[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


   REVIEWING DHS'S TARGETED VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM PREVENTION GRANT 
                                PROGRAM

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                         OVERSIGHT, MANAGEMENT,
                           AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                                 OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             JUNE 14, 2022
                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-61
                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
       
       
       
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]       
       
                                          

         Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
         
                              ___________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
48-778 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2022          




                     COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

               Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas            John Katko, New York
James R. Langevin, Rhode Island      Michael T. McCaul, Texas
Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey     Clay Higgins, Louisiana
J. Luis Correa, California           Michael Guest, Mississippi
Elissa Slotkin, Michigan             Dan Bishop, North Carolina
Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri            Jefferson Van Drew, New Jersey
Al Green, Texas                      Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
Yvette D. Clarke, New York           Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee
Eric Swalwell, California            Andrew S. Clyde, Georgia
Dina Titus, Nevada                   Carlos A. Gimenez, Florida
Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey    Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Kathleen M. Rice, New York           Peter Meijer, Michigan
Val Butler Demings, Florida          Kat Cammack, Florida
Nanette Diaz Barragan, California    August Pfluger, Texas
Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey          Andrew R. Garbarino, New York
Elaine G. Luria, Virginia            Vacancy
Tom Malinowski, New Jersey
Ritchie Torres, New York
                       Hope Goins, Staff Director
                 Daniel Kroese, Minority Staff Director
                          Natalie Nixon, Clerk
                                 ------                                

       SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT, MANAGEMENT, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                  J. Luis Correa, California, Chairman
Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey     Peter Meijer, Michigan, Ranking 
Dina Titus, Nevada                       Member
Ritchie Torres, New York             Dan Bishop, North Carolina
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi (ex  Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee
    officio)                         John Katko, New York (ex officio)
                Lisa Canini, Subcommittee Staff Director
         Eric Heighberger, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director
                    Aaron Greene, Subcommittee Clerk
                            
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               Statements

The Honorable J. Luis Correa, a Representative in Congress From 
  the State of California, and Chairman, Subcommittee on 
  Oversight, Management, and Accountability:
  Oral Statement.................................................     1
  Prepared Statement.............................................     2
The Honorable Peter Meijer, a Representative in Congress From the 
  State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 
  Oversight, Management, and Accountability:
  Oral Statement.................................................     3
  Prepared Statement.............................................     4
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress 
  From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Committee on 
  Homeland Security:
  Prepared Statement.............................................     5

                               Witnesses

Mr. Kurt Braddock, PhD, Assistant Professor, American University:
  Oral Statement.................................................     7
  Prepared Statement.............................................     8
Ms. Humera Khan, President and Founder, Muflehun:
  Oral Statement.................................................    10
  Prepared Statement.............................................    11
Mr. Paul Kim, Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles County 
  District Attorney's Office:
  Oral Statement.................................................    15
  Prepared Statement.............................................    16
Mr. Chris A. Kelenske, Commander, Michigan State Police:
  Oral Statement.................................................    17
  Prepared Statement.............................................    18

                                Appendix

Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Kurt Braddock...    39
Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Humera Khan.....    39
Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Paul Kim........    40
Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Chris A. 
  Kelenske.......................................................    40

 
   REVIEWING DHS'S TARGETED VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM PREVENTION GRANT 
                                PROGRAM

                              ----------                              


                         Tuesday, June 14, 2022

             U.S. House of Representatives,
                    Committee on Homeland Security,
                    Subcommittee on Oversight, Management, 
                                        and Accountability,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:04 p.m., in 
room 310, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. J. Luis Correa 
[Chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Correa, Titus, Meijer, Bishop, and 
Harshbarger.
    Chairman Correa. The Subcommittee on Oversight, Management, 
and Accountability will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare the 
subcommittee in recess at any point.
    I want to start by thanking everyone for joining us today. 
We are here to discuss a topic that is becoming all too 
familiar to man of us and every part of this Nation, and that 
is domestic terrorism.
    From the hostage situation at a synagogue in Colleyville, 
Texas earlier this year to the racially-motivated shooting at a 
grocery store in Buffalo, New York, to just last month many, 
many attacks have devastated our communities across the 
country. In response, the Secretary of Homeland Security 
recently launched a new urgent review to assess the 
Department's capabilities to address this rising threat. We are 
here today discuss one of those capabilities in depth.
    A key piece of the Department of Homeland Security's 
toolbox has been the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention 
Grant Program, or TVTP. Since 2011 the Department has 
identified the need to partner with local communities to 
address the growing domestic terrorism threat. In 2016 DHS 
launched the Countering Violent Extremism Grant Program, a 
predecessor to current TVTP program. However, weak management 
of that early grant program undermined Homeland Security's 
ability to determine the effectiveness of the funding and 
concerns about inherent anti-Muslim bias in some of that 
program funded projects eroded trust with minority communities. 
It is local community leaders who are in the best position to 
know when and how to engage with a vulnerable individual, and 
ensuring the Department maintains trust with local communities 
has to be a top priority.
    In 2020, DHS relaunched the grant program under the new 
TVTP name, with a new public health-focused approach. Through 
the TVTP grant funding, DHS supports the efforts of local 
partners who seek to raise awareness about the domestic violent 
extremism threat and develop community-based networks to 
provide support to individuals who may be radicalizing to 
violence before a crime is committed.
    Our witnesses today represent four of the organizations 
that have received TVTP grants in either the fiscal year 2020 
or fiscal year 2021 grant cycles. Their projects, executed over 
a period of 2 years, represent the wide variety of violence 
prevention efforts that are funded by this program. DHS has 
sought to support projects that implement promising practices 
as well as those that propose to test new and innovative 
solutions to terrorism prevention.
    These projects fall into a number of categories including: 
Enhancing threat assessment capabilities, challenging on-line 
mobilization narratives, and establishing or enhancing local 
prevention frameworks. The TVTP program has demonstrated some 
promising early results but it is still relatively new and 
although DHS has started the process to ensure an independent 
review of the efficacy of projects funded in the 2020 grant 
cycle, that review is not yet complete. Continued oversight of 
this program will be necessary to ensure that the mistakes of 
the past are not repeated today.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about 
how they have ensured the protection of privacy, civil rights, 
and civil liberties in their work with individuals and local 
communities, as well as how they plan to measure the impact of 
their projects. It is of the utmost importance that we get this 
right and do whatever we can to curb these horrifying attacks 
we must do immediately.
    [The statement of Chairman Correa follows:]
                  Statement of Chairman J. Luis Correa
                             June 14, 2022
    We're here to discuss a topic that has hit all too close to home 
for many of us in recent weeks.
    From the hostage situation at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas 
earlier this year, to the racially-motivated shooting at a grocery 
store in Buffalo, New York just last month, hate-fueled attacks have 
devastated communities across the country. The increasingly frequent 
acts of domestic violent extremism in places we used to think of as 
safe, have us all asking what more we can do.
    The Secretary of Homeland Security recently launched a new urgent 
review to assess the Department's capabilities to address this rising 
threat. We are here today to discuss one of those capabilities in 
depth. A key piece of the Department of Homeland Security's toolbox has 
been the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant 
program.
    Since 2011, the Department has identified the need to partner with 
local communities to address the growing domestic terrorism threat. In 
2016, DHS launched the Countering Violent Extremism grant program, a 
predecessor to the current TVTP program. However, weak management of 
that early grant program undermined DHS's ability to determine the 
effectiveness of the funding and concerns about inherent anti-Muslim 
bias in some of the funded projects eroded trust with minority 
communities.
    It is local community leaders who are in the best position to know 
when and how to engage with a vulnerable individual, and ensuring the 
Department maintains trust with local communities must be a top 
priority. In 2020, DHS relaunched the grant program under the new TVTP 
name and with a new public health-focused approach.
    Through the TVTP grant funding, DHS supports the efforts of local 
partners who seek to raise awareness about the domestic violent 
extremism threat and develop community-based networks to provide 
support to individuals who may be radicalizing to violence before a 
crime is committed.
    Our witnesses today represent four of the organizations that have 
received TVTP grants in either the fiscal year 2020 or fiscal year 2021 
grant cycles. Their projects, executed over a period of 2 years, 
represent the wide variety of violence prevention efforts that are 
funded by this program. DHS has sought to support projects that 
implement promising practices as well as those that propose to test new 
and innovative solutions to terrorism prevention.
    These projects fall into a number of categories including: 
Enhancing threat assessment capabilities, challenging on-line 
mobilization narratives, and establishing or enhancing local prevention 
frameworks. The TVTP program has demonstrated some promising early 
results but it's still relatively new and although DHS has started the 
process to ensure an independent review of the efficacy of projects 
funded in the fiscal year 2020 grant cycle, that review is not yet 
complete. Continued oversight of this program will be necessary to 
ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how they 
have ensured the protection of privacy, civil rights, and civil 
liberties in their work with individuals and local communities, as well 
as how they plan to measure the impact of their projects. It is of the 
utmost importance that we get this right and do whatever we can to curb 
these horrifying attacks.

    Chairman Correa. With that, I thank you again for joining 
us today and the Chair would recognize the Ranking Member, if 
he he is here. Is he here?
    Mr. Meijer. Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear and see 
me?
    Chairman Correa. Mr. Meijer, how are you? Welcome.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you, sir.
    Chairman Correa. Ready for your comments, sir. Welcome.
    Mr. Meijer. Coming to you live off the floor.
    So, Chairman Correa, thank you for holding this important 
subcommittee hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's 
Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program. Thank 
you so much to our witnesses for joining us today. I look 
forward to hearing your testimony about experience they have 
had with the program as grant recipients, and am particularly 
interested in learning about what you found to be the most 
effective and how you think this program might be able to 
responsibly grow and benefit a larger number of communities in 
the future.
    Over the years the terrorism landscape has evolved and 
while many grants focusing on terrorism prevention were created 
as a result of the 9/11 attacks, the current threat landscape 
has a combination of both international and domestic violence 
concerns. We must address and evolve our approach so that it is 
tackling these new and emerging threats and allocating Federal 
dollars in the most effective way possible.
    I believe that we must do all we can to protect our 
communities and equip them with the tools they need to combat 
and prevent targeted violence and terrorism in whatever form it 
takes. The TVTP Grant Program is one such tools that can help 
communities build and strengthen their resiliency capabilities 
and prevent threats before they arise. Just last April I co-led 
a letter to the House Appropriations Committee that was 
focusing on all of these various funding streams, asking them 
to increase funding in fiscal year 2022 for the Office of 
Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, which is now off 
operating as the Center for Preventative Partnerships and 
Programs, and the TVTP threat program itself. This letter 
highlighted the fact that in recent years more Americans have 
been killed by domestic violence extremists than by 
international terrorism. The number of terrorism investigations 
conducted by the FBI has doubled since 2017.
    While threats from foreign terrorist organizations remain 
very real, these figures demonstrate that the landscape is 
changing, so so too must our thinking.
    Recently our country has experienced increased rates of 
violence, ranging from heartbreaking mass shootings to an 
attempted assassination of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. We 
must do more to combat violence and address its root causes, no 
matter the ideological motivation so that democracy is 
protected. Violence of any kind is unaccepted and as elected 
leaders it is our responsibility to find solutions that will 
promote and protect the safety of those we represent.
    The TVTP Grant Program has a great amount of potential to 
enhance these important efforts. At the same time, I think it 
is incumbent that we make sure this money is well spent. Simply 
spending more taxpayer dollars will not fix the problem. We 
must make sure that Federal grant dollars are spent 
efficiently, with clear objectives, and measurable outcomes. 
This grant program must be transparent and accountable to the 
American people and it must ensure that civil liberties for all 
Americans are protected.
    As lead Republican on the Oversight, Management, and 
Accountability Subcommittee, I remain committed to working with 
my colleague, Chairman Correa, to help strengthen the security 
of our local communities and to bolster and improve DHS 
programs designed to achieve this goal. It is imperative that 
we continue to advance bipartisan efforts to increase funding, 
accessibility, and resources to programs that enhance the 
safety and security of communities around this country. 
Targeted violence and terrorism can occur anywhere at any time. 
We must remain committed to empowering local leaders and local 
law enforcement to strengthen this resiliency and ensure DHS 
has the proper funding to support their efforts.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on the 
importance of the TVTP Grant Program, the ways in which they 
have used these grant awards to protect their communities, and 
any recommendations that they have to improve the program going 
forward.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    With that, I yield back.
    [The statement of Ranking Member Meijer follows:]
                Statement of Ranking Member Peter Meijer
                             June 14, 2022
    Chairman Correa, thank you for holding this important subcommittee 
hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's Targeted Violence and 
Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program, and thank you to our 
witnesses for joining us today. I am looking forward to hearing 
testimony about your experiences with the program as grant recipients, 
and I am particularly interested in learning about what you found most 
effective and how you think this program might be able to responsibly 
grow and benefit a larger number of communities in the future.
    Over the years, the terrorism landscape has evolved. While many 
grants focusing on terrorism prevention were created as a result of the 
9/11 attacks, the current threat landscape is filled with both 
international and domestic threats. We must evolve our approach to 
address these new and emerging threats and allocate Federal dollars in 
the most effective manner possible.
    I believe that we must do all that we can to protect our 
communities and equip them with the tools they need to combat and 
prevent targeted violence and terrorism--in whatever form it comes.
    The TVTP Grant Program is one such tool that can help local 
communities build and strengthen their resiliency capabilities and 
prevent threats before they arise. Last April, I co-led a letter to the 
House Appropriations Committee calling on them to increase funding in 
fiscal year 2022 for the Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism 
Prevention (OTVTP), now operating as the Center for Prevention Programs 
and Partnerships (CP3), and the TVTP Grant Program.
    This letter highlighted the fact that in recent years, more 
Americans have been killed by domestic terrorism than by international 
terrorists and that the number of domestic terrorism investigations 
conducted by the FBI has doubled since 2017. While threats from Foreign 
Terrorist Organizations remain very real, these figures demonstrate 
that the landscape is changing, and so must our thinking.
    Recently, our country has experienced increased rates of violence, 
ranging from heartbreaking mass shootings to an attempted assassination 
of a sitting Supreme Court Justice. We need to do more to combat 
violence and address its root causes, no matter the ideological 
motivation, to protect our democracy. Violence of any kind is 
unacceptable, and as elected leaders, it is our responsibility to find 
solutions that will promote and protect the safety of those we 
represent. The TVTP Grant Program has a lot of potential to enhance 
these important efforts.
    At the same time, I want to make sure that this money is well 
spent. Simply spending more taxpayer dollars will not fix the problem. 
We must make sure that Federal grant dollars are spent efficiently--
with clear objectives, and measurable outcomes. This grant program must 
be transparent and accountable to the American people, and it must 
ensure that the civil liberties of all Americans are fully protected.
    As lead Republican on the Oversight, Management, and Accountability 
Subcommittee, I remain committed to working with Chairman Correa to 
help strengthen the security of our local communities and to bolster 
and improve DHS programs designed to achieve this goal. It is 
imperative that we continue to advance bipartisan efforts to increase 
funding, accessibility, and resources to programs that enhance the 
safety and security of communities around the country.
    Targeted violence and terrorism can occur anywhere, at any time. We 
must remain committed to empowering our local leaders to strengthening 
the resiliency in our communities and ensuring DHS has the proper 
funding to support this effort. I look forward to hearing from our 
witnesses on the importance of the TVTP Grant Program, the ways in 
which they've used these grant awards to protect their communities, and 
any recommendations they have to improve the program going forward.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

    Chairman Correa. Ranking Member Meijer, I couldn't agree 
with you more. The mission to protect American lives from 
terrorism, very important mission. We have to make sure that 
every taxpayer dollar we invest in this mission is optimal.
    Thank you very much, sir.
    Members are reminded that the committee will operate 
according to the guidelines laid out by the Chairman and 
Ranking Member in their February 3 colloquy regarding remote 
procedures. Members are reminded they may submit statements for 
the record.
    [The statement of Chairman Thompson follows:]
                Statement of Chairman Bennie G. Thompson
                             June 14, 2022
    We are here today to discuss the Department of Homeland Security's 
Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program. 
Although still relatively new, this grant program has become a key part 
of the Department's strategy to address a rise in violent domestic 
extremism incidents. Community spaces we all once considered safe--
schools, churches, grocery stores--have been repeatedly struck by 
horrific and tragic violence in recent years. These attacks leave deep 
and lasting scars on our communities, and our Government must do 
everything in its power to put a stop to this violence.
    Over the last decade, the Department of Homeland Security has 
tracked the rising number of fatal domestic violent extremism attacks. 
Perpetrators of these violent acts are often lone wolves and DHS has 
found that there is no common motivating factor that unites them all, 
making these attacks difficult to predict and prevent. In response to 
these challenges, DHS has sought to support local programs to prevent 
individuals from committing a violent act regardless of the motivating 
ideology.
    Through the TVTP grant program, the Department directly funds 
State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments, nonprofits, and 
institutions of higher education to help create or enhance violence 
prevention networks. Known as local prevention frameworks, these 
networks facilitate connections between community leaders to increase 
awareness about the domestic violent extremism threat and provide 
support services for vulnerable individuals who may be on the path 
toward radicalizing to violence. These support services can take many 
forms, from youth-resilience programs to media literacy and critical 
thinking initiatives aimed at combating the pervasive appeal of 
disinformation. The goal is to reach people who may have started down 
the wrong path but have not yet committed a crime.
    Identifying and working with these individuals is not something 
that local law enforcement always has the capacity or authority to do. 
That is why DHS has identified the need to support a whole-of-society 
approach to violence prevention, with the goal of equipping faith 
leaders, schoolteachers, and other community members with the tools 
needed to provide meaningful support. Yet just as importantly, these 
programs must ensure that the protections for privacy, civil rights, 
and civil liberties that all Americans enjoy are not swept aside in the 
name of prevention.
    We must be aware of the limitations inherent in the goal of 
preventing a crime before it happens. The DHS Office of Civil Rights 
and Civil Liberties has worked closely with the Department's Center for 
Prevention Partnerships and Programs, to ensure that both DHS and the 
projects it funds are protecting already vulnerable individuals and 
communities. But continued oversight from this committee and others 
will be necessary.
    I look forward to the completion of the Department's independent 
review into the efficacy of these grant programs, and I am pleased we 
have the opportunity today to delve more deeply into how some of these 
projects have been designed and implemented. It is my hope that DHS 
will stand as a leader in the fight against domestic violent extremism 
and provide a light for local communities during their darkest hours.

    Chairman Correa. Without objection, Members not on the 
subcommittee shall be permitted to sit and question the 
witnesses.
    Now I welcome our panel of witnesses. Our first witness, we 
have Dr. Kirk Braddock, an assistant professor, School of 
Communication at American University. His research focuses on 
persuasive strategies used by violent extremist groups to 
recruit and radicalize audiences targeted by their propaganda. 
Dr. Braddock also explores how theories of communication, 
persuasion, and social influence can be used to inform 
practices meant to prevent radicalization among the vulnerable 
audiences.
    Second witness, Ms. Humera Khan, the president and founder 
of the Muflehun, a think tank specializing in preventing 
radicalization and domestic violent extremism. She has also 
served as co-investigator for the Department of Defense's 
Minerva Research Institute project on terrorist propaganda, as 
well as strategic advisor to the U.N. Security Council managing 
the countering violent extremism portfolio.
    Our third witness, Mr. Paul Kim, a deputy district attorney 
with the LA District Attorney's Office, where he has served for 
over 25 years. Mr. Kim currently works with the hate crimes 
unit within the organized crime division.
    Our final witness is Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kelenske, 
commander of field support bureau and deputy director of the 
Michigan State Police. He is responsible for strategic 
leadership for the emergency management and homeland security 
division and intelligence operations division, which includes 
the State of Michigan's Fusion Center.
    Without objection, the witnesses' full statements will be 
inserted in the record.
    I now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement 
for 5 minutes, beginning with Mr. Braddock.
    Welcome, sir.

STATEMENT OF KURT BRADDOCK, PH D, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, AMERICAN 
                           UNIVERSITY

    Mr. Braddock. Mr. Chairman Correa, Ranking Member Meijer, 
thank you for having me here today.
    Members of the committee, thank you for having me to 
testify in relation to DHS's Center for Prevention Programs and 
Partnerships, formerly TVTP.
    As Chairman Correa said, I am assistant professor of public 
communication at American University where I am also a faculty 
fellow at a research center focusing primarily on domestic 
extremism and terrorism, called the Polarization and Extremism 
Research Innovation Lab.
    Between these two appointments, I work at the intersection 
of communication and violent extremism, where I try to 
understand how communication influences people to engage in 
violent activities on behalf of ideologies that we see both 
domestically and internationally.
    My work in this area really stems from the events of 
September 11, 2001, which really instilled in me a drive to 
find ways and understand why people could engage in such evil 
and find ways academically to protect Americans from this kind 
of violence. To this end, for the last 20 years I have studied 
violent Islamic Jihadists, violent extremists from the far left 
and the far right, Irish Republican dissident groups, lone 
actor terrorists, violent animal rights activists, single 
issues terrorists, Christian extremists, and every other 
extremist you can find.
    I sit in front of you today to discuss my unique experience 
with the CP3 Program. At present, this program, where my 
research is intended to understanding disinformation and 
conspiracies perpetuated by far-right extremists and their 
intended audiences and, more importantly, how we can prevent 
those audiences from engaging in violence in support of that 
disinformation, those conspiracies. I focus on the far right in 
this project because I know how important it is for the U.S. 
Government to use its budgets efficiently, getting the most 
value for every dollar spent.
    To that end, I sought to develop a project that addresses 
what all data show to be the most significant threat to 
domestic American security at the moment, far-right violent 
extremists. Stated most simply, I want to get you all the most 
bang for your buck. I am glad to say that to date the project 
has been a relative success, resulting in multiple deliverables 
for CP3, as well as a large workshop attended by some of the 
foremost experts in right-wing extremism and disinformation. I 
hope that my work continues to be of use for DHS in this 
regard.
    From the outset of this project, CP3 program, formerly 
TVTP, has been very enthusiastic and supportive of any research 
that I have done. Personnel at CP3, some of which I will 
mention by name later, have been in constant contact with me 
throughout my work and have sought to help me address logistic 
problems associated with my research at every turn.
    One specific challenge that I ran into in the early goings 
of the project was related to the impact of the COVID-19 
pandemic, which limited to the degree to which I could meet 
collaborators, research participants, or other colleagues fact-
to-face. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and the 
limitations it put on my research, CP3 continued its support by 
facilitating the completion of deliverables that can be worked 
on without face-to-face contact. Some of these include the 
development of training modules for stakeholders that helped 
them build resilience to disinformation within their 
communities, as well as training modules for those who would 
train others to help build this resilience.
    After COVID protocols were sufficiently lifted, we were 
able to hold the in person workshop on understanding 
disinformation and future threats, one of the themes of which 
was a focus on LGBTQ+ communities, which as we saw just a 
couple of days ago, does seem to be a target of the far right, 
or at least some elements of it.
    I understand my role here today will be to testify in more 
detail about my experiences with CP3 to gauge its value for the 
American people. To this end, I offer my full endorsement thus 
far. Not only has the program funded a range of research that 
addresses a variety of threats facing the country, it also 
demands accountability. Very few research programs require 
measures of program effectiveness to the degree that CP3 does. 
Because of this, the field is rife with pundits that pose as 
professional. Prominent media figures, twitter experts, and 
backseat driver pundits have long commented on the 
effectiveness of certain practices to reduce the risk of 
violence, but have provided no evidence to this effect. CP3 
doesn't allow for this kind of fast and loose commentary.
    If only for CP3's demands for research accountability and 
proof of intervention effectiveness, I believe the program 
provides excellent value.
    But before turning to your questions to provide further 
detail about my project, I want to thank by name on the record 
John Wilder of CP3. He has been my program manager and with my 
project he has been a godsend on coordinating, organizing, and 
demanding accountability on my part for why my project is being 
effective.
    With that, I look forward to your questions and I will also 
apologize in advance if you hear my dog tapping around during 
my testimony. I think he just wants to be part of the 
Congressional record.
    So thank you very much and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Braddock follows:]
                  Prepared Statement of Kurt Braddock
                              14 June 2022
    Esteemed Members of the committee, thank you for having me here 
today to testify in relation to the Department of Homeland Security's 
Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. My name is Dr. Kurt 
Braddock and I am an assistant professor of public communication at 
American University. I am also a faculty fellow at a research center at 
American University called the Polarization and Extremism Research and 
Innovation Lab. Between my appointments, I work at the intersection of 
communication and violent extremism where I seek to understand how 
different forms of communication influence individual decisions to 
engage in illicit political violence. My work in this area was inspired 
by the events of September 11, 2001, which instilled in me a drive to 
protect my fellow Americans through my work. To this end, for the last 
20 years, I have studied violent Islamic jihadists, violent extremists 
from the far-left and the far-right, Irish republican dissident groups, 
lone-actor terrorists, violent animal rights activists, religious 
Christian extremists, and every other ideology you can imagine. I sit 
in front of you today to discuss my experience with the Department of 
Homeland Security and its CP3 program, which has funded a project I am 
currently working on.
    At present, I am working on a research project geared toward 
understanding how disinformation and conspiracies perpetuated by far-
right extremists persuade their intended audiences, and more 
importantly, how we can prevent those audiences from engaging in 
violence in support of those conspiracies and disinformation. To date, 
this project has been a success, resulting in several deliverables for 
the CP3 program, including a large workshop on the world's foremost 
experts in extremism and disinformation. I hope that my work continues 
to be of use to the Department of Homeland Security, and in turn, the 
country.
    My experience with the CP3 program began when it was referred to as 
the program for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention in 2020. 
Prior to my being hired at American University, I began working on a 
research proposal concerning the work I described above. I was made 
aware that my research had been funded just before my official start 
date at AU in the summer of 2020.
    From the outset of the project, the CP3 program has been 
enthusiastic and supportive of my research. Personnel at CP3 (some of 
whom I will mention by name later) have been in constant contact with 
me over my work and have sought to help me address logistic problems 
associated with the research at every turn. One specific challenge I 
faced in the implementation of my research was the impact of the COVID-
19 pandemic, which limited the degree to which I could meet 
collaborators, research participants, or colleagues face-to-face. 
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and the limitations it put 
on the early part of my research, CP3 continued its support by 
facilitating the completion of deliverables that could be worked on 
without face-to-face contact. Some of these deliverables included the 
development of training modules for stakeholders to build resilience to 
disinformation in their communities, training modules with guidance on 
teaching others about building this resilience, reviews of research 
related to disinformation and far-right violent extremism, and finally, 
after COVID protocols were sufficiently lifted, an in-person workshop 
on understanding disinformation and future threats.
    I understand that my role here today will be to testify in more 
detail about my experiences with the CP3 program to gauge its value to 
the American people. To this end, I offer my full endorsement. Not only 
has the program funded a range of research that addresses a variety of 
threats facing the country, it also demands accountability for that 
research. Very few research programs require measures of program 
effectiveness to the degree that CP3 does. Because of this, the field 
is rife with pundits posing as professionals. Prominent media figures, 
Twitter ``experts,'' and backseat driver pundits have long commented on 
the effectiveness of certain practices to reduce the risk of 
ideological violence, but have provided no evidence to back their 
claims. The CP3 program does not allow for this kind-of fast-and-loose 
commentary. For every question I ask, every experiment I design, every 
bit of data I collect, I must demonstrate whether the intervention I am 
testing is effective. This is a breath of fresh air in our field.
    If only for CP3's demands for research accountability and proof of 
intervention effectiveness, I believe the program provides excellent 
value. Before turning to your questions to provide further detail, I 
would like to thank, by name, John Wilder of CP3. He is the program 
manager on my project, and has been a godsend on research coordination, 
organization, and accountability.
    With that, I look forward to your questions.

    Chairman Correa. Thank you, Mr. Braddock. Your dog's 
comments on the Congressional record will be accepted without 
objection.
    Mr. Braddock. They are not worth it.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you for your testimony.
    Now I recognize Ms. Khan to summarize her statement in 5 
minutes.
    Welcome, Ms. Khan.

   STATEMENT OF HUMERA KHAN, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, MUFLEHUN

    Ms. Khan. Good afternoon, Chairman Correa, Ranking Member 
Meijer, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee. Thank 
you for this opportunity to testify about the DHS Targeted 
Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program.
    My name is Humera Khan and I am the president and co-
founder of Muflehun, and we are an independent resource center 
at the nexus of society, security----
    To prevent domestic terrorism and targeted violence in a 
country, it is essential we focus on, No. 1, raising awareness 
of the threat and using a public health approach as the 
solution for violence prevention. But No. 2 is allocation of 
resources by Federal, State, and local governments to mitigate 
risk factors and enhance protective factors for primary 
prevention of violence.
    So Muflehun was actually the recipient of two DHS fiscal 
year 2020 TVTP grants and that focus on these two areas. One 
for an upstander training branded Tackle! to raise awareness, 
and the second is an innovation grant called the Community 
Resilience Early Warning System, CREWS, for primary prevention 
of domestic terrorism and targeted violence.
    CREWS is a data-informed platform to help mayors, county 
executives, city managers, and locally-elected leaders 
prioritize risk and protective factors specific to their 
jurisdictions and to allocate budgets aligned with the need of 
their local prevention frameworks. CREWS uses publicly-
available open-source data of society and community risk and 
protective factors at the National, State, and local levels. It 
does not use any individual level information, nor is there any 
personally identifiable information, PII, in the platform.
    So we are grateful to DHS for funding this innovative 
approach and to our four pilot locations for their commitment 
to protecting their communities. Our preliminary analysis has 
focused on hate crimes and domestic terrorism, and over the 
next few weeks we will be completing our initial analysis for 
mass casualty shootings and school shootings.
    After our analysis is finalized, and in partnership with 
the stakeholders, we will be recommending priorities for 
steering limited resources to build local prevention 
frameworks. We will be conducting briefings and capacity-
building workshops at each pilot location to facilitate multi-
stakeholder partnerships based on their specific needs.
    In 2020, Muflehun also got the TVTP grant for the Tackle! 
Upstander training. That was implemented in partnership with 
the American Jewish Committee, AJC. That training curriculum 
includes awareness of the threat of targeted violence and 
domestic terrorism and targeted violence, understanding how 
hate and bigotry can incite violence, anti-Semitism, anti-
Muslim bigotry, and Black racism, and anti-Asian hate, the role 
of communities in violence prevention and the role of engaged 
upstanders in recognizing that individuals are experiencing 
distress and knowing what to do in these situations. The 
participants from 12 States included elected officials, 
district attorneys, human rights commissioners, school safety 
officers, superintendents, county emergency management 
directors, and law enforcement.
    So the implementation of our two TVTP grants over the last 
18 months has resulted in several learnings, right. Based on 
that we do recommend: No. 1, While the threats of domestic 
terrorism and targeted violence continue to increase, $20 
million of grant funding each year is stretched thin over our 
whole country. It is inadequate. Grant funding levels should be 
increased multiple-fold. No. 2, greater attention should be 
given to increasing awareness levels by encouraging the scaling 
of capacity-building programs such as Tackle! and other similar 
initiatives. No. 3, the regional prevention coordinators are 
one of the greatest assets of DHS. They are experienced 
professionals, they are an invaluable resource for the grantees 
and the local stakeholders alike. But there is not enough of 
them; there need to be at least one RPC per State. No. 4, while 
DHS is adding members to its team, there is still a gap for 
more technically-qualified staff with subject-matter expertise 
that is aligned with the public health approach. No. 5 is data-
informed analysis facilitates improved decision making. DHS 
should utilize data in its selection of future grants by 
matching data informed needs of geographic locations to the 
proposed solutions at State and local levels.
    So let me end by emphasizing that we must accelerate our 
efforts with increased resource allocation, and not be 
discouraged by the mistakes of the past. We cannot wait for 
another Tree of Life Synagogue attack or Charleston's AME 
church attack or Buffalo supermarket killings or the Uvalde 
school massacre before we decide to allocate resources toward 
primary prevention.
    Thank you again for your attention and for the opportunity 
to share Muflehun's experiences and perspective.
    I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Khan follows:]
                   Prepared Statement of Humera Khan
                             June 14, 2022
    Good afternoon, Chairman Correa, Ranking Member Meijer, and 
distinguished Members of the subcommittee. Thank you for this 
opportunity to testify about the DHS Targeted Violence and Terrorism 
Prevention Grant Program.
    My name is Humera Khan and I am the president and co-founder of 
Muflehun. Muflehun is an independent non-profit founded in 2010. We are 
at the nexus of society, security, and technology, and serve as a 
resource center for preventing and countering hate, extremism, and 
violence, and for building resilience. Our mission is to facilitate a 
world with justice for all by cultivating prosperity.
                         organization overview
    Muflehun works with stakeholders to design contextualized solutions 
to complex social challenges aimed at increasing social resilience. We 
conduct research and analysis of current violent extremism challenges, 
identifying root causes and developing relevant solutions; applying the 
learnings from research to pilot programs to counter the threats faced 
by society; sharing lessons with partner organizations and providing 
support in their capacity building for adapting and delivering 
localized versions of the programs; and regularly providing analyses 
and learning to policy makers for improved macro-level decisions.
    Our research and pilot programs feed into capacity building of 
individuals, communities, Federal and local government agencies, multi-
lateral agencies and independent organizations, as well as institutions 
involved in the efforts of preventing and countering violent extremism 
or those influenced by any act of incurred or potential violent 
extremism. Muflehun has designed and implemented multiple projects 
providing capacity building to adapt and deliver localized solutions 
and regularly provides analyses and learning to policy makers for 
improved decisions domestically and internationally in more than 10 
countries.
    Muflehun has a special focus toward the increasing threats within 
USA, drawing upon its rich subject-matter expertise and vast network of 
resources, applying technology tools and methods to design relevant 
solutions for the local challenges faced in society. We provide support 
to Federal, State, and local governments in developing community 
resilience frameworks, increasing the safety of the local populations.
                               background
    Every few weeks, the news headlines announce another attack, 
another shooting, another round of thoughts and prayers for the victims 
and their families, another post-attack post-mortem revealing that 
there were warning signs and red flags for years and yet help could not 
be coordinated in a way to prevent the tragedy from occurring. This 
oft-repeated cycle needs to stop.
    To prevent domestic terrorism and targeted violence in our Nation 
it is essential to focus on two main areas: (1) Raising awareness of 
the threat and utilizing a public health approach as a solution for 
violence prevention, and (2) the allocation of resources by Federal, 
State, and local governance for primary prevention to mitigate risk 
factors and enhance protective factors.
    Muflehun was the recipient of two fiscal year 2020 Targeted 
Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grants from DHS that focused 
on these two areas. One is for an upstander training titled Tackle! 
designed to raise awareness, and the second is an innovation grant 
titled the Community Resilience Early Warning System (CREWS) to 
recommend resource allocations for primary prevention of domestic 
terrorism and targeted violence. Following are brief overviews of the 
projects funded by the DHS TVTP grants.
                                 crews
    In 2020, Muflehun received DHS TVTP grant No. EMW-2020-GR-00087 for 
the Community Resilience Early Warning System (CREWS) to recommend 
resource allocations for primary prevention of domestic terrorism and 
targeted violence, namely hate crimes, mass casualty shootings, and 
school shootings.
    The challenge Muflehun took on in designing and implementing CREWS 
was to apply a public health approach for primary prevention of these 
threats of domestic terrorism and targeted violence without repeating 
the failures of previous CVE efforts. The CREWS project is grounded in 
decades of academic research, and uses data to inform our understanding 
of mitigation of risk factors and enhancement of protective factors at 
local governance levels. It was developed with the objective of 
facilitating systemic change, and encouraging multi-stakeholder 
partnerships and prevention frameworks.
    CREWS is a data-informed platform to help mayors, county 
executives, city managers and locally-elected leaders prioritize risk 
and protective factors, specific to their jurisdictions, that need to 
be addressed to prevent domestic terrorism and targeted violence, and 
to allocate budgets aligned with the needs of their local prevention 
frameworks.
    CREWS uses publicly-available open-source data of societal and 
community-level risk and protective factors at the National, State, and 
local levels. It does NOT use any individual level information, nor is 
there any Personal Identifiable Information (PII) in the platform. The 
factors are identified from academic research conducted over the past 
20 years, and are grouped into several categories: Economic, education, 
health, public safety, community cohesion, social participation, and 
influence of ideology. The machine-learning models are trained on 20 
years of data including the years 2000-2019. Muflehun is working with 
four pilot locations to apply the results of the data findings and 
support the local government leaders in understanding how their 
financial resources can be better utilized in developing local 
prevention frameworks.
    We are grateful to the DHS for investing in this innovative 
approach in fiscal year 2020, and to our pilot locations for their 
commitment to protecting their communities, and their willingness to 
use data to understand how best to build resilience. Many thanks to the 
Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania and her office, the leadership of the 
Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, Pennsylvania, the County 
Executive of New Castle County, Delaware and his office, and the State 
senator of the 3rd District of Connecticut for their bold leadership.
    Our preliminary analysis has focused on hate crimes and on domestic 
terrorism, and over the next few weeks we will be completing initial 
analysis for mass casualty shootings and school shootings.
    Our findings show that: (1) Each location has a unique combination 
of risk factors and protective factors; what is a risk factor for one 
location might not be contributing to increasing vulnerability at 
another location. Examples of this are school spending and income 
inequality which vary considerably across locations. The prioritized 
resource allocation portfolio for each location will therefore 
necessarily look very different (2) The combination of risk and 
protective factors for each location change over time and analysis must 
take recent trends into account (3) Some factors, such as drug overdose 
deaths, mental illness rates and access to health resources, are 
consistently amongst the top ten risk factors for domestic terrorism 
and hate crimes across all the pilot locations, over the past 10 years 
(4) Whereas there is considerable overlap in the risk and protective 
factors for domestic terrorism and hate crime, they are not identical. 
Local governments would be well-served to prioritize resource 
allocation for factors that impact both domestic terrorism and hate 
crimes for greater impact. Examples of this are cyberbully and school-
based bullying (5) Enhancing protective factors, rather than only 
mitigating risk factors, should be part of the design of local 
prevention frameworks.
    These examples of early findings are only the first step in the 
wealth of information that will be available from CREWS to share with 
our pilot location partners.
    After our analysis is finalized and in partnership with our 
stakeholders, we will recommend priorities for steering limited 
resources to facilitate comprehensive local prevention frameworks. 
Before our project ends at the end of the year, we will be conducting 
briefings and capacity-building workshops at each pilot location and 
facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships based on their specific 
needs. Increasing the efficient utilization of limited resources to 
build resilience against targeted violence and domestic terrorism is 
essential for the safety of our Nation.
                                 tackle
    In 2020, Muflehun received DHS TVTP grant No. EMW-2020-GR-00093 to 
implement an upstander training designed to raise awareness of the 
threat of domestic terrorism and targeted violence, and to enhance the 
ability of community leaders to identify and respond to individuals at 
risk of mobilizing to violence.
    The Tackle! Upstander Training was implemented in partnership with 
American Jewish Committee (AJC) and its network of 24 regional offices 
and 11 Muslim-Jewish Advisory Councils (MJACs) that build ties between 
Jewish and Muslim leaders to work against hate, anti-Semitism, and 
anti-Muslim bigotry.
    The 8-hour training curriculum includes:
   Awareness of the threat of targeted violence, domestic 
        violent extremism, and recruitment tactics
   Understanding of how hate and bigotry can incite violence, 
        including narratives that ignite anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim 
        bigotry, anti-Black racism, and anti-Asian hate
   Local prevention frameworks and the role of communities in 
        violence prevention
   Understanding the role of engaged upstanders to recognize 
        when individuals are experiencing distress and broadcasting 
        their intent to move toward violence, and knowing what to do in 
        such situations.
    The participants included elected officials, district attorneys, 
human rights commissioners, school safety officers, principals, and 
superintendents, town and county emergency management directors, 
sheriffs, and law enforcement officers. We were also tremendously 
fortunate that DHS Regional Prevention Coordinators (RPCs) joined each 
of our cohorts for discussions and engagement with the participants 
about existing local resources.
    One hundred eighty leaders in 9 cohorts attended the virtual course 
with 154 participants completing the full training (85 percent). 
Participants were surveyed on their starting knowledge and post-
training to assess the change in their willingness and skills to be 
engaged upstanders. The results inform our understanding of the dire 
need for more awareness, the effectiveness of our Tackle! curriculum, 
and suggestions for improvements:
   When asked if participants had heard the terms domestic 
        terrorism and targeted violence, 94 percent indicated that they 
        knew of the terms however only 25 percent knew what the terms 
        actually meant.
   When asked about using a public health approach for violence 
        prevention, a mere 22 percent knew the concept, with over 30 
        percent never having heard of it before.
   After the Tackle! Training, 86 percent of the participants 
        agreed or strongly agreed that they had the skills to prevent 
        violence, an increase of 37 percent.
   Similarly, post-training 73 percent were very likely to 
        engage with a friend or family member they were concerned 
        about, an increase of 21 percent.
   Participants consistently stated the most helpful features 
        were ``case studies and real-life examples'' and requested 
        ``more case scenarios with upstander interventions''
    Given the low levels of awareness of the threat and how to respond 
to it even by the very leaders who are entrusted to keep us safe, the 
need to scale up awareness is imperative for the safety of our country.
    To ensure sustainability of the Tackle! training beyond the DHS 
TVTP grant, Muflehun and its partners have applied for support from 
private foundations to continue to enhance the curriculum and provide 
training in new locations.
             learnings from the crews and tackle! projects
    The implementation of our two DHS TVTP grants over the last 18 
months has resulted in several learnings and recommendations which we 
will briefly share:
    1. While the threats of domestic terrorism and targeted violence 
        continue to increase, $20 million of grant funding each year, 
        stretched thin over our whole Nation, is woefully inadequate. 
        It is merely a drop in the bucket and what we need is a 
        firehose. We recommend that the grant funding levels should be 
        increased multiple fold.
    2. Our experience in implementing the CREWS and Tackle! projects 
        has highlighted the low awareness levels of the threats of 
        domestic terrorism and targeted violence (and how to respond to 
        them) of our leaders who are entrusted to keep us safe. We 
        would request the House Homeland Security Committee to give 
        greater attention to increasing awareness levels by enouraging 
        the scaling of capacity building programs such as Tackle! and 
        other similar initiatives. Giant strides are required to build 
        the capacity of the local leaders; only baby steps have been 
        taken so far.
    3. The DHS Regional Prevention Coordinators are one of the greatest 
        assets of DHS CP3. They are experienced professionals who 
        understand what is happening on the ground and are an 
        invaluable resource for the grantees and the local stakeholders 
        alike. Muflehun has worked closely with the Regional Prevention 
        Coordinators while implementing the CREWS and Tackle! projects 
        and has witnessed their support in developing local prevention 
        frameworks. But there is not enough of them; there need to be 
        at least one per State, and in more populated States, multiple 
        Regional Prevention Coordinators per State are required.
    4. DHS CP3 has provided overview documents to encourage the 
        development and implementation of local prevention frameworks. 
        However, much more detailed guidelines are needed that factor 
        in the necessary sophistication and coordination required to 
        effectively design and implement these approaches. DHS should 
        incorporate the learning from its various grantees to 
        accelerate the in-depth understanding and process of developing 
        well-informed local prevention frameworks.
    5. While DHS CP3 continues to add members to its team, there 
        remains an unfilled gap for more technically qualified staff 
        with subject-matter expertise that are aligned with the public 
        health approach that DHS is now taking toward preventing 
        domestic terrorism and targeted violence. Without the required 
        expertise and knowledge, there is a risk that essential 
        technical areas of developing local prevention frameworks will 
        remain unattended or previous mistakes from CVE might be 
        repeated.
    6. Data-informed analysis facilitates improved decision making. Our 
        experience in implementing the CREWS project displays the 
        variation in the combination of needs for local prevention 
        frameworks. Muflehun recommends utilization of data by the DHS 
        TVTP Grants program in its selection of future grants by 
        matching the data-informed needs of geographic locations to the 
        proposed solutions at State and local levels.
                               conclusion
    Let me end by emphasizing that DHS TVTP grant funded projects such 
as CREWS and Tackle! are only the beginning of the long journey of 
solutions ahead of us as a Nation. To make the required progress, we 
must accelerate our efforts with increased resource allocation, and not 
be discouraged by mistakes of the past. We need to learn and 
continually improve our approaches to make our country safer by 
tackling the public safety challenges upstream rather than intervening 
only after they become threats to communities. We must not wait for 
another Tree of Life Synagogue attack or Charleston AME church attack 
or Sandy Hook School shooting, or Buffalo supermarket killings or the 
Uvalde school massacre before we decide to allocate resources toward 
primary prevention.
    Thank you again for your attention and for the opportunity to share 
Muflehun's experiences and perspectives. I look forward to answering 
any questions you may have.

    Chairman Correa. Thank you very much, Ms. Khan.
    I recognize Mr. Kim to summarize his statement in 5 
minutes.
    Welcome, sir.

 STATEMENT OF PAUL KIM, DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY, LOS ANGELES 
               COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

    Mr. Kim. Thank you, Chairman Correa, Ranking Member Meijer, 
and distinguished Members of this committee.
    My name is Paul Kim and I am a deputy district attorney at 
the DA's Office here in Los Angeles County.
    I am currently assigned to the hate crimes unit. I have 
been assigned here for about 8 years. The hate crimes unit 
vertically prosecutes all serious hate crimes that happen 
within the County of Los Angeles, including any case that 
involves great bodily injury or death, any case that is 
committed by an organized hate group, and cases that are either 
complex in nature or require a seasoned deputy district 
attorney.
    In this capacity, my primary role is I am a trial attorney. 
My secondary role is I do community outreach. I work closely 
with our partners, our community-based partners, ranging from 
the Jewish groups to the AAPI groups, and including members of 
the LGBTQ community as well.
    During the time that I was prosecuting hate crime cases, 
about 3 years ago I came across an issue. I had a defendant 
that had committed a crime of violence against a member of the 
LGBT community here in Long Beach. This had gone all the way up 
to the very highest levels at my office and a disposition was 
reached to include 200 hours of community service. Obviously 
our goal was to try to raise the defendant's awareness when it 
came to the LGBT community. When we reached out to one of our 
partners, one of our stakeholders, I was immediately asked what 
did this individual do. When I described what happened and I 
described the nature of the injury, what was I was told by the 
director was, Mr. Kim, this individual has committed an act of 
violence and has seriously injured a member of our community. 
We don't desire to have him participate doing any community 
service with our members or on our property.
    Now, this posed a problem. One of the things that we know 
is that hate is not innate, it is something that is learned, it 
is something that is acquired. Somewhere he learned to hate 
this group of people because of whatever characteristic it is 
that you are biased against. When we start with that point, and 
we also consider the penal code, the California penal code 
422.85, which suggests that whenever you place somebody on a 
grant of probation, you should engage in some sort of cultural 
sensitivity and awareness training. LA County didn't have an 
anti-bias program.
    One day, when I was doing community outreach with the 
Museum of Tolerance, I was on a call with the LA City 
Attorney's Office, who was working with the Museum of 
Tolerance, who was also a TVTP awardee, on their one-to-one 
program, which is a 15-hour coaching program. At that time I 
met Michael Brown, who is the deputy director of field 
operations, and I reached out to Mr. Brown after I heard his 
talk and he mentioned that there was a grant available. So I 
told him I would like to apply for the grant. I told him there 
was a need in the county, specifically when it came to trying 
to address the bias-motivated violence that caused the 
individual to target whoever it was for whatever crime was 
committed.
    Mr. Brown encouraged me to apply. It was the first time I 
had applied. It was in fact the first time that LADA had 
applied for a Federal grant. We had previously applied for 
local grants, State grants, but never a Federal grant. At this 
point, I must echo Dr. Braddock, John Wilder is also my program 
analyst and he has been incredibly helpful when it comes to 
helping us get the basics of this program done.
    The program is three-fold. No. 1, we want to focus on 
counseling. One of our sub-recipients is Gateways Hospital and 
Mental Health Center. They are going to have a clinician that 
is going to be working for 80 hours, 40 individual and 40 hours 
of group, trying to see if they can determine what the roots of 
the bias animus are and where they came from.
    Second, we are going to be working with a community-based 
organization called Second Call. Second Call does re-entry for 
former felons and they are going to be acting as professional 
facilitators and they are going to be acting as coaches in 
helping with the anti-bias portion of the program.
    Finally, we are working with Three Strands to develop an 
anti-bias program, an anti-bias curricula, that can be used for 
any category of bias once it is created.
    I think that the CP3 program is really amazing. I think 
that what it is going to permit us to do is to develop two 
things. No. 1, an offender-centric study--not a very large one, 
but an offender-centric one, and, No. 2, the tools and the 
modules that are necessary to try to address explicit bias.
    I look forward to the questions and I thank you for 
inviting me to participate.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Kim follows:]
                     Prepared Statement of Paul Kim
    REACCH is a program designed to reduce recidivism of bias-motivated 
crimes in the Country of Los Angeles through a multidisciplinary 
regimen that aims to foster understanding, empathy, and self-awareness, 
and prevent future transgressions of bias-motivated crimes. In 
recognition of the importance of DHS's public health approach to 
violence prevention, this project will utilize substance abuse and 
mental health treatment, functional impairment identification, anger 
management and cognitive behavior restructuring, vocational and 
educational training to address maladaptive behavior in general and 
bias animus in particular. REACCH also aims to aid participants of the 
program to begin the process of reconciliation with the victim or peer 
victim group through letters of apology, direct interaction, and 
community service. We have partnered with several community 
organizations including Gateways, 2d Call, and 3Strands to holistically 
recognize, analyze, and rectify the roots of bias animus, and have set 
up both qualitative and quantitative measures to thoroughly evaluate 
our method of reducing recidivism.

    Chairman Correa. Mr. Kim, thank you very much for your 
testimony.
    Now I would like to recognize Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske 
to summarize his statement for 5 minutes.
    Welcome, Colonel.

   STATEMENT OF CHRIS A. KELENSKE, COMMANDER, MICHIGAN STATE 
                             POLICE

    Mr. Kelenske. Thank you Chairman Correa, Ranking Member 
Meijer, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee for 
allowing me to discuss the Targeted Violence and Terrorism 
Prevention Grant Program.
    My name is Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kelenske and I am the 
deputy director in charge of the Field Support Bureau of the 
Michigan State Police, or MSP. In this role, I oversee MSP's 
Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division, as well as 
the Intelligence Operations Division, among other areas. MSP 
was awarded a grant of $451,255 from the fiscal year 2021 DHS 
Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program and 
today I will be discussing how we are using this important 
Federal support.
    Too many times in recent years we have experienced 
incidents across our great Nation where individuals have 
targeted others and committed acts of violence leading to far 
too many senseless deaths. The Targeted Violence and Terrorism 
Prevention Grant is a tool that is helping us in Michigan to 
hopefully prevent these incidents before they occur by 
establishing a regional Behavioral Threat Assessment Management 
Team and a State-wide Fusion Liaison Officer program.
    Our Behavioral Threat Assessment Management Team consists 
of multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional partners who 
identify individuals who are on a pathway to violence and 
intervene by providing them with productive alternative 
outcomes.
    The State-wide Fusion Liaison Officer program includes law 
enforcement, first responders, and private-sector partners 
across Michigan who will enhance awareness and strengthen 
collaboration and information sharing to aid in preventing 
targeted acts of violence.
    We recognize the need to develop behavioral threat 
assessment management capability in our State to ensure 
prevention frameworks are adopted that will allow local 
stakeholders to participate in communications addressing 
radicalization to violence. To address our behavioral threat 
assessment management gap within the terrorism prevention and 
targeted violence framework, we are developing one regional 
concept Behavioral Threat Assessment Management Team that 
covers three counties. These three counties include the seat of 
State government and the State capitol of Michigan, have a 
combined total population of just under 500,000 people, and are 
comprised of both urban and rural communities. This Behavioral 
Threat Assessment Management Team will serve as a conduit to 
identify persons of concern who pose a threat of targeted 
violence, and then provide referrals to independent programs as 
a form of prevention. This initial, multi-disciplinary team 
that this grant is helping to create is comprised of 
professionals from the local community who will collaborate to 
increase communications, develop protocols, and work with 
individuals who have risk factors of targeted violence and 
terrorism.
    Using our grant funds, we are hiring a specialist who will 
be on-board within the next month who will be responsible for 
developing and managing the team, providing intervention and 
threat assessment training for team members, and for developing 
team protocols. A critical success factor for this program is 
having the funds to keep this specialist employed beyond the 
grant period, as this would provide communities with the 
coordination, training, and confidence to identify at-risk 
individuals and respond with a coordinated community approach 
for successful targeted violence intervention and prevention.
    Future grant opportunities will help us to expand this 
regional team concept State-wide. Additionally, through this 
grant, and in partnership with Center for Prevention Programs 
and Partnerships or CP3, we have recently begun to collaborate 
with Michigan State University School of Medicine and the 
National Policing Institute on a project that will train a 
highly-skilled set of clinicians to be deployed across Michigan 
who will supplement the regional behavioral threat assessment 
teams by providing advanced care and safety or management plans 
for those most at risk for becoming radicalized toward acts of 
targeted violence.
    We are also sensitive to the protection of privacy, civil 
rights, and civil liberties, which is why the privacy policy of 
the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center will be adhered to 
in all cases brought to the attention of the Behavioral Threat 
Assessment Management team. Individuals associated with cases 
that pose a public safety risk will be treated with the same 
Constitutional protections as any other individual encountered 
by law enforcement.
    The goals of the Fusion Liaison Officer program are to 
provide training to increase awareness of targeted violence 
through outreach, community involvement, and intervention. As 
part of this grant, we received funding for two part-time, 
contract analysts to assist with the delivery of the Fusion 
Liaison Officer training, which is in-person training provided 
to law enforcement, first responders, and private-sector 
personnel. This training seeks to increase awareness of the 
risk factors and radicalization to violence process, strengthen 
strategic partnerships, and bolster information and 
intelligence sharing. To date, we have hired one of two part-
time contract analysts to assist the Fusion Liaison Officer 
coordinator, finalized our educational materials, held a Joint 
Community Awareness Briefing with our CP3 partners that 
included 30 of our State intelligence members, and conducted 1 
of the scheduled 10 training sessions. Once the initial 
groundwork is complete and the program is established, the 
Fusion Liaison Officer coordinator, who is a senior 
intelligence analyst in the Michigan State Police, will be 
capable of managing the program independently without the 
sustainment of the contract analysts beyond the grant 
performance period.
    Thank you for your time and this opportunity to share our 
experiences in Michigan. At this time I am happy to take any 
questions you may have for me.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Kelenske follows:]
                Prepared Statement of Chris A. Kelenske
                             June 14, 2022
    Thank you Chairman Correa, Ranking Member Meijer, and distinguished 
Members of the subcommittee for allowing me to discuss the U.S. 
Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Targeted Violence and Terrorism 
Prevention Grant Program. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Chris Kelenske, 
and I am the deputy director in charge of the Field Support Bureau of 
the Michigan State Police, or MSP. In this role, I oversee MSP's 
Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division, as well as the 
Intelligence Operations Division, among other areas. MSP was awarded a 
grant of $451,255 from the fiscal year 2021, DHS Targeted Violence and 
Terrorism Prevention Grant Program. Today I will be discussing how we 
are using this important Federal support.
    Too many times in recent years, we have experienced incidents 
across our great Nation where individuals have targeted others and 
committed acts of violence leading to far too many senseless deaths. 
The Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention grant is a tool that is 
helping us in Michigan to hopefully prevent these incidents before they 
occur by establishing a regional Behavioral Threat Assessment 
Management Team and a State-wide Fusion Liaison Officer program.
    Our Behavioral Threat Assessment Management Team consists of 
multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional partners who identify 
individuals who are on a pathway to violence and intervene by providing 
them with productive alternative outcomes.
    The State-wide Fusion Liaison Officer program includes law 
enforcement, first responders, and private-sector partners across 
Michigan who will enhance awareness and strengthen collaboration and 
information sharing to aid in preventing targeted acts of violence.
    We recognize the need to develop behavioral threat assessment 
management capability in our State to ensure prevention frameworks are 
adopted that will allow local stakeholders to participate in 
communications addressing radicalization to violence. To address our 
behavioral threat assessment management gap within the terrorism 
prevention and targeted violence framework, we are developing one 
regional concept Behavioral Threat Assessment Management Team that 
covers three counties. These three counties include the seat of State 
government and the State capitol of Michigan, have a combined total 
population of just under 500,000 people, and are comprised of both 
urban and rural communities. This Behavioral Threat Assessment 
Management Team will serve as a conduit to identify persons of concern 
who pose a threat of targeted violence, and then provide referrals to 
independent programs as a form of prevention.
    This initial, multi-disciplinary team that this grant is helping to 
create is comprised of professionals from the local community who will 
collaborate to increase communications, develop protocols, and work 
with individuals who have risk factors of targeted violence and 
terrorism. Using our grant funds, we are hiring a specialist who will 
be on-board within the next month who will be responsible for 
developing and managing the team, providing intervention and threat 
assessment training for team members, and for developing team 
protocols.
    A critical success factor for this program is having the funds to 
keep this specialist employed beyond the grant period, as this would 
provide communities with the coordination, training, and confidence to 
identify at-risk individuals and respond with a coordinated community 
approach for successful targeted violence intervention and prevention. 
Future grant opportunities will help us to expand this regional team 
concept State-wide.
    Additionally, through this grant and in partnership with Center for 
Prevention Programs and Partnerships or CP3, we have recently begun to 
collaborate with Michigan State University School of Medicine and the 
National Policing Institute on a project that will train a highly-
skilled set of clinicians to be deployed across Michigan who will 
supplement the regional behavioral threat assessment teams by providing 
advanced care and safety or management plans for those most at-risk for 
becoming radicalized toward acts of targeted violence.
    I want to mention that we are sensitive to the protection of 
privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, which is why the privacy 
policy of the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center will be adhered 
to in all cases brought to the attention of the Behavioral Threat 
Assessment Management team. Individuals associated with cases that pose 
a public safety risk will be treated with the same Constitutional 
protections as any other individual encountered by law enforcement.
    The goals of the Fusion Liaison Officer program are to provide 
training to increase awareness of targeted violence through outreach, 
community involvement, and intervention. As part of this grant, we 
received funding for two part-time, contract analysts to assist with 
the delivery of the Fusion Liaison Officer training, which is in-person 
training provided to law enforcement, first responders, and private-
sector personnel. This training seeks to increase awareness of the risk 
factors and radicalization to violence process, strengthen strategic 
partnerships, and bolster information and intelligence sharing.
    To date, we have hired one of two-part time contract analysts to 
assist the Fusion Liaison Officer coordinator, finalized our 
educational materials, held a Joint Community Awareness Briefing with 
our DHS CP3 partners that included 30 of our State intelligence 
members, and conducted 1 of the scheduled 10 training sessions.
    Once the initial groundwork is complete and the program is 
established, the Fusion Liaison Officer coordinator, who is a senior 
intelligence analyst in the Michigan State Police, will be capable of 
managing the program independently without the sustainment of the 
contract analysts beyond the grant performance period.
    Thank you for your time and this opportunity to share our 
experiences in Michigan. At this time I am happy to take any questions 
you may have for me.

    Chairman Correa. Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske, 
for your testimony.
    I want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony as 
well.
    I will remind the subcommittee that we will each have 5 
minutes to question the panel.
    I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes of questions and 
my first question would go to Mr. Braddock and Ms. Khan. As you 
know, this TVTP program is essentially a 2-year cycle. Fiscal 
Year 2020 just coming to a close. So question, briefly, can you 
tell me what your programs were able to achieve over the last 2 
years?
    Ms. Khan.
    Ms. Khan. So we have two projects. I will count both of 
them.
    So for CREWS we have--let us see, we have four pilot 
locations who are committed to trying out this new approach of 
using data-informed analysis to support the primary prevention 
of violence. We are very specifically working with them to help 
understand the risk and protective factors for the allocation 
of resources.
    So this is about working with them to develop the 
recommendations for their sites. Of course, all of this is 
based on the fact that we have actually built out the CREWS 
platform, which is bringing in open-source data from the last 
20 years from multiple Government agencies to actually 
understand what is playing out in terms of risk factors and 
protected factors.
    For Tackle! we have actually completed the Tackle! training 
program and we have trained over 150 participants over 12 
States. This is a virtual training. After the Tackle! training 
we have found that 86 percent of our participants agreed or 
strongly agreed that their self-perception is that they have 
the skills to prevent violence. So this was actually an 
increase of 37 percent just based on those 8 hours of training.
    Then similarly we found that after the training, 73 
percent, right, were actually willing to engage with a family 
or friend that they were concerned about. That is an increase 
of over 20 percent in that.
    So we have--I mean for--so for Tackle! we have completed 
all our grant requirements because we finished early. We 
actually went above what we had promised. For CREWS it is on-
going and we have--and we are now--already sent the pilot 
locations the initial results and we are working with them to 
develop the recommendations and see how they are doing their 
budgets and how they are building their partnerships.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you.
    Mr. Braddock.
    Mr. Braddock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    So this project was designed as a two-phase project, the 
first of which was meant to inform the second phase. Before I 
describe exactly what we have achieved so far, let me describe 
what the basis of the project is.
    This project hinges on the idea of something called 
attitudinal inoculation. The idea being that if you expose 
somebody to a weakened form of an idea in the same way the body 
is exposed to a weakened form of a virus, they can develop 
resilience to that idea. Now, there is about 60 years of 
research in communication science showing that this is an 
effective means of helping people prevent being persuaded by 
these sorts of ideas.
    So the first phase of the project was meant to develop 
deliverables and trainings that help people develop their own 
inoculation messages. So in the years that we worked so far 
there have been four major real outcomes.
    No. 1, we have developed this literature base around 
inoculation and disinformation that can be of use to 
stakeholders. I know that literature is a boring word to 
politicians and to practitioners. So we have made this a way 
that is accessible to practitioners. One of the things I really 
want to do with this work is to make sure it is easily 
accessible and digestible by people that are going to use it. 
So it has been boiled down to its basest element so that people 
can understand it.
    Second, we have developed a reading list for people so they 
can look at this information. But the two major hallmarks of 
the first phase are the trainings that have been undertaken and 
the workshop that we have undertaken. The training, so far I 
think we have conducted three. Two were we trained stakeholders 
directly and I think we have trained probably 200 by now, 
stakeholders from around the country in developing inoculation 
messages for specific threats that they face in their 
communities.
    So although my focus for my project is on the far right and 
disinformation specifically, different communities have 
different kinds of threats that face them. So I want to be able 
to train those communities to address those informational 
threats that face them specifically. So we have trained several 
individuals, 200 or so, in how to develop inoculation messages 
for those specific threats.
    For the project, going into phase two, we conducted this 
workshop where we had about I guess 30 of the world's foremost 
experts on right-wing extremism and disinformation and 
identified some of the threats coming down the pipeline in 
terms of disinformation and the kind of violence that might 
come from the American far right, one of which, as I mentioned, 
was the LGBTQ threat.
    Building on that, we will be conducting an experiment where 
we are testing inoculation against this very idea in areas 
around the country where this idea is starting to percolate 
based on searches and search engines that are completely 
anonymized.
    So we have achieved a lot of our foundational work, 
conducted several trainings, we have identified these threats, 
and the last step is to test inoculation based on the threats 
we have identified.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you, Dr. Braddock.
    I now recognize Ranking Member Meijer for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Welcome, sir.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you hear me?
    Chairman Correa. Yes, yes. A for effort.
    Mr. Meijer. But, you know, I really appreciate all the 
witnesses' testimonies today. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, 
for holding this important hearing on the subject.
    I will start with Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske. I appreciate 
you coming in from Michigan today, from the great State of 
Michigan, the greatest State of Michigan.
    With all the grant funding that you have received, the 
Michigan State Police, Michigan Intelligence Operations Center, 
or MIOC, implemented their State-wide Fusion Liaison Officer 
program. The goal of the program of course is to provide 
training to law enforcement, first responders, and private-
sector partners across the State to enhance awareness and also 
strengthen collaboration.
    Now, since the implementation of this training, can you 
share how the information sharing and collaboration has 
improved between the key stakeholders in this space, what have 
you found to be best practices in information sharing, and how 
can other local communities implement similar processes to 
strengthen collaboration?
    Mr. Kelenske. Thank you for your question.
    We have only been able to get one of the two part-time 
contract analysts in place to date. The focus has been mostly 
in the creation and updating of the educational materials for 
the Fusion Liaison Officer trainings and then initial meetings 
with State and Federal partners. We have numerous Fusion 
Liaison Officer training sessions that will occur, with three 
coming up actually in August and September. With the training 
session we had and future trainings, we expand our targeted 
violence and terrorism prevention ecosystem of stakeholders, 
which by its very nature fosters information sharing and 
collaboration through frequent discussions, interactions, and 
our product distribution. Personnel in the sessions not only 
get comfortable with Fusion Center and Fusion Liaison Officer 
personnel who they provide information, but they understand the 
process of the information sharing and benefits of 
collaboration.
    After our first FLO training, our Fusion Liaison Officer 
training session, we did not see an increase in suspicious 
activity reports, but we did see an increase in requests for 
service. But we cannot say if this at this time is attributed 
to the FLO training or some other factors, but we are going to 
continue to look at these impacts from our training session as 
we move forward.
    With over 7,000 individuals, and that is law enforcement, 
emergency management, our private-sector partners, who 
currently receive our daily information bulletins from our 
Fusion Center, and with the increased exposure to the FLO 
program through our trainings, I am certain our information 
sharing and collaboration will continue to flourish and 
increase. We also look to our stakeholders to help us continue 
to identify how we can improve our collaboration and 
information sharing.
    We also have more interaction with agencies and personnel 
on the threat mitigation and targeted violence and terrorism 
prevention through our biweekly meetings with State agencies 
who are interested in behavioral threat assessment teams. 
Additionally, by embedding our DHS CP3 coordinator into our 
Fusion Center, we have more direct and quicker access to DHS 
resources, as well as having our regional coordinator's 
expertise in implementing targeted violence and terrorism 
prevention programs.
    Last, we have engaged with our renowned experts on this 
topic from Michigan State University to collaborate with us and 
to provide guidance as we move forward.
    As far as your question on best practices, first and 
foremost, providing actionable, relevant, and timely 
information to stakeholders. Then build a network of multiple 
disciplines that have regular meetings to engage with each 
other, identify that essential reporting mechanism and how the 
distribution of information should occur, discussing 
appropriate interventions, as well as hold joint training 
sessions that foster trust and demonstrates the effectiveness 
of inter-agency and multi-disciplinary collaboration.
    Then we continue to look at what has been done in Virginia, 
North Carolina, and recently Florida, who has shown that 
behavioral threat assessment management is a best path forward 
with I believe it was a May 2007 study.
    So we will continue to look at our partner States to see 
what are the promising practices as we continue to move 
forward, sir.
    Mr. Meijer. This is the last question.
    Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske, you know, you mentioned in 
your testimony the importance to protecting privacy, civil 
rights, civil liberties, throughout the work of behavioral 
threat assessment management team.
    You know, obviously, in the State of Michigan we saw the--
just in recent months the acquittal of four individuals who 
were accused of participating in the kidnapping plot against 
the Governor. It is in the realm of domestic violent extremism, 
making sure we are protecting civil liberties, we are not 
getting to the point, which has been alleged of conducting 
entrapment operations. Now, some of that obviously is a little 
bit more right-ward than kind-of the focus on the prevention 
side, but could you provide more details into that process and 
how your Department ensures that, you know, in the course of 
doing their work they are also protecting, you know, civil 
liberties, civil rights, and just the privacy of American 
citizens more broadly?
    Mr. Kelenske. Yes. I can provide a lot more information. I 
believe we have our intelligence operations operation center 
policy privacy, is a 6-page document that is posted on-line. I 
can ensure that that gets sent to you. It is a public-facing 
document. But we take that very serious. We look at that all 
the time to ensure those protections are in place, as well as 
an agency it is embedded in our official orders or policies to 
ensure that all members continually have those protections at 
the front of their mind. But I can provide you that document, 
sir, or the link to that document if that is OK.
    Mr. Meijer. I appreciate it, Lieutenant Colonel, and, Mr. 
Chairman, with that I yield back.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you, Mr. Meijer.
    I now recognize Mr. Bishop for 5 minutes of questions.
    Mr. Bishop.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Braddock, I would like to ask a couple of questions of 
you. One of the other witnesses at least related, how much have 
you received in grants from DHS for this sort of research?
    Mr. Braddock. This particular grant was $568,000 I believe, 
and change. Somewhere in that realm.
    Mr. Bishop. How about over the course of time? How much in 
total from DHS?
    Mr. Braddock. In terms of this grant or overall in my 
personal research?
    Mr. Bishop. Why don't you first do this grant and then 
overall.
    Mr. Braddock. This grant I think we are about halfway 
through the money that we spent, and overall DHS just add 
another $5,000 to it for a grant that I got in graduate school 
for my dissertation.
    Mr. Bishop. So about a half million, give or take a few 
thousand? Is that what you are saying in total?
    Mr. Braddock. Give or take. Yes, I would say somewhere 
between $550,000 and $580,000.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. One thing you said in your testimony, and I 
saw it in the written testimony as well, is that you credit DHS 
for its program here for the use of ``measures of program 
effectiveness''. You say that is kind-of rare in the field. 
Then you say ``because of this, the field is rife with pundits 
posing as professionals''.
    Mr. Braddock. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Bishop. I take note of that because I am concerned 
about that, especially with the recent hullabaloo about the 
disinformation governance board and the like and the way I see 
that.
    But let me ask you about this, on May 16 you had a tweet 
thread out there that I took a look at addressing what you call 
stochastic terrorism.
    Mr. Braddock. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Bishop. Looking into it, it is a term that has been 
bandied about the last 5 years or so. I mean it has been a 
little earlier than that, but not much, but 5 years in active 
use. You describe it as ``a form of incited terrorism whereby a 
communicator has access to a platform and big audience''.
    Mr. Braddock. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Bishop. ``When the communicator uses coded language 
that promoted violence within an audience of millions, at least 
one is likely to interpret it as a call to arms''. Then you go 
on to say--that is the end of your quote, but you say you 
really can't predict who, when, or where, but as a matter of 
probability, at least one person will view it that way and 
might act on it.
    Mr. Braddock. Correct.
    Mr. Bishop. So that is what you described stochastic 
terrorism as. Then you--I mean you distinguished that from 
incitement, right? I mean the law already recognizes that if 
you----
    Mr. Braddock. Absolutely.
    Mr. Bishop [continuing]. Call for violence immediately, 
that is incitement. That is not protected. But the line that 
Brandonberg v. U.S. drew by the Supreme Court was it is not--
you can even talk about violence, calling for violence. You 
can't call for immediate violence. That is incitement. 
Otherwise it is protected, isn't that right?
    Mr. Braddock. That is correct, yes.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. So then you go on in that tweet thread and 
you say in one that President Trump is a stochastic terrorist 
with respect to the January 6 riot at the Capitol, right?
    Mr. Braddock. Correct.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. So he is a terrorist. Then you also say 
that with respect to the 2019 El Paso Walmart mass shooting of 
people of Hispanic descent, that President Trump was a 
stochastic terrorist of that event, right?
    Mr. Braddock. Right. Among others, yes.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. Then you have a tweet here that says--ends 
with this--it says--well, let me just pull it up--it says 
Carlson is a danger to U.S. domestic security. You are talking 
about Tucker Carlson, right?
    Mr. Braddock. I am.
    Mr. Bishop. Your conclusion is that Tucker Carlson is a 
terrorist.
    Mr. Braddock. Stochastic terrorist.
    Mr. Bishop. OK.
    Mr. Braddock. I distinguish between an activist terrorist, 
someone who engages in violence, and a stochastic terrorist as 
the inciter not meeting the legal definition for incitement.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. It is not an inciter in law, but one in 
your definition, a stochastic terrorist. I guess I will keep 
using that term--it is hard to say stochastic. It is a 
statistical term, right?
    Mr. Braddock. I know, it is annoying. Yes, yes, it is a 
statistics term that I didn't come up with. The term stochastic 
terrorist came up--I think it emerged somewhere around 2011-
2012.
    I actually had a discussion with somebody earlier--I just 
did a podcast where I say I don't actually like the terms 
stochastic terrorist because terrorism----
    Mr. Bishop. I am not a big fan either.
    Mr. Braddock [continuing]. Is an activity. What is that?
    Mr. Bishop. I am not a big fan either.
    Let me go on with that.
    Mr. Braddock. Go for it. Yes, yes.
    Mr. Bishop. So the word stochastic is when--you know, you 
are familiar with the Chuck Schumer statements about Kavanaugh 
and Gorsuch, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay 
the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with 
these awful decisions. Is Chuck Schumer a stochastic terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. I would say that one walks the line. There is 
another one from the left--I forget who it was--that said it, 
but somebody on the left a couple of--maybe it was last year--
talked about getting in the face and getting aggressive with 
police, or something along those lines. I forget----
    Mr. Bishop. Like Maxine Waters, how about that? Let us make 
sure we show up wherever we have to show up and you push back 
on them and you tell them they are not welcome anymore 
anywhere. Is she a stochastic terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. I have made that argument.
    Mr. Bishop. Is Joe Biden--after the attempt on Kavanaugh's 
life said merely that evening that if--he went on late night 
comedy and predicted a mini revolution if the Supreme Court 
overturns Roe. Is President Biden a stochastic terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. I wouldn't think that meets the line, no. But 
you mentioned a point earlier too where it all relates to data 
and collecting data as to whether one connects to the other. 
That is the research I am trying to conduct now. I am actually 
not related to the project I am testifying on now, but another 
research project I am working on is looking at the connection 
between the two.
    Something I think you are alluding to but I want to 
distinguish is stochastic terrorism isn't illegal. Just because 
the term is in it doesn't mean that it is illegal. Incitement 
is illegal. That doesn't mean the phenomena doesn't exist.
    Mr. Bishop. Well, that is what I am concerned about. I 
don't know if the Chairman might indulge me a little bit since 
it doesn't look like we have got a long train of people, but 
let me just ask this.
    Chairman Correa. Go ahead.
    Mr. Bishop. The end of that tweet thread I was talking 
about says one more thing, I am a firm believer that 1A--you 
are referring to the First Amendment--is sacrosanct.
    Mr. Braddock. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Bishop. But there is a debate that needs to be had 
about whether and how stochastic terrorism is allowed to occur.
    Mr. Braddock. Sure.
    Mr. Bishop. So you are talking about some restriction that 
by your own definition is different than where the Supreme 
Court is about what is protected by the First Amendment, aren't 
you?
    Mr. Braddock. It is not a legal restriction I am arguing 
for. The arguments I make for against stochastic terrorism are 
building of resilience against that particular strategic 
communication because it is a strategic form of communication. 
Although it is not legal incitement, it can be argued to relate 
to the behaviors that take place later. Though it is not 
illegal, it doesn't mean that we can't do counter persuasion 
against it. It is a strategic communication device like any 
other.
    Mr. Bishop. So sort-of last line--last point that can take 
me back to that tweet I showed you.
    Mr. Braddock. Sure.
    Mr. Bishop. Have you been paid taxpayer dollars by DHS to 
study Tucker Carlson as a stochastic terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. No.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. Has that been a feature of your research? 
Have you researched Tucker Carlson?
    Mr. Braddock. I mean informally. For my own edification I 
have.
    Mr. Bishop. Sufficient to the point that you are willing to 
say on Twitter that he is a stochastic terrorist for the 
Buffalo massacre, right?
    Mr. Braddock. I am willing to say it on Congressional 
record, yes.
    Mr. Bishop. But you haven't researched to quantify anything 
or to come up with a statistical relationship?
    Mr. Braddock. There are researches--I haven't done that 
argument----
    Chairman Correa. Mr. Bishop, I am going to----
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your 
indulgence.
    Chairman Correa. We are going to have a second set of 
questions if you so wish.
    But let me get to Ms.----
    Mr. Braddock. Can I make one last statement, Chairman?
    Chairman Correa. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. This is a 
good discussion. Go ahead.
    Mr. Braddock. No, it is.
    Chairman Correa. Make your point.
    Mr. Braddock. Mr. Bishop, these are the exact discussions 
that I am talking about in that tweet thread that I want to 
take place. The fact that these discussions can actually take 
place and we can find where a line is, or if there is a line, 
that debate needs to take place. This is what I enjoy about 
these sorts of things.
    It is not meant to be--it is not meant to mean that 
somebody should be arrested for saying something, but these 
sorts of words do have implications. We have 100 years of 
research showing that words have implications. Even if they are 
not legally actionable, they need to be talked about. These are 
the discussions that I like to have with both sides.
    Mr. Bishop. The Chairman has been very gracious to allow me 
to go on.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you.
    Mr. Bishop. I look forward to maybe taking it up with you 
for a little further--if I get another chance, Mr. Braddock.
    Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Correa. OK. You got it.
    Mrs. Harshbarger, welcome. You get a little bit over 5 
minutes. How is that? Go ahead.
    Mrs. Harshbarger. Hi, I am good. I am good to go. Thank 
you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the panel for being here today.
    You know, I have a question about how you measure the 
program effectiveness. You know, from what I understand, DHS 
defines targeted violence as any intentional act against a pre-
identified target based on that target's perceived identity or 
affiliation that is intended to intimate, coerce, or generate 
publicity about the perpetrator's grievance.
    I guess my question to any of the panel is how do you 
measure the program effectiveness and performance standards? 
How do you integrate that into this TVTP grant program? How did 
having a performance standard and accountability measure help 
you evaluate your projects and improve the effectiveness of 
your projects? Because how do you know something is successful 
if you don't have outcomes and measures put in place to measure 
that program?
    That is to anyone on the panel.
    Mr. Braddock. I will go very quickly, because I don't want 
to take everybody's time here.
    In mine there are several measures of effectiveness, the 
primary one being the inoculation, actual treatments. You can 
pre- and post-test people to see how they feel about a 
particular topic before and after they receive the inoculation 
treatments. That is the plan with the experimental phase of the 
overall project.
    In terms of the trainings that I have done and those sorts 
of things, we have actually conducted surveys of people who 
have gone through the trainings who have intentions about 
inoculation, who understand it, who believe it would be useful 
for their specific communities. We can actually do statistical 
analyses of their responses to see whether there is improvement 
in what they feel about the actual strategy moving forward. 
Those have all shown positive improvement.
    In terms of the second part, the--what I mentioned 
earlier--the actual inoculation treatments, those are based on 
controlled experimentation, which in social science is the gold 
standard, but hard to come across. So there is several 
different measures that I use. Again, one of the I think 
cornerstones of the TVTP program is that it demands these kinds 
of evaluations as we do these sorts of thing.
    Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes. Absolutely.
    Does anybody else have a comment for us?
    Mr. Bishop. I thought you were trying to yield, Diane. I am 
sorry.
    Mrs. Harshbarger. No, it is OK, Dan.
    Ms. Khan. So I was going to talk about for our programs we 
actually use pre- and post-questionnaires and various feedback 
and survey instruments very specifically to measure the shift 
in knowledge and willingness to act based on information that 
they have received. So, for example, for our Tackle! program 
what we started off with is--and this is when you mentioned 
actually the definitions of--who knows what the definitions 
even mean. So we actually asked the participants that. It turns 
out that 94 percent of the participants had heard the terms 
domestic terrorism and targeted violence and yet only 25 
percent knew what they meant.
    Same thing we asked about public health approach, what is 
that? Barely 20 percent knew of the concept and about 20 
percent had never even heard of it before.
    So you can imagine, right, that when we are talking about 
what is targeted violence, what is domestic terrorism, what is 
public health approach, mass majority of our participants had 
no idea. These were the elected officials and the leaders who 
are there to protect us. So there is this--for us it was this 
huge awareness that--recognition that awareness is essential. 
Without the awareness there is no way of actually doing 
prevention or having a public health approach or any of this 
stuff if people don't even know what it is they are trying to 
do.
    So that for us was important.
    We also found through our training that after our 
training--and I mentioned this earlier also--is that we found 
after our training over 85 percent of the participants agreed 
or strongly agreed that they now--there is a certain section of 
skills to actually, to be upstanders and knowing what to do in 
various types of situations and running through case studies 
and role plays, and they found that they were actually ready to 
do it. This was an increase of over 37 percent. That is a huge 
increase because we are talking about, you know, 6 hours live 
training, 2 hours on-line, right. So a total of 8 hours virtual 
training. It is 1 day of training, which caused this huge 
increase in their willingness and they actually--the skills of 
that they had.
    Then the other thing, which we were checking against is the 
willingness to act. Because it is one thing to say oh, I know 
what to do, but the question is, am I willing to do it? There 
we also saw that after their training over about 75 percent--73 
percent were willing to actually engage with friends and 
family.
    When we are talking about upstanders, right, in this case 
we are not talking about here is a random stranger. This is not 
about the DHS like see something, say something. When we are 
talking about up upstanders, it is how can people who you know 
within your own network recognize if an individual is going 
through any sort of distress, is any crisis in their life, and 
then how to get them help way before they actually are trying 
to get toward violence. So for that, so you want the friends 
and family, you want our own networks to be one of, hey, 
something is happening but what to do about it. There we saw 
that, again, post-training there was an increase. There was 
almost a 20 percent increase.
    So we did--yes, we are absolutely using metrics. We have 
to----
    Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes, yes. I know that--did you want to 
say something, sir? Mr. Kim.
    Mr. Kim. Thank you, Representative Harshbarger, I did.
    One of the things I think that is interesting about the 
REACCH Program, which is--it stands for Reconciliation, 
Education, and Counseling Crimes of Hate--is we are dealing 
specifically with criminal defendants who are being placed on 
probation and are going to be completing the program as a term 
of probation.
    I think there are two interesting things that we can talk 
about here when we are talking about metrics. The easiest 
metric is going to be whether or not they further offend. So we 
are seeking to get permission to track them for 5 years to see 
whether or not they commit offense and then, if they did commit 
an offense, did they target the same group that they targeted 
the first time. It is not so much recidivism in terms of global 
recidivism, but targeted and selected recidivism that this 
program is about. I do feel that having the ability to check 
their criminal record is clear quantifiable empirical factor 
that we can look at.
    The other thing I would like to mention to this committee 
is this program is making a deliberate effort to bring victim 
reconciliation into the arena. When I say that, one of the 
target participants that is going to be working with us, he was 
White, he was with his wife, she was White, and they ended up 
all over the National press because they came across an African 
American man and his ethnic wife and they got out of the car 
and they started saying things like only White lives matter. 
This was all being recorded by the victim's wife. What is 
interesting here is even though the court only has jurisdiction 
over the defendant, the individual who struck the truck with 
the shovel, after talking to him and his attorney and saying we 
would like you to participate in this program, he and his wife 
have both agreed to participate in victim reconciliation with 
the victims. In this instance the victims, the man and his 
wife, have agreed to sit down with the defendants--well, a 
singular defendant. What is interesting I think there is, you 
know, metrics--I mean when we try to make it quantifiable can 
be very difficult, but qualitatively here, having the victim 
and the defendant sit down to talk about what happened, for the 
defendant to be given the opportunity to apologize and for the 
victim to be given the opportunity to accept, goes way beyond 
the defendant and the victim, it involves the entire community, 
whether it is a Jewish community that is involved, whether it 
is the African American community that is involved, whatever 
community it is.
    So I would like to point that out. Sometimes there are 
qualitative factors that are difficult to measure, but they do 
yield I think significant results.
    Thank you for your question.
    Mrs. Harshbarger. Thank you, Mr. Kim.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you very much.
    Any other Members that wish to ask their 5 minutes of 
questions?
    Seeing none, would you all be interested in a second run of 
questions?
    Mr. Bishop. I would, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Correa. So would I. OK, let us move to a second 
round. I will start with a set of questions. I am going to try 
to hold to 5 minutes.
    I am going to ask Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske a question 
and thoughts if I may.
    Lieutenant Colonel, you are running part of the Fusion 
Center in Michigan. We here in Orange County, California also 
have a Fusion Center and they do some great things, from cyber 
to intel, trying to prevent some bad stuff from happening. One 
of the concerns that I have heard from Fusion Centers is the 
communication not be as good as it should be and that sometimes 
communication is from the Feds now, but not--or I should say 
from the bottom up and not from the bottom back to the Fusion 
Centers.
    Any thoughts?
    Mr. Kelenske. I think we have seen over the years that the 
communication ebbs and flows. I will say, we are--have been 
doing this since right after 9/11 and we are light years ahead 
of where we were. I think everyone would agree with that. But I 
do feel that the communication is effective. We can always do 
better.
    I also think the communication between the Fusion Centers 
throughout our Nation, to include the work that the National 
Fusion Center Association is doing to keep everyone together is 
also very, very good, sir.
    We always can do better. Sometimes we are limited by the 
information that gets pushed up to us that is down at the local 
level. That is what kind-of delays some of the actions that we 
take.
    Chairman Correa. Can you elaborate on that specific point 
please?
    Mr. Kelenske. The last one, sir, about getting the 
information pushed out?
    Chairman Correa. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Kelenske. Yes. So this is exactly why we want to get 
our Fusion Liaison Officer program in place. Because that is 
going to put people who are trained in the process of 
identifying information that is relevant to the Fusion Centers 
so then we can look at that information and say, yes, we need 
to do further on this or, no, that is Constitutionally-
protected, there is nothing more to do here. But we have to get 
that information pushed up to us, whether it is from our Fusion 
Liaison Officers or through the general public, through the see 
something, say something. In Michigan we have an OK to say 
school tip line. That is what generates our suspicious activity 
reports.
    Chairman Correa. Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske, sir, if I may 
interrupt you. You just said something interesting, which is if 
you have information that is Constitutionally-protected, in the 
context of a possible clear and present danger, how do you 
resolve that issue?
    Mr. Kelenske. Well, if it is a clear and present danger, I 
guess I would question what is protected in that regard. A lot 
of times--not a lot of times--sometimes we might get 
information that somebody may not--they could even have just a 
beef with their neighbor and they push that up to our Fusion 
Center. That is not something for us to act on. That is very 
different than information that we actually look at, has a 
criminal nexus, and we need to look through more.
    Chairman Correa. So in a situation where you do have that 
balancing act of Constitutionally-protected activity versus the 
possibility of something terrible coming to happen, you do have 
a mechanism to resolve that and hopefully make the right 
decision?
    Mr. Kelenske. Yes. Our Fusion Center personnel, as well as 
the Fusion Center personnel throughout our Nation, are trained 
very well and very much understand what they can and can't do 
based on the Code of Federal Regulations.
    Chairman Correa. Now, you know, we look back at 9/11 and 
because of the misinformation, the silos that we operated 
before 9/11, Homeland Security was created to eliminate a lot 
of those silos. You just said that things could always be 
better. I guess my open question to you would be how do we make 
sure we continue to improve on our communication? Because I am 
bothered. You all do a great job. You have got thousands and 
thousands of fact and data points and you have got to figure 
out what this stuff means, but any thoughts on how we can 
specifically improve on what you do within the Constitutional 
confines of assuring that we prevent the next horrific thing 
from happening?
    Mr. Kelenske. Yes. I think we continue to leave egos at the 
door and I think we continue the open dialog and collaboration 
not only with local, State, and Federal partners, but also with 
our private-sector and non-Governmental organizations, as well 
as those that are responsible for overseeing civil rights, 
civil liberties, and our Constitutional protections. We all 
have to be engaged with each other.
    Chairman Correa. Looks like my time expired.
    So what I am going to do is hand it over to our Ranking 
Member Meijer for 5 minutes of questions.
    Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Chairman Correa. Again, I appreciate 
the second round of questioning.
    You know, I know Ms. Khan was talking about just over the 
overall funding levels and some of those frustrations and 
concerns, you know, that the money can only go so far. 
Obviously some of the goals of grant programs are to kind-of 
spur additional insights and information and hearings like one 
we are having today where we can evaluate what potentially that 
number needs to be.
    But I guess, again, to Lieutenant Colonel Kelenske, you 
know, the training that has been provided by the newly-created 
Fusion Liaison Office program, how in your view has that helped 
deter acts of terrorism or violent threats in your communities? 
As a corollary, how would an increase in funding allow you to 
more efficiently achieve the desired outcomes of your program?
    Please, I would be curious to your thoughts.
    Mr. Kelenske. It is a great question, sir.
    We have only had the one initial training. I will say that 
one individual I know of--and I am sure there may have been 
others--from the initial training, did already provide 
information to our field analysts to follow up on. This was a 
result of providing not only the training but providing 
attendees field analyst locations and contact information that 
facilitates that reporting, collaboration, and investigation. 
While nothing came from this report, it does demonstrate that 
the training is providing an effective identification and 
reporting process.
    To your point, or your question on increased funding, that 
allows us to appropriately resource gaps we continue to 
identify as we move through this process. This could include 
increasing staffing for tip lines and our watch desk personnel 
or Fusion Liaison Officers at the local and State level, State-
wide implementation of our Behavioral Threat Assessment 
Management teams from the local and State level--we at least 
want one per State Police district--provide trainings for 
additional skilled workers in mental health--that is a 
continual gap--host more training sessions on preventing 
targeted violence and terrorism prevention and increase 
community engagement and education.
    Once the Behavioral Threat Assessment Management team or 
teams are in place, we also need to make sure that we have the 
bandwidth to handle the requests for service effectively and 
efficiently because we know with training and more community 
engagement and education we will get more, or an increase in, 
requests for service.
    Mr. Meijer. Obviously the question of ultimate 
responsibility in funding source between State and Federal is 
something for us to kind-of discuss in a bit more detail in 
other fora.
    But, you know, I guess kind-of turning back to what Ms. 
Khan was talking about earlier--and I would welcome if anyone 
else wants to address this as well, more than happy--but what 
we have heard from many in the community that are applying for 
grants across the board, you know, not necessarily under DHS, 
but that can be a very cumbersome process. I would just be 
curious for your own experiences, how challenging was the 
application for TVTP funding and how did you find that relative 
to other, you know, grant processes that you have undertaken 
throughout your other kind-of Federal interactions?
    Ms. Khan. So from our perspective, the TVTP grant was 
fairly standard. This is not very different from any other 
Federal grant, even State-level grants. The requirements for 
what you have to write is actually not too bad. So the process 
itself, I think it just--there are instructions and you have to 
follow it. Anytime you are applying for any Federal or any 
government grant you have to follow the instructions. As long 
as you are doing it--and they have like time lines, make sure 
you do this 2 weeks ahead time, a week ahead. So as long as you 
are following it, you are all good.
    So I think there is just a place where you have to, you 
know, dot your Is and cross your Ts because you are dealing 
with the Government. I think it is not just that once the grant 
process is easy, reality is that if you want to get the 
funding, you have like 200 pages of compliance. But that is 
just the Federal process and you have to make sure that all 
your systems----
    Mr. Meijer. I see a lot of heads nodding on the compliance 
front, yes.
    Ms. Khan. You see, it just is the fact of life when you are 
dealing with any sort of Government money. It is no different 
from anything else.
    Mr. Meijer. OK.
    Mr. Chairman, I see my time is close to expiring, so I 
yield back.
    Thank you again.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you, Mr. Meijer.
    Now I recognize Mr. Bishop for 5 minutes, sir--5 minutes.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Let us go back, Mr. Braddock, to what we were talking 
about, stochastic terrorism. I----
    Mr. Braddock. Let us do it.
    Mr. Bishop. Your paper says that--your testimony says at 
present I am working on a research project geared toward 
understanding how disinformation and conspiracies perpetuated 
by far-right extremists persuade their intended audiences and 
more importantly how we can prevent these audiences from 
engaging in violence in support of these conspiracies and 
disinformation.
    Mr. Braddock. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Bishop. So the concept of stochastic terrorism is part 
of that theory, right?
    Mr. Braddock. Not necessarily. Not necessarily.
    Mr. Bishop. Has any of your research for DHS addressed the 
concept of stochastic terrorism?
    Mr. Braddock. No.
    Mr. Bishop. OK. Let us talk about this just a little 
further.
    Mr. Braddock. Sure.
    Mr. Bishop. So stochastic, from what I read, means random.
    Mr. Braddock. Well, random, although guaranteed to occur. 
Statistics means it--out of statistics it means it is random 
where and when it will occur, but it will reliably occur.
    The best way to explain it----
    Mr. Bishop. Well, but the difference between--I mean if 
something is random, it happens without regard to a causal 
factor. But when you talk about stochastic terrorism, you are 
attributing to a Donald Trump or a Tucker Carlson, they 
caused----
    Mr. Braddock. But what you said is not true. You can 
attribute something to random. If you remember in biology class 
or--biology class is the best example to use it. When I was in 
biology class in high school you would take a petri dish and 
you would sneeze into the petri dish and then you would close 
the petri dish. Then 3 days later bacteria would grow 
somewhere. You can't predict when and where, but it would grow 
somewhere. That is attributable to the sneeze.
    A better example, maybe not in biology class, is if you are 
sitting on your front porch in North Carolina, right--North 
Carolina, and you are looking out on the horizon. I know it 
gets hot in North Carolina, I have been to Chapel Hill plenty 
of times. You see dark clouds rolling in on your porch. You 
know lightning is going to strike somewhere. You can't predict 
when and where, but it is going to strike somewhere. That is 
attributable to the heat meeting the cold.
    Mr. Bishop. So, OK. So we are all far afield pretty much. I 
will leave for the moment for somebody else who is watching to 
decide whether there is a concept is different between 
randomness and something caused by an efficient cause.
    But let us leave that aside for one moment. Let me just get 
a couple of more examples.
    You said you had no hesitancy to conclude that President 
Trump is a stochastic terrorist with respect to January 6 and 
with respect to the El Paso shooter. You said that Tucker 
Carlson is a stochastic terrorist with respect to the Buffalo 
attack. But then you said you thought Chuck Schumer walked the 
line when he said what he said about you won't know what hit 
you when addressed it to Supreme Court Justices. Why does that 
walk the line?
    Mr. Braddock. Because I don't know what hit you, isn't as 
direct as there are people replacing you in your country or 
isn't as direct as we are going to walk down Pennsylvania 
Avenue and then not walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with those 
people.
    Mr. Bishop. OK.
    Mr. Braddock. These are implied directives.
    Mr. Bishop. Let me keep going. Maxine Waters. I started 
talking about that where she said wherever these people show 
up, you push back on them, you tell them they are not welcome 
anymore anywhere. That is not stochastic terrorism? Is that 
what I understand?
    Mr. Braddock. Did you ignore what I said earlier? I said 
yes, that would be.
    Mr. Bishop. Oh, you said Maxine Waters is a stochastic 
terrorist? OK.
    Mr. Braddock. I said these are incidents of stochastic 
terrorism.
    Mr. Bishop. How about this, Eric--well, let me ask you--I 
am going to ask you one more. Eric Swalwell says the 
Republicans won't stop with banning abortion, they want to ban 
interracial marriage. Is he a stochastic terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. No. Not out of that quote.
    Mr. Bishop. Nothing would inspire anybody to do anything? 
Let me ask this, was Frank James, the guy in the Buffalo--and 
New York subway who shot in the subway and I don't remember 
what all else he did--was he inspired by stochastic terrorism 
of say Black Lives Matter and critical race theorists?
    Mr. Braddock. I am not familiar with the Frank James case. 
You are going to have to explain to me what happened and the 
quotes you are attributing to his actions.
    Mr. Bishop. You are not aware of the Brooklyn subway attack 
that just happened about 2 or 3 months ago?
    Mr. Braddock. No, I am not familiar with it.
    Mr. Bishop. All right. Let me see. OK. When Joe Biden 
said--I think I may have done that one--Hillary Clinton on the 
Dobbs leak. This decision will kill and subjugate women. What 
an utter disgrace. Is that stochastic terrorism?
    Mr. Braddock. There is no implied directive. If you can't 
see the difference between mentioning something that will occur 
and an implied directive, like we are going to walk down 
Pennsylvania Avenue, one implies that there is some justifiable 
motion toward an action. I could talk about the theory that 
underpins why my argument is that these certain cases are 
stochastic terrorism versus others aren't.
    Mr. Bishop. Our time probably doesn't allow for that. I got 
20 seconds.
    Let me just try to get at it one other way. Is calling 
Republicans White supremacists itself a form of stochastic 
terrorism?
    Mr. Braddock. No.
    Mr. Bishop. Hmm. How about the----
    Mr. Braddock. It is just like calling Democrats communists 
and socialists isn't stochastic terrorism.
    Mr. Bishop. All right. The woman who runs the account on 
Twitter, Libs of TikTok, Washington Post identified her, said 
she was a domestic terrorist. She has had a spate of death 
threats as a consequence. Is Washington Post a stochastic 
terrorist?
    Mr. Braddock. Through identifying her? No. It has to be an 
implied directive.
    Chairman Correa. I will allow you that last one, Mr. 
Bishop. We are out of time, but go ahead Dr. Braddock. Go ahead 
and finish answering that one.
    Mr. Braddock. I can do this all day, Mr. Chairman. But that 
last one----
    Chairman Correa. OK.
    Mr. Braddock [continuing]. There needs to be an implied 
directive toward what is happening.
    Again, I am more than happy to send information to the 
panel and to Mr. Bishop. Like I said, I like having these 
conversations. I know it is kind-of a gotcha game, but I enjoy 
having these conversations because ultimately it means less 
violence from both sides.
    But I will be happy to send some material----
    Chairman Correa. Later--and after the hearing----
    Mr. Braddock. I am sorry?
    Chairman Correa. Dr. Braddock, after the hearing you are 
more than welcome to supply written answers to any of the 
questions that the Members may have.
    Mr. Braddock. I really actually want to. For Mr. Bishop, I 
know we don't have time, but I will send you the materials that 
link implied messaging to actions so you have a better idea 
where I am coming from because it is kind-of a lecture. I know 
that Government time is valuable.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Dr. Braddock. Thank you.
    Mr. Braddock. Thank you, Mr. Bishop.
    Chairman Correa. I look forward to getting that 
information.
    Now, I am going to go back to--Ms. Titus has joined us, is 
that correct? Ms. Dina Titus.
    Ms. Titus. I am here, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Correa. Madam, how are you?
    Ms. Titus. Oh, I am good. Thank you. I apologize for being 
late. Today is election day in Nevada.
    Chairman Correa. That is what I figured. I heard that you 
were busy today so I want to give you 5 minutes if you can to 
ask the panel of witnesses some questions.
    Welcome, ma'am.
    Ms. Titus. Well, thank you.
    As you know, we are currently involved in an increased 
domestic threat environment and this is due to a number of 
factors. But one thing that has been cited is the forthcoming 
decision by the Supreme Court on abortion. So I wrote a letter, 
I was joined by some Members of this committee and the Chairman 
and Chairman Thompson, to the Secretary of Homeland Security 
asking them to please remain vigilant and come up with a plan 
to deal with this and kind-of get ahead of the game instead of 
reacting.
    But I would like to go back to Dr. Braddock to talk about 
those some with his research to counter disinformation 
campaigns. One of the big ones from some of the right-wing 
groups is great replacement theory. That is being used in the 
context of the abortion issue. So all those things kind-of come 
together.
    I wonder if you could talk about how we can prevent on-line 
forums from perpetuating untruths or how can tackle the 
situation if we are expecting a rise in dangerous attacks? 
Could you just share some of your research or findings on those 
kind of topics?
    Mr. Braddock. Sure. Absolutely.
    Mr. Bishop will like this, this applied to both the left 
and the right. Inoculation is useful for any kind of ideology 
in my research that advocates for violence. The idea is to 
prevent ultimately violence that perpetuates from a violent 
extremist ideology.
    So I mentioned earlier kind-of what inoculation is, 
attitudinal inoculation. It is a strategic counter-persuasive 
strategy whereby there are two major elements to it. In one you 
essentially warn a target who hasn't been exposed to an idea 
before, or has been exposed to it minimally, that there is a 
third actor out there that is third actor out there who is 
trying to use them for their own devices and may try to get 
them to engage in behaviors they might not otherwise engage in.
    Being Americans especially, Americans very much value their 
own autonomy, so when we think somebody is going to try to 
persuade us, we really don't like it and we kind-of become 
resolute in our beliefs and attitudes. That is what I really 
like about it, is because you can approach people, and I have 
approached people, and said listen, I may not agree with your 
political points of view, that is OK. You can have whatever 
beliefs and attitude you have, I just want to make sure you 
don't engage in violence. There are people out there who would 
have you engage in violence. That is step one.
    Step two is to present them with counter-arguments against 
what they are going to encounter.
    Now, my research and 60 years of research in other context 
has shown that when you do this, there are a couple of pretty 
cool things that happen. No. 1, they experience what is called 
reactance in response to that. So what they do--I guess the 
best way to explain this is have you ever been in a store and 
you just want to window shop and somebody comes up to you and 
wants to sell you something, that weird gross feeling where you 
want them to just go away, that is what they experience when 
they encounter the propaganda. So they get angry and they 
counter argue against it. That is No. 1.
    No. 2 is that they attribute less credibility to the person 
that might try to persuade them down the line. They think they 
are less credible.
    What I found in my research, and the most important thing 
for me, is No. 3. They report significantly less intention to 
support that group or that person with violence. They might 
still ideologically believe whatever they want to believe, but 
they report less intention to get violent on the back of it.
    So I argue, and I have argued, that one of the key things 
that we need with respect to disinformation, in the United 
States and elsewhere, is some comprehensive media literacy in 
schools to help kids understand when they are encountering 
information that might be false. It is not their fault, it is 
not school districts' fault, it is not the Government's fault 
that we don't have this, it is just that digital technologies 
have advanced so quickly and web 2.0 technologies, where people 
can create their own content, has advanced so quickly we 
haven't been able to keep up with it.
    So we need to arm people who don't have the capacity for 
identifying true versus false information from anywhere. They 
don't have that capacity.We need to help them with that. I 
think that inoculation, at least from the research that I have 
shown thus far, would benefit that.
    Now, there are boundaries around inoculation, like there is 
with any counter-persuasion strategy or any communication 
strategy, but that is what research is for. That is why we are 
parsing it out.
    Ms. Titus. The Department of Homeland Security is paying 
attention to this? There are grants for this or? How can we 
pursue that suggestion?
    Mr. Braddock. I hope they are. They gave me more than a 
half million dollars to research it, so I hope they are paying 
attention. But----
    Ms. Titus. I don't want your findings just to go on a shelf 
somewhere.
    Mr. Braddock. No, I am actually--that is one of the things 
that--we mentioned John Wilder a couple of times, my program 
manager. One of the things that we are very cognizant of is 
this needs to reach the people that need to use it. So I have 
conducted a couple of trainings already with people all around 
the country, right wing, left wing, and everything in between 
to help them develop inoculation messages in their communities 
against the specific disinformation problems that they face. 
From what I have learned from those individuals, after they 
have undergone the training, they have reported back to me that 
they intend on using it and they have talked about the 
different kinds of disinformation they face. It is not just 
coming from what my focus is on this project, being the right 
wing, they see it coming from all over the place. They want to 
help prevent people from being taken in by it and, most 
importantly, engaging in violence on behalf of it.
    I am interested in preventing violence. Beliefs and 
attitudes, that is--people can believe whatever they want. 
These inoculation trainings were meant to help people to help 
others, prevent them from engaging in violence on behalf of any 
kind of disinformation they encounter.
    Ms. Titus. Very interesting.
    Well, thank you very much for allowing me to come back, Mr. 
Chairman. Learned a lot.
    Chairman Correa. Thank you very much, ma'am. Good luck 
today in your election.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you.
    Chairman Correa. Mrs. Harshbarger, are you there? Would you 
like to ask 5 minutes of questions, ma'am? Going once, going 
twice.
    I want to thank the witnesses for their testimony today and 
the Members for their questions. That was a good hearing today.
    Members of the committee may have additional questions for 
the witnesses and we ask that you respond to those questions 
expeditiously in writing.
    The Chair reminds the Members that the committee record 
will remain open for another 10 days.
    Without objection, the committee stands adjourned. Thank 
you very much. Good afternoon to all.
    [Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]



                            A P P E N D I X

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     Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Kurt Braddock
    Question. Each of the grant projects you represent were funded as 
part of the Department of Homeland Security's whole-of-society approach 
to violence prevention, which emphasizes involvement from community 
leaders across multiple disciplines. Cooperation from community 
partners will be critical to ensuring these projects achieve the most 
impact.
    In the execution of your grant project, how have you worked to 
ensure buy-in from the communities you're working in and partnering 
with?
    Answer. Thank you for your question; I am very pleased to respond 
to someone from my home State.
    One of the cornerstones of my project is the development and 
implementation of attitudinal inoculation campaigns geared toward 
preventing the assimilation of right-wing disinformation and/or violent 
extremist ideologies based on that disinformation. Attitudinal 
inoculation is based on the premise that if someone is warned about an 
imminent effort to persuade them and are offered counter-arguments that 
challenge those persuasive efforts, they will be better equipped to 
become resilient to persuasive messages. For this project, participants 
will be warned about potential exposure to right-wing extremist ideas 
based on disinformation and provided counter-arguments to challenge it. 
One of the benefits of this approach is that individuals are approached 
as a potential ally rather than an adversary. In effect, participants 
are told that we are aware that they are not dangerous--and that we 
want to help prevent them from becoming dangerous. This is different 
from many approaches to counter-radicalization which have been 
ineffective due to their accusatory approach. Therein lies one of the 
key factors that facilitates buy-in from vulnerable communities.
    Many communities in which disinformation and extremism are 
pervasive are skeptical of counter-radicalization messaging approaches 
that assume imminent guilt on the part of program participants. Because 
inoculation avoids assumptions of imminent violent activity on the part 
of the target audience, I have found communities to be more accepting 
of its tenets and the strategic efforts that feature its employment.
    In addition to the conceptual elements of inoculation that make it 
a more attractive option to communities than more traditional counter-
radicalization/counter-disinformation efforts, this specific research 
program also includes--as a part of its deliverables package--a series 
of training initiatives in which stakeholders in both the U.S. 
Government and in vulnerable communities themselves are trained on how 
to develop and implement attitudinal inoculation efforts specifically 
tailored to their own audiences and disinformation problems. At 
present, the research program has trained over 200 stakeholders. In the 
next 3 months, we have training sessions planned to train several more 
hundred. Expected stakeholders will include more Government officials 
from across the intelligence community, as well as community leaders 
who are in a unique position to not only identify vulnerable 
individuals in their communities, but also implement their own 
inoculation practices.
    In sum, the research program associated with the money alotted to 
American University promotes a counter-radicalization/counter-
disinformation strategy that is historically accepted by vulnerable 
communities not only because of its conciliatory approach, but also 
because it is amenable to training in which stakeholders can tailor the 
approach to their respective contexts.
      Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Humera Khan
    Question. Each of the grant projects you represent were funded as 
part of the Department of Homeland Security's whole-of-society approach 
to violence prevention, which emphasizes involvement from community 
leaders across multiple disciplines. Cooperation from community 
partners will be critical to ensuring these projects achieve the most 
impact.
    In the execution of your grant project, how have you worked to 
ensure buy-in from the communities you're working in and partnering 
with?
    Answer. For our CREWS project (DHS TVTP grant No. EMW-2020-GR-
00087)
   We are grateful to our pilot locations for their commitment 
        to protecting their communities, and their willingness to use 
        data to understand how best to build resilience.
   To ensure local buy-in we engaged with and received written 
        commitment from all four pilot locations before we started our 
        analysis.
   Many thanks to the Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania and her 
        office, the leadership of the Philadelphia Commission on Human 
        Relations, Pennsylvania, the County Executive of New Castle 
        County, Delaware and his office, and the State senator of the 
        3rd District of Connecticut for their bold leadership.
   All model results are shared with the pilot locations, at 
        interim and final stages.
   All recommendations will be co-developed with pilot 
        locations and their stakeholders.
   We are providing training and workshops for all stakeholders 
        identified by the pilot locations.
    For our Tackle! Upstander Training Project (DHS TVTP grant No. EMW-
2020-GR-00093)
   To ensure local buy-in we partnered with the American Jewish 
        Committee (AJC). AJC Regional offices and their regional 
        Muslim-Jewish Advisory Councils co-hosted each of our 
        trainings. This resulted in attendance by diverse local 
        leadership across multiple sectors.
   Overview information about the trainings was included in the 
        invitations so everyone who registered did so voluntarily, and 
        already knew what the curriculum would cover.
   Several registrants invited their networks and colleagues to 
        further expand the diversity of professional sectors that 
        participated.
   The participants included elected officials, district 
        attorneys, human rights commissioners, school safety officers, 
        principals, and superintendents, town and county emergency 
        management directors, sheriffs, and law enforcement officers.
       Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Paul Kim
    Question. Each of the grant projects you represent were funded as 
part of the Department of Homeland Security's whole-of-society approach 
to violence prevention, which emphasizes involvement from community 
leaders across multiple disciplines. Cooperation from community 
partners will be critical to ensuring these projects achieve the most 
impact.
    In the execution of your grant project, how have you worked to 
ensure buy-in from the communities you're working in and partnering 
with?
    Answer. Response was not received at the time of publication.
   Question From Honorable Donald M. Payne, Jr. for Chris A. Kelenske
    Question. In the execution of your grant project, how have you 
worked to ensure buy-in from the communities you're working in and 
partnering with?
    Answer. Our buy-in comes from our holistic approach with Government 
and private-sector partners. From the moment the Michigan State Police 
received the grant award, we have actively engaged our partners to 
ensure all voices and perspectives are being heard and applied to our 
multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplined approach. We are working 
with specific intent to ensure we do not produce a behavioral threat 
assessment team built inside of a vacuum that doesn't account for the 
knowledge and experiences that our community partners bring to the 
conversation.
    Training, outreach, and awareness with our Government and private-
sector partners will ensure they are aware of all available resources 
and, more importantly, how to utilize and access those resources. 
Additionally, ensuring our returned results are actionable, relevant, 
and timely will build trust and legitimacy within the relationships 
that we continue to foster and leverage.
    At the end of the day our goal is to establish a team that 
represents the communities we serve and provides value with helping to 
identify concerning behavior and off-ramping individuals prior to 
becoming radicalized and committing acts of targeted violence against 
others.

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