Trump's DHS Disbands Domestic Terror Unit

A couple of weeks ago, when bigot-in-chief and demagogue Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump responded to a question about domestic white supremacists being a growing threat, he downplayed it, as might be expected since they form a share of his base. It's part of a pattern with him, like when he pretended not to know who David Duke was after he got his endorsement, or his "very fine people" comment about neo-Nazis after Charlottesville.

There are now reports that last year Trump's Department of Homeland Security quietly disbanded a unit that collected and analyzed intelligence on domestic terrorism, including growing incidents of white supremacist terrorism. The analysts that previously worked in the intelligence unit were reassigned elsewhere. The effect has been to hamper law enforcement and to put the public at greater risk:

"In the wake of this move, officials said the number of analytic reports produced by DHS about domestic terrorism, including the threat from white supremacists, has dropped significantly. People in and close to the department said this has generated significant concern at headquarters.

'It’s especially problematic given the growth in right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism we are seeing in the U.S. and abroad,' one former intelligence official told The Daily Beast.

The group in question was a branch of analysts in DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). They focused on the threat from homegrown violent extremists and domestic terrorists. The analysts there shared information with state and local law enforcement to help them protect their communities from these threats. [snip]

Former officials pointed to a spate of domestic terror attacks in recent years as evidence that DHS erred by shuttering this branch. From the massacre that left 11 people dead at a Pittsburgh synagogue to a shooting targeting Republican members of Congress in June 2018 to bomb threats that a deranged Trump fan directed at prominent Democrats and CNN, violent attacks informed by homegrown hatred have left Americans increasingly terrorized." (our emphasis)

There's the defensive pushback from DHS saying "nothing to see here," but the fact that State and local law enforcement officials are concerned about not getting the intelligence reports on domestic terrorism that they had been getting reflects the damage that's being done.