Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP)

Description

Overview From its founding, one of the primary missions of the Department of Homeland Security has been to "prevent terrorist attacks within the United States." In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, DHS used this mandate to develop nationwide capabilities that help to detect and disrupt terrorist plots directed from overseas. Examples of these capabilities included stopping terrorist travel with enhanced law enforcement and intelligence capabilities and ensuring that state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments were integrated in this mission as part of a holistic approach to preparedness. In the last decade, the terrorist threat has evolved. Domestic terrorists have caused more deaths in the United States in recent years than have terrorists connected to foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Domestic terrorist attacks and hate crimes sometimes overlap, as perpetrators of prominent domestic terrorist attacks have selected their targets based on factors such as: race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. In assessing the terrorist threat, the DHS 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment finds that domestic violent extremists, to include violent white supremacists, are "the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland." Since 2018, violent white supremacist extremists have conducted more lethal attacks in the United States than any other violent extremist movement. While lone offenders, as opposed to cells or organizations, are the most common perpetrators, lone offenders are also most often part of a broader movement and will sometimes engage in outreach with like-minded individuals abroad in order to expand their violent extremist networks. Violent white supremacist extremists' outlook can generally be characterized by hatred for immigrants and ethnic minorities, often combining these prejudices with virulent anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBTQ+ views. Additionally, FTOs such as Al-Qa'eda and ISIS continue to leverage digital communication platforms to inspire domestically-based individuals to commit terrorist attacks with little to no training and preparation. Furthermore, we have seen individuals commit or plan mass casualty attacks with no clear nexus to a violent ideology, devastating hometowns across America. The latest research continues to show that the risk factors for individuals being radicalized to violence are similar across the ideological spectrum, and that other acts of targeted violence also share many of those risk factors. The Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program is a critical support for the development of local prevention frameworks that address priority areas and diverse threats. These frameworks are called for by the Department's Strategic Framework and align with the Department's goal to "Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security Threats," as described in the DHS Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2020-2024. It builds off the lessons learned and promising practices from the department's past and ongoing activities and seeks to make awards to projects that will build local capacity to prevent targeted violence and all forms of terrorism. Objectives The FY21 TVTP Grant Program seeks to provide funding to implement local prevention frameworks and explore innovative approaches to preventing targeted violence and terrorism. Applications are being sought in three application tracks: Promising Practices-Single Project, Promising Practices-Multiple Projects, and Innovation. Each track, as explained in Appendix A, supports the development of local prevention frameworks in accordance with the 2019 DHS Strategic Framework. Local prevention frameworks and the approaches sought in the Innovation track support terrorism prevention objectives in the March 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, to align resources to evolving threats. The objectives of the TVTP Grant Program align with the objectives of developing local prevention frameworks (see Appendix A for additional details): Raising awareness of radicalization to violence, Raising awareness of the risk factors for - and the protective factors against - radicalization to violence, Ensuring members of the local community engage the broadest set of local stakeholders that sustain trusted partnerships and increased communications addressing radicalization to violence, Ensuring members of the local community have the ability to act on their awareness training by knowing how to contact - and understanding the role of - threat assessment and management teams, Ensuing members of the local community have access to multi-disciplinary threat assessment and management teams, and Ensuring the local community has a variety of programs that address risk factors while also providing services supporting threat management approaches. The TVTP Grant Program seeks to provide funding to applications that align with these objectives and that protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Please see Appendix D for research, logic model, performance measurement, and other resources that can be referenced to design project proposals. Priorities The FY21 TVTP Grant Program has the following priorities: Preventing Domestic Violent Extremism Enhancing Local Threat Assessment and Management Capabilities Implementing Innovative Solutions for Preventing Targeted Violence and Terrorism Challenging Online Violence Mobilization Narratives

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