When I saw this headline and read the story about how a 22-year-old intern is now in charge of a Department of Homeland Security program to prevent terrorism, I smelled a big pile of bovine excrement.
Written by ProPublica–need I say more?–but published by Defense One–we learn that Trump cares so little about defending the Homeland (I hate that term!) that his administration has hired a Gen Z activist to lead the effort to fight terrorists.
What could go wrong?
— Ann Vandersteel™️ (@annvandersteel) June 5, 2025
I know nothing about Thomas Fugate, the intern in question, and had only a vague idea what the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at Homeland Security does, but if you go by ProPublica’s description, you would think that it is all that stands between us and all those terrorists Biden let waltz in through the border blowing the world up.
But of course, ProPublica doesn’t really tell you what the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships actually does, aside from “partner” with people to do really good things for America.
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When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space.
His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.
The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.
Fugate’s appointment is the latest shock for an office that has been decimated since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and began remaking national security to give it a laser focus on immigration.
News of the appointment has trickled out in recent weeks, raising alarm among counterterrorism researchers and nonprofit groups funded by CP3. Several said they turned to LinkedIn for intel on Fugate — an unknown in their field — and were stunned to see a photo of “a college kid” with a flag pin on his lapel posing with a sharply arched eyebrow. No threat prevention experience is listed in his employment history.
Now I don’t consider myself a reporter, even though I am a “journalist,” because I write about things in the news. You might say that I am a polemicist, I suppose.
But I know a thing or two about distinguishing fantasy from reality, and I put all that fancy education I got to work and did a bit of digging. I can’t say that I am an instant expert on what Homeland Security does, but it didn’t take five minutes to figure out why Homeland Security is slashing the budget and firing people in droves from the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships.
What does it do? Hand out money to nonprofits and locals in localities to do VERY GOOD THINGS like partner with LGBTQIA+/-% groups to ferret out nasty white supremacists who are roaming the land ready to strike at the very heart and soul of our nation.
Here, for instance, is a grant that I found after 2 minutes of poking around:
CenterLink (FL)
Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 5: Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Teams
$350,000
CenterLink will equip 350 LGBTQ community-based organizations (CBOs) with prevention education and security resources to raise awareness of targeted violence and terrorism (TVT) in underserved LGBTQ communities. By engaging our active membership of LGBTQ CBOs nationwide, CenterLink will develop awareness-raising material specific to LGBTQ CBO audiences, facilitate educational sessions and security consultations for LGBTQ CBOs’ staff and volunteers, produce a substantial safety and security resource library tailored to LGBTQ CBOs’ unique needs, develop and disseminate culturally specific outreach materials, and implement capacity-building services that equip LGBTQ CBOs to engage and enhance their local TVT prevention networks. This initiative aims to strengthen the capabilities of LGBTQ CBOs to address and prevent targeted violence, ensuring a safer environment for their communities. Additionally, this project will foster collaboration among LGBTQ organizations, enhancing their ability to share best practices and resources, thereby creating a more unified and effective approach to violence prevention. By leveraging the strengths and networks of LGBTQ CBOs, CenterLink aims to build a robust, resilient community capable of addressing and mitigating threats of violence and terrorism.
What will America look like now, once this line item gets cut?
I can’t tell you why Kristi Noem put Thomas Fulgate in charge, but I genuinely hope that the reason is that she wants to humiliate the people who have been running rampant in this “center.” No doubt something good was done through this office–I am being generous here and assuming this because, well, what do I know? It’s possible, right?
But this smells very much like the claims that cancer research was gutted because we are no longer funding research on how best to inform LGBTQ people about their having cancer. I could tell you how without a grant: compassionately, and with as much information about how to cope with and beat it as possible.
There, I saved a few million.
Dillard University (LA)
Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content
$289,920
Dillard University (DU), Louisiana’s oldest Historically Black College and University (HBCU), proposes the DU Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program: Intersections of Race, Religion, Social Media, and Violence (DU-TVTP), a collaborative project between the DU Center for Racial Justice and the DU National Center for Black-Jewish Relations. The goal is to provide awareness-raising workshops, community engagement sessions, and training to build awareness, skills, and intervention systems based on risk factors, including pre-incident behavioral indicators. The intended audience includes area PreK-12 and DU students, faculty, staff, community leaders, faith leaders, and law enforcement agencies.
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (KY)
Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 4: Youth Resilience Program; Type 5: Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 6: Bystander Training; Type 8: Recidivism Reduction and Reintegration
$787,369
School violence has been a critical issue for western Kentucky for generations, but the Heath High School shooting in Paducah brought new focus to school campuses. The Green River Regional Education Cooperative (GRREC) has played an important role training staff to identify potential threats, defuse situations, and provide ongoing training and assistance. Eleven districts in the GRREC service area face significant violent action threat factors, including high rates of chronic absenteeism, violent incidents, and bullying, with responses not seen in other area districts. GRREC proposes a targeted anti-violence program for these 11 districts and their 45 schools. GRREC’s project, REPELS: Risk Elimination and Prevention for Expanded Layers of Safety, aims to improve the situation through program support, training for administrators, expanding Behavioral and Threat Assessment and Management Teams’ (BTAMs) work, addressing bullying, implementing mentoring, and assisting alternative school administrators in reducing violent incidents and recidivism. When these goals are achieved, the community will support violence prevention, more citizens will receive bystander training, schools will make continuous improvements, and key violence indicators will be reduced.
Whatever you want to call this, it isn’t fighting terrorism and doesn’t belong at Homeland Security. For Defense One to print a story that leaves out the most important information and which is clearly intended to incite hysteria and outrage is grossly irresponsible.
The Independent Production Fund (NY)
Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 4: Youth Resilience Program
$575,999
Strengthening Awareness Against Violent Extremism (SAAVE) will raise awareness about the growing dangers of extremist violence by creating and distributing educational content on the deadly targeted attack at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, NY on May 14, 2022. The project includes development of a PBS documentary film, violence prevention learning modules, and a local screening campaign. SAAVE will explore the long-term impact on Buffalo’s community, track the perpetrator’s pathway to violence, expose extremist online messaging strategies and recruitment, and reveal missed prevention opportunities. The local screening campaign, developed with local educators, faith group leaders, and impacted community members, will engage 3,820 people in Buffalo and Erie County, NY. The documentary will be distributed to 100 PBS stations through the National Educational Television Association, reaching 500,000 viewers. Partnerships with The Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, the Teaching Black History Conference, and other national organizations will enable distribution of the film and modules to 6,000 educators and civic leaders nationwide.
I mean, come on. This is terrorism prevention? Funding a PBS documentary film?
The point is obvious: this is yet another boondoggle intended to spread the cash around to people and groups favored by the left. It has as much to do with preventing terrorism as funding Planned Parenthood or handing over $2 billion to Stacey Abrams, which is none at all.
Yet there it is. It gets dropped out into the world for the sole purpose of infuriating readers. The editors of Defense One only needed to see one fact to know that this story is BS–they didn’t even need to go to the website of the Center to do it.
What is the yearly budget of the Center? It’s right there in the second paragraph: an $18 million grant program is its main gig. Given the many billions we spend on counterterrorism, this tells you that this is not “the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention.”
ProPublica wrote another story on the Center, and here is the lede:
On a frigid winter morning in 2022, a stranger knocked on the door of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during Shabbat service.
Soon after he was invited in for tea, the visitor pulled out a pistol and demanded the release of an al-Qaida-linked detainee from a nearby federal prison, seizing as hostages a rabbi and three worshipers. The standoff lasted 10 hours until the rabbi, drawing on extensive security training, hurled a chair at the assailant. The hostages escaped.
“We are alive today because of that education,” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said after the attack.
The averted tragedy at Congregation Beth Israel is cited as a success story for the largely unseen prevention work federal authorities have relied on for years in the fight to stop terrorist attacks and mass shootings. The government weaves together partnerships with academic researchers and community groups across the country as part of a strategy for addressing violent extremism as a public health concern.
Thank God the Rabbi learned how to throw a chair from Homeland Security.
This is journalism in the 21st century. Sigh.
