversity, Tea Party Patriots, the Make America Great Again movement ( MAGA), the pro-police movement Blue Lives Matter and the Christian Radio Broadcasting Network.
The pyramid also included hate groups such as The Base, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group, and the Daily Stormer, a pro-Nazi publication, which apparently compared them to mainstream organizations like the GOP.
DHS funded a college program that has explicitly grouped Republican and conservative groups with Nazis. (Getty Images/AP)
In 2021, the University of Dayton held a seminar called “Extremism, rhetoric and democratic precariousness“, with several extremism experts comparing mainstream conservatives to genocidal extremists.
The university’s grant application to DHS linked to video of the conference, describing it as indicative of the university’s work “to assess regional needs and capabilities for the prevention of violent extremism” and directing government assessors to see it for more information.
A speaker at the conference presented the “Pyramid of Far Right Radicalization.” Another compared the Trump administration to Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that killed 1.5 to 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. A third presenter compared Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposing a volunteer civilian military force to assist the National Guard in emergencies such as hurricanes with the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.
Another speaker at the event was a DHS official who appeared virtually in his official capacity to make a brief presentation.
“Extremism, Rhetoric and Democratic Precarity” was not the only controversial conference held by the University of Dayton. In a separate seminar entitled “White Nationalism Workshop”, the same researcher who presented the “Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization” spoke and explained how “anti-fascists” could “de-platform” alleged fascists — comparing them to the mainstream political right — by monitoring them, infiltrating and confronting them physically.
National Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas looks on during a briefing as part of the High Level Security Dialogue at the SRE building on October 8, 2021 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
DHS WARNS OF ‘AMBORN WITH GRADE THREAT’ IN US AMID ‘POLITICAL TENSIONS’
At the same event, another teacher showed footage of anti-COVID lockdown and anti-vaccine mandate protesters, suggesting they were infiltrated by hate groups.
In order to promote its work in the city of Dayton, PREVENTS-OH sent the city an image, called Anti-Rights Movements and Democratic Regression, featuring a cartoon of a Second Amendment supporter over the words “Why we have a radicalized society?”
Both DHS and the University of Dayton noted that the controversial conferences were separate and predated DHS awarding money to PREVENTS-OH, adding that they do not target or discriminate against groups that express their constitutional rights. Neither addressed the school’s inclusion of the seminars in its grant application, which DHS reviewed.
“President Biden’s authoritarian Department of Homeland Security is weaponizing limited taxpayer dollars and department resources to crush conservatives across America,” Biggs told Fox News Digital. “This department seems to be taking cues straight from George Orwell’s 1984, in which a police state controls all speech and beats up all dissidents. America must never become that society.”
“Secretary Mayorkas must fully answer my questions and justify why a multibillion-dollar counterterrorism program designed to prevent the next Osama Bin Laden is being used to prey on innocent conservatives,” the congressman added .
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pauses during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, Thursday, April 28, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
BIDEN’S WAR ON ‘MISINFORMATION’ IS ACCEPTED WITH GOP ACCUSES OFFICIALS OF PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE TRUTH
Biggs’ letter raises 16 questions about TVTP grants and DHS’s approach to extremism and terrorism, asking for answers by June 11.
The letter also asks DHS to grant seminars led by “extremists” instead of targeting groups that “promote and amplify civil unrest and racial violence such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter.”
The document adds that the Biden administration should not award grants related to countering domestic radicalization to organizations and municipalities that “lack the ability to discern between discourse and legitimate policy decisions with which they disagree agreement and domestic terrorism”.
In the letter, Biggs calls it “particularly troubling” that TVTP grants were very much on the radar of DHS leadership. Mayorkas called the program a “high priority” in a document obtained by the Media Research Center.
“Secretary Mayorkas thanked the recipients for their work and assured all attendees that this program is a priority for the department and that the work being done is of the utmost importance,” wrote the Department of Management ‘Maryland emergencies in your notes and documentation. of the 2022 TVTP Scholarship Symposium, which Mayorkas hosted.
The letter comes amid calls for Mayorkas to resign over his handling of the ongoing crisis on the country’s southern border. Several Republican legislators have promoted the idea of impeaching him for allegedly neglecting his duties.
Biggs and the co-signatories of his letter weren’t the only ones to take notice of Fox News Digital’s reporting on the DHS grant to the University of Dayton.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., speaks at a news conference on the debt limit and the Freedom Caucus’ plan for spending cuts at the U.S. Capitol on March 28, 2023 in Washington, DC (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also highlighted the story on his podcast earlier this week.
“It’s the latest example of the Biden administration being more than happy to arm the federal government to use the powers of the federal government to target you,” Cruz said. “They engage in propaganda, and the propaganda says that anyone in the center is a terrorist, anyone in the center is a Nazi, anyone in the center is a Klansman. It’s the vicious lie that the radical left often pushes… why is the government funding this? They are funding this because they want to fuel the fire that attacks those they see as enemies of the regime.”
Cruz called out what he described as a double standard by many US academics and officials targeting conservatives, but not looking further at radical groups like Antifa. He added that both the House and Senate should hold hearings on the issue to examine whether taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly on counter-extremism programs.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
Aaron Kliegman is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.
