Report: Trump administration is turning FEMA toward domestic terrorism enforcement
Key Takeaways
- •Ken Klippenstein reported that FEMA is using grant money to help states build capacity for pre-crime operations tied to organized political violence.
- •The agency bulletin cited by Klippenstein says the program could fund training to identify social media-based indicators and monitor online behaviors and digital footprints.
- •The bulletin also describes teams for managing people whose behavior is viewed as potentially leading to domestic terrorism.
- •The effort is connected to President Trump’s executive order aimed at stopping crimes before they occur.
- •Klippenstein argued that the approach raises civil liberties concerns because it relies on interpreting indicators as signs of crimes that may never happen.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Donald Trump is preparing to engage in counterterrorism work, according to a political analyst.
Ken Klippenstein reported that FEMA, which is primarily known for disaster preparation and aid, “is shelling out grant money to state and local authorities to build up capacity to carry out pre-crime operations against ‘organized political violence,’” according to a recent agency bulletin.
The effort is tied to Trump’s executive order aimed at stopping crimes before they occur, a concept that was popularized to a dystopian extreme in the 2002 science fiction film Minority Report.
According to the bulletin cited by Klippenstein, the “pre-crime” operations will include encouraging states to pay for “training to spot ‘social media-based indicators,’ analysts to monitor ‘online behaviors and digital footprints,’ and teams for ‘managing persons of concern whose behavior indicates a potential trajectory toward domestic terrorism.’” That framing suggests FEMA’s grant dollars could be used not just for emergency response, but for broader state and local monitoring capacity at a time when federal agencies are being pushed to take a more preventative posture toward domestic threats.
Klippenstein said the bulletin places emphasis on “indicators,” which he described as things a person said or did that an officer has been trained to interpret as a sign of a crime that has not happened and may never happen. He called it “vibes-based law enforcement,” with the “imprimatur of national security respectability,” and warned that it poses a serious threat to civil liberties.
FEMA under the Trump administration has also faced other problems. A procurement rule enacted by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delayed disaster responses in several emergencies, including the floods in Central Texas. In addition, the agency’s third-in-command was forced out after he began ranting that God had teleported him to a Waffle House. The added scrutiny matters because FEMA is a central disaster-relief agency, and changes to its mandate or internal capacity can affect how quickly it responds when emergencies hit, even as the administration expands its security-focused priorities.