In a blatant example of the Biden administration’s refusal to benefit Americans, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently revealed the Department of Homeland Security’s prioritization of anti-conservative censorship programs instead of tackling the southern border crisis.
Millions of illegal immigrants have crossed the U.S.’s wide-open southern border since President Joe Biden took office, jeopardizing the lives of Americans. Considering the gravity of the situation, Hawley recently sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, denouncing the department’s $700,000 grant to a leftist organization.
The Daily Wire reported that DHS used counterterrorism resources “to pay activists to write blog posts that criticized Donald Trump and other conservatives under the guise of ‘media literacy.’”
In his letter, Hawley accused DHS of weaponizing the federal government to prosecute Biden’s political opponents: conservatives.
“Your Department has consistently weaponized the federal government to attack conservatives using taxpayer dollars, first by colluding with private social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints and now by funding private actors to create affirmative propaganda to ‘counter’ conservatives,” Hawley wrote.
“All these funds should be clawed back by the federal government immediately, and anyone involved in making his grant should be fired,” the Missouri senator added.
Now DHS is paying – *paying* – leftist academics to create “counter-propaganda” on “immigration, racial justice” and COVID. This from the people who brought you the Disinformation Board. Another reason Mayorkas should be gone 👇 pic.twitter.com/TQGbRavh3S
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 17, 2024
DHS’ grant was given through the department’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Program to the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab, which uses a federal funding application that advocates for the use of “community-created counterpropaganda to raise public awareness” about so-called “disinformation.”
“There’s no doubt that propaganda is effective as a form of warfare, which is why terrorism has long been called ‘the propaganda of the deed,’” the university’s application states. “But propaganda can also be used for socially beneficial purposes.”
“Indeed, because the public has long been recognized as being suggestible, the United States has long made use of beneficial propaganda during WWI, WWII, and the Cold War,” the application continues.
Haley also blasted DHS for providing the University of Dayton with over $300,000 to tackle “domestic violent extremism and hate movements.”
The Missouri congressman noted that a year before receiving the funds from the department, the university labeled conservative-leaning organizations, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a “pyramid of far-right radicalization.”
