The recent shooting of Charlie Kirk is a chilling reminder: Terrorism and violent extremism remain a clear and present danger to our national security. Yet just as threats grow more sophisticated and diffuse, the Trump administration is quietly dismantling some of our most effective tools to prevent attacks before they happen.

Programs like the Department of Homeland Security’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention initiative and the State Department’s Office of Countering Violent Extremism have been gutted or eliminated. Long-serving experts have been fired, reassigned or resigned — taking with them decades of hard-won knowledge about what works in preventing terrorism.

The result: a less secure America.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that attacks and plots against government targets driven by partisan beliefs nearly tripled from 2016 to 2024 compared to the previous 25 years combined.

Meanwhile, the global landscape of terrorism has shifted. While the U.S. successfully degraded core al-Qaeda and ISIS leadership, splinter groups have adapted, grown and forged new networks — targeting........

© The Hill