FIRST ON FOX: The Department of National Security targets conservative Americans and must be held accountable 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, wrote Rep. Andy Biggs, R- Ariz., 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 The Constitution prohibits the federal government to suppress 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 speech regulation 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 motivated orientation not American.”
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 called one of its TVTP goals “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”.
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.
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, which killed between 1.5 and 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. A third presenter compared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposing a volunteer civilian military force to assist the National Guard in emergencies such as hurricanes in 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.
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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, titled Anti-Rights Movements and Democratic Regression, featuring a cartoon of a Second Amendment supporter above the words “Why do 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 The authoritarian Department of Homeland Security is weaponizing limited taxpayer dollars and department resources to crush conservatives in America,” Biggs told Fox News Digital. “This department looks like it’s taken straight out of the novel of 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,” added the congressman
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 hold 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.
In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, a DHS spokesperson rejected the idea that the department is targeting political opponents to express their views or support others who engage in such discrimination.
“DHS does not profile, target or discriminate against any individual to exercise their constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment,” the spokesperson said. “The Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grants Program has been administered across multiple administrations and provides funding for communities to expand their prevention and intervention activities or address gaps in current prevention capabilities.”
Biggs’ letter comes in the middle calls for the resignation of Mayorkas for his management of the current crisis on the southern border of the country. 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.
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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 right-of-center is a terrorist, anyone right-of-center is a Nazi, anyone in the center is a member of the Klan. It’s the vicious lie that the the radical left often pushes … why is the government funding it? They are funding it because they want to fuel the fire that attacks those they consider 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 matter to consider it taxpayers’ money is being spent responsibly on programs against extremism.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
