oversight, management, and accountability willl now come to order. without objection the chair is authorized to declare the subcommittee in recess at any time. want to start by thanking everyone for joining us today. we heard to discussod the topic that is becoming all too familiar to many of us in every part of this nation, that is domestic terrorism. when the hostage situation in a synagogue in colleyville, texas, only this year to the radically motivated shooting at a grocery store in buffalo, new york, to just last month, many, many attacks that devastated our community throughout the country. in response the sect of homeland security was 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 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 t grant program, a predecessor to the current tvtp program. p 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 trustm 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. d in 2020, dhs relaunched the grant program under the new tvtp name and with a new public health focused approach. through this new grant funding program, dhs supports the efforts of local partners who seek to raise awareness aboutne the domestic violent extremism threat and develop community-based networks to provide support to individuals who may be radicalized, or radicalizing to violence before the crimes are actually committed. our witnesses today represent four of the organizations that have received tvtp grants inn either the fy 2020 or fy 2021 grant cycles. their projects, executed over a period of two 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 assessmentt capabilities, challenging online 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 fy 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 ofvi 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. with that i thank you again for joining us today, and the chair would recognize the rankingou member, if he is here. is he your? >> sim, mr. chairman. can you hear and see me? >> welcome. >> coming to you live off the floor. chairman correa, thank you for holding this important subcommittee hearing, the department of homeland security targeted violence and terrorist program at think it sums for witnesses for joining us today. i look forward to hearing your testimony about experiences they've had withh the program as grant recipients and particularly interested in learning about what you found to be the most effective and i think this program might be able to responsibly grow and benefit poa larger number of communities in the future. over the years the terrorism landscape has evolved and while many grants focusing on terrorism prevented were created as as a result of the 9/11 attacks, the current threats landscape as 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. p i believe we must all began 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 targeted violence, tvtp grant program is one such tool that can help communities build and strengthen their resiliency capabilities and prevent threats before they arrive. 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 fiscal year '22 for the office of targeted violence and terrorism prevention which is now operating as a 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 violent extremists than by international terrorism. and 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 the landscape is changing so too must our thinking that race of a country has experienced increased rates of violence ranging from shootings to mass an attempted assassination of a sitting supreme court justice. we must do more to combat pilots and address its root causes, no matter the ideologicalal motivation. so our democracy is protected. 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 great amount of potential to enhance these important efforts. at the same time i think it's tincumbent we make sure this money is well spent picks pending more taxpayer dollars will not fix the problem. we must make sure 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 civil liberties for all americans are protected. as lead republican on the oversight, management, and accountability subcommittee i remain committedk to working wih 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 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't occur anywhere at any time, and we must remain committed to empowering local leaders and local law enforcement to strengthen this resiliency adventure dhs has the proper funding to support their efforts. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses on the board's of the tvtp grant program, the ways in which you then use these grant awards to protect their communities,ti and in the recommendations they have to put the program going forward. thank you, mr. chairman. and without i yield back. >> ranking member meijer, i couldn't agree with you more. the mission to protect american lives and terrorism very important mission. went to make sure every taxpayer dollar we invest in this mission is optimal. thank you very much. members are reminded the committee will operate according to the guidelines laid out byto the chairman and ranking member of the february 3 colloquy regarding remote procedures. without objection members not on the subcommittee shall be permitted to sit and questioned the witnesses. and now i welcome our panel of witnesses. our first witness we have dr. kurt braddock an assistant professor, school of communication at american university, his research focuses on persuasive strategies used by violent extremist groups to recruit and radicalized audiences targeted by propaganda. dr. braddock also explores our theories of communication,, persuasion and social influence can be used when practices meant to prevent radicalization among the vulnerable audience. second witness, ms. homeric on, the president and founder of the muflehun, a think tank specializing in preventing radicalization and domestic violence extremism. she is also served as coinvestigator department of defense maneuver research institute 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 alley district attorney's office where he has served for over 25 years. mr. kim early works with the hate crimes unit within the organized crime division. our final witness is lieutenant colonel chris kelenske, commander of fieldie support bureau deputy director of the michigan state police. he is responsible for strategic leadership for the emergency management and homelandor secury division, and intelligence operation division which includes the state of michigan fusion center. without objection, the witnesses for statements will be inserted in the record,in and i now ask each witness to summarize his or her statement for five minutes, aching with mr. braddock. outcome. m -- welcome. today. members of the committee thank you for having me to testify in relation to the center for prevention programs and partnerships. as the chair sadaam assistant st professor of communication at american university and a faculty fellow at a research center focusing primarily on domestic extremism and terrorism the pluralism research innovation lab. between the two appointments i work at the intersection of the communication violent extremism where i try to understand how the communication influences people to engage in violent activities on behalf of ideologies that we see domestically and internationally. my work in this area stems from the events of september 11, 2001 which instilled in me a drive to find ways to understand why people get engaged in such evil and find ways academically to protect americans from this kind of violence and to this end of the last 20 years i studied violent jihadist extremists from the far left into the far right, irish republican dissident groups, violent animal rights activists, single issue terrorists, christian extremists and every other you can find. i sit in front of you today to discuss my experience with the program. at present the program where my research has intended to understand disinformation and conspiracies perpetuated by far right extremists and other intended audiences and more importantly how to prevent them from engaging in that disinformation and conspiracies. i focus on the far right in this project because i know how important it is for the government to use its budget efficiently getting the most value for every dollar spent and to that end i sought to develop a project that addresses the most significant threat to security at the moment, far right violent extremists. most simply i want to get you the most bang for your buck. i'm glad to say today this project has been a relative success resulting in multiple deliverable as well as a large workshop intended by the foremost experts and white ring extremism and disinformation. i hope the work continues to be at use for this regard. from the outside of the project the program has been very enthusiastic and supportive of any research that i've done. personnel, some i will mention by name later have been in constant contact throughout my work and sought to help me address associated research at every turn. one specific challenge i've run into is the early goings of the project related to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic that led to the degree i could meet collaborators, research participants were other colleagues face to face despite the challenges posed and the limitations it put on my research, they continue to support by facilitating the completion of deliverables that could be worked on without face-to-face contact some include the development of training modules for stakeholders that help them build resilience into disinformation within their communities as well as modules for those who would train others to help build resilience. after the covid protocols were lifted we were able to hold the in person workshop understanding the disinformation and future threats and one of the themes of which was focused on lgbtq plus communities which as we saw just a couple of days ago doesn't seem to be a target of the right. i understand my role will be to testify in more detail about my experiences to gauge the value for the american people and 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 but it also demands accountability. very few programs require measures to the effectiveness. the field is ripe with pigments that pose professionals, permanent media figures, twitter experts independence have long commented on the effectiveness of certain practices to reduce the risk of violence but provided no evidence to this effect. cp three doesn't allow for this loose commentary. the demands for research accountability and improve intervention effectiveness i believe the program provides excellent value but before turning to your questions to provide further details on my project i want to thank on the record john wilder of cp three he's been my program manager and with my project a godsend on coordinating, organizing and demanding accountability on my part for my my project is effective and with that i look forward to your questions and also apologize in advance if you hear my dog during my testimony. so thank you very much and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you and your dog's comments on the congressional congressionalrecord will be acct objection. now i recognize you to summarize your statement in five minutes. welcome. good afternoon, chairman, ranking member and distinguished members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify. the president and cofounder. it is essential to focus and the public health approach to the allocation of resources with local governments to mitigate risk factors and enhance. the recipient to focus on these areas one outside of the training and second was an innovation grant for the prevention of domestic terrorism and counter violence. a data informed county executive city managers and elected leaders to prioritize risk specific to the jurisdiction and to allocate. publicly available open source that the national, state and local level nor is there any personally identifiable information. we are grateful for funding the approach and for the commitment to protect the community and we focus on hate crimes and domestic terrorism and over the next few weeks we will be competing. to facilitate. in 2020. and that influenced the domestic terrorism and how the hate and bigotry. the communities in the prevention. and the participants for the district attorney's. the implementation of the grants over the last has resulted and the grant funding is stretched. [inaudible] the data in the selection by latching the data informed means to the proposed solutions by the state and local level. let me end by emphasizing we must accelerate the efforts with increased resource allocations and not be discouraged by the mistakes and we cannot wait for another or the school massacre [inaudible] thank you for your attention and opportunity to share. i look forward to questions. >> thank you very much. they hate crimes unit prosecutes all serious hate crimes that happen at the county of los angeles including any case that is committed by an organized hate group and the cases that are either complex in nature or require a seasoned deputy district attorney. in this capacity, my primary role and my secondary role is i do community outreach. i worked closely with our partners, community-based partners ranging from the jewish groups and including members of the lgbt community as well. during the time that i was prosecuting the hate crime case is about three years ago i came across an issue. i had a defendant that committed a crime of violence against the lgbtq committee here in long beach and this has gone all the way to the highest levels of in my office if this position was reached to include 200 hours of community service, obviously the goal was to try to raise the awareness when it came to the lgb tq community. when we reached out to the stakeholders, i was immediately asked what did this individual do and when i described what happened and the nature of injury what i was told by the director was this individual has committed an act of violence. one of the things that we know is that hate is not innate. in the bias program one day when i was doing community outreach i was on a call with the city attorney's office. on the one-to-one program at that time i met the field operations. i said there was a need in the county specifically when it came to trying to address the bias. john wilder is our program analyst. one, we want to focus on counseling. to see if they can determine what the risks of the animus are and where they came from. second, we are going to be working with the community based organization. i think the program is really amazing and what it's going to permit us to do is develop two things. one, and offender centric study, not a very large one and two, the tools and the modules that are necessary to try to address explicit bias. i look forward to the questions and thank you for inviting me to participate. thank you. >> now i'd like to recognize the lieutenant colonel to summarize his statement. welcome, colonel. >> thank you, chairman. ranking member meyer and a distinguished members of the subcommittee for allowing me to discuss the targeted violence and the terrorism prevention grant program. my name is lieutenant colonel deputy director in charge of the field to support the bureau of the michigan state police or msp and in this role i oversee the emergency management homeland security division as well as the intelligence operation of other areas. the individuals have targeted others and committed acts of violence leading to death. the targeted violence prevention grant is a tool that is helping us in michigan to hopefully prevent the incidences before they occur by establishing the behavioral threat assessment team. they consist of multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional partners who are on a pathway to violence and intervene by providing them with productive alternative outcomes. the acts of violence we recognize the need to develop the threat assessment capability in our state to ensure the prevention frameworks are adopted that would allow multiple stakeholders to participate in communications addressing radical violence. to address the behavioral threat assessment management gap in the terrorism targeted violence framework we are developing one regional concept behavioral threat assessment team that covers three counties. the three counties include the state government and state capital of michigan and have a combined population of just under 500,000 people comprised of both urban and rural communities. this behavioral threat assessment management team reserves a conduit to the concerns and poses targeted violence and provide referrals to independent programs as a form of prevention. this multidisciplinary change is comprised of professionals from the local community to collaborate to increase communications throughout the protocols and work with individuals who brought risk factors of the targeted violence and terrorism. using the grant funds we have the specialists onboard within the next months that are responsible for developing and managing the team providing intervention and threat. to respond to the coordinated approach to successful targeted violence intervention and prevention. they help us to expand this team statewide. for those at risk of becoming radicalized in the targeted violence. we are also sensitive to the protection of privacy civil rights and civil liberties. they pose a public safety risk and will be treated with of the same constitutional protection as any other individual encountered by law enforcement. as a part of this grant we receive the funding from two part-time contract analysts. to increase awareness to the risk factors radicalization's process. today we fired one of the part-time contract analysts to assist the liaison coordinator. finalize the educational materials and help the joint community awareness briefing with the partners and the state intelligence numbers and conducted one of the scheduled training sessions. once the initial groundwork is placed into the program is established, the liaison officer into the michigan state police will be capable of managing the program independently without the sustainment of the contract analyst beyond the performance period. >> thank you for your time and opportunity to share our experiences and at this time i am happy to take any questions you may have from me. >> thank you, lieutenant for your testimony. i want to thank all of the witnesses for your testimony as well. a reminder we will each have five minutes of questions for the panel and i will now recognize myself for five minutes of questions and my first question as you know this grant program potentially is a two-year cycle. fiscal year 2020 just coming to a close, so the question briefly you can tell me what your programs are able to achieve. all of this is based on the fact it is bringing in open source the last 20 years from the government agency strategies for what is playing out. over 150 partners and after, we found 86% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed it's there to have the skilled prevent violence based on the training and similarly we found 73% were actually willing to engage with family or friends they were concerned about and that's an increase. so it went above where promised and we've already sent the initial results and we are working with them to develop recommendations and see. >> thank you mr. chairman. this project was designed the first of which was meant to inform the second phase and before i describe what we have achieved so far let me describe the base of the project. this project hinges on the idea of the attitude inoculation the idea being if you expose somebody to a weekend a form of an idea in the same way the body is exposed they can develop resilience to that idea. there's about 60 years of research and communication showing is an effective means of helping people prevent being persuaded by these sort of ideas so the first phase was meant to develop deliverables and training that help people develop their own inoculation messages, so in the years so far there've been four major outcomes. number one is literature based around inoculation and disinformation. that literature is a boring word. to make sure that it's digestible by people that are going to use it and it's been boiled down to so people can understand it. second we've developed reading lists for people for the information but the two major hallmarks of the first phase. my focus is on the far right of the information specifically, different communities have different kinds of threats. so i wanted to train the communities to address those informational threats they sent specifically. it is against this very idea in areas around the country where the idea is starting to percolate based on searches and search engines that are anonymized. based on the threats identified. >> now recognize the ranking member for five minutes of questions. welcome, sir. i really appreciate all the witnesses testimonies today and thank you for hosting this important meeting. at the michigan state police and operations center implemented their statewide liaison officer program. the goal of the program of courses to provide training to law enforcement and private sector partners across the state to enhance awareness and also strengthen collaboration. since the implementation training, can you share how the information and collaboration has improved between the key stakeholders and what have you found to be best practices and information sharing and how can other local communities implement similar prophecies to strengthen the collaboration? >> thank you for your question. we've only been able to get one in place and it's been mostly in the updating of the educational materials. the officer trainings and initial meetings with federal partners we have numerous liaison officer training sessions that will occur with three coming up in august and september. we had in future trainings we expanded the ecosystem stakeholders. they not only get comfortable with fusion centers to provide information. we haven't seen the increased suspicious activity reports but an increase in the request for service. but we cannot say if this at this time is attributed to some other factors but we are going to continue to look at these impacts from the training sessions as we move forward. to continue to flourish and increase and we also look to the stakeholders to help us continue to identify how to improve the collaboration and information sharing. with the meetings and state agencies that are interested in the behavioral threat assessment teams and additionally by combating the cp three coordinators into the fusion center we have more direct access to resources and as well as having the regional coordinator's expertise and implementing the targeted violence and terrorism prevention programs and last, we have engaged with the profound experts on the topic from michigan state university to collaborate with us as we move forward. as far as your question on best practices with actionable relevant and timely information to stakeholders and then build a network of multiple disciplines that have regular meetings. identify that mechanism and how the distribution should occur discussing appropriate interventions and joint training sessions and fosters trust and demonstrates the effectiveness of the interagency and multidisciplinary collaborations and then we continue to look at what has been done in virginia and north carolina and florida. as we continue to move forward. you mentioned the importance of protecting privacy, civil rights, civil liberties throughout the work of the behavioral threat assessment and i've seen the state of michigan just in recent months the individuals who were accused of participating in the kidnapping and in the realm of domestic violence extremism protecting the civil liberties not getting to the point which has been alleged conducting operations. some of that is a little bit more rightward than the focus on the prevention side but could you provide more details into that process and how your department ensures that in the course of doing the work and also protecting the civil liberties and civil rights more broadly? >> i can provide a lot more information. i believe we have our intelligence operations center. it is a six page document that is posted online and i can and sure that gets to you as 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 that is embedded in artificial orders and policies to ensure all members continually have those at the front of their mind. thank you mr. chair man. a couple of questions. in terms of the screen or my personal research. >> and then overall. >> this grant we are halfway through the money we spend to add another $5,000 to it for a grant i got in graduate school in my dissertation. >> so about a half-million give or take a few thousand. >> i would say somewhere between 550 to 580,000. >> one thing you said in your testimony and i thought this was a witness testimony as well you credit for its program for the use of measures of program effectiveness. then you say the field is ripe with pendants posing as professionals. it is a form of insight and terrorism whereby a communicator has access to a platform and big audience. then you go on to say you really can't predict who, what or when but one person will view it that way and might act on it. they also say with respect to the 2019 el paso walmart mass shooting. you are talking about tucker carlson. i am not a big fan either. i would say that one walks the line is another one from the left. you tell them they are not welcome anymore anywhere. >> i wouldn't think that, no. but you mentioned a point earlier where it all relates to data and collecting data whether one connects to the other end of it is to research and trying to conduct now not relating to the project but another research project i'm working on. just because the term doesn't mean that a legal incitement isn't. is there a debate that needs to be had about whether it is allowed to occur. you're talking about some restrictions that buy your own definition is different than where the supreme court is about what's protected. >> it's not a legal restriction i'm arguing for. against that communication because it is although it's not legal incitement, it can be argued to relate to the behaviors that take place later and though it's not illegal doesn't mean we can't do counter persuasion. it's a communication device unlike any other. >> so the last plaintiff you bring me back to that, have you been paid by dhs to study tucker carlson as a terrorist? >> no. has that been a feature of your research? >> in the formally. >> sufficient to the point that you were willing to say. we can find where the line is that the debate needs to take place and that's what i enjoy about these sort of things. they do have implications even if they are not legally actionable they need to be talked about. will. is any international act. in the affiliation for publicity about the grievance. in the performance standards and accountability measure to evaluate the effectiveness of the project for the outcomes and measure? you can test people to see how they feel about a particular topic before and after they receive the treatments and that's the plan with the experimental phases of the overall project. in terms of the training that i've done. they've been useful to the specific communities and we can actually do statistical analyses of the response to see whether there is enough proof improvement in the actual strategy moving forward. it demands these kind of valuations [inaudible] this is the only definition that we need and in terms of that, only 25% the same thing we asked about the public health approach. these were the elected officials and leaders for the future development and recognition and without this [inaudible] that was important and the training i mentioned this earlier other training over 85% if we strongly agree the skills and knowing what to do in various situations and this was an increase of over 30% and that is a huge increase because we are talking about 6,000 for a total of eight hours of training. it is a huge increase in the willingness and the skills and then the other thing it's one thing to say i know what to do but the question is am i going to do it and about 75 or 72% were willing to engage when you talk about the standards it's not about if you see something say something but how can people that you know recognize and then how does it help so we want our own networks and then we saw that increase. >> did you want to say something, sir? >> thank you, representative. one of the things that i think is interesting about the program is the reconciliation and education and counseling as we are dealing specifically with criminal defendants who are being placed on probation and are likely completing the program. i think there's two interesting things we can talk about here when we talk about that choice. the easiest metric we are seeking to get permission to track them to see whether or not they commit an offense and if they did, did they target the same group they targeted the first time. it's not so much recidivism but targeted and selected recidivism and i do feel having the ability is a quantifiable 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 into the arena and when i say that, one of the target participants that's going to be working with us they ended up all over the national press because they came across a man and his ethnic wife. they got out of the car into started saying things like only white lives matter. >> it was reported by the victim's wife. even though the court only has jurisdiction over the defendant, the individual who struck the truck with a shovel, after talking to him and his attorney and saying we would like you to participate in this program, he and his wife both agreed for victim reconciliation with the victims. in this instance the victims, man and his wife began to sit down with the defendants, well, singular defendant. the interesting thing is, metrics, qualitatively having the victim and the defendant sit down and talk about what happened for the defendant the opportunity to apologize and the victim the opportunity to accept goes way beyond just the defendant and the victims, it involves the entire community, whether it's the jewish community involved, the african-american community involved, whichever 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. >> thank you, mr. kim, thank you very much. and any other members that wish to ask their questions? seeing none, would you all be interested in a round of second questions? >> i would, mr. chairman. >> okay, let's move to a second round and i'll start with a set of questions here and try to hold it five minutes. i'm going to ask lt. colonel a question if i may. lt. colonel, you are in michigan, we here in orange county, california have a fusion center and they do great things from cyber, to intel, trying to prevent some bad stuff from happening. one of the concerns that i've heard fusion centers is, the communication not be as good as it should be and that sometimes communication is, from the feds down, but not-- or i should say from the bottom up and not bottom back to the fusion centers. any thoughts? >> i think we've seen over the years that the communication ebbs and flows. i would say we've been doing this since after 9/11 and we're light years ahead of where we were, i think that everyone would agree with that, but i feel that the communication is effective. we can always do better and i also think that the communication between the fusion centers throughout our nation to include the work that the national fusion centers association is doing to keep everyone together, is also very, very good, sir. we always can do better and sometimes we're limited by the information that gets pushed up to us that's down at the local level. and that's what tended to delay some of the actions that we take. >> it you elaborate on that specific point, please? . with the last one, sir, about getting the information pushed out. yes, so this is exactly why we want to get our fusion liaison officer in place because that's going to put people who are trained in the process of the information on the relevant fusion centers, yes, we need to do further on this or no, that's constitutionally protected and there's nothing more to do here, but we have to get that information pushed up to us, whether it's from our fusion liaison officers or through the general public, to see something, say something. in michigan, we have an okay to say school tip line and that's what generates our suspicious activities. >> sir, if i may interrupt you, you just said something interesting, which is if you have information that's constitutionally protected in the con section of a possible clear and present danger, how do you resolve that issue? >> well, if it's 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 -- that could even have just a beef with their neighbor and they push that up to our fusion center. that's not something for us to act on. that's very different than information that we actually look at, has a criminal nexus and we need to look through more. >> 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? >> yes, our fusion center personnel, as well the personnel throughout our nation are they trained, trained very well, and very much understand what they can and can't do based on the code of federal regulations. >> you know, we look back at 911 and because the misinformation, the silo that we operated toward, homeland security was created to eliminate a lot of those silos and things could always be better and i guess my open question to you would be how do we make sure that we continue to improve. because i am bothered. you all do a great job and you've got thousands and thousands of fact and data points and you've got to figure out what this stuff means, but any thoughts how we can improve on what you do, within the constitutional confines of assure that we prevent the next horrific thing from happening. >> i think we continue to leave egos at the door and open collaboration, not only with local, state and federal partners, but also with our private sector and nongovernoral organizations, as well as those responsible for overseeing, civil rights and civil liberties and our constitutional protections. we all have to be engaged with each other. >> looks like my time expired. so what i'm going to do is send it over to ranking member meijer for five minutes of question. thank you, sir. >> thank you, chairman correia and again, i appreciate the second round of questioning. i know ms. khan was talking about the frustrations and concerns that the money can only go so far and some of the goal of grant programs is to spur information and hearings like we're having today and evaluate potentially what that value needs to be. i guess to lt. colonel, the training by the newly created fusion liaison officer program. how, in your view, has that helped to deter violent threats in your community and as a correlary, how would an increase in funding allow you to more efficiently achieve the desired outcomes of your program? please, i'd be curious to your thoughts. >> that's a great question, we've only had the one initial training and i will say that one individual i know of, and i'm sure there may have been others, did already provide information to our field analyst to follow up on, and 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. nothing came from this report. it does demonstrate that the training is providing 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 and this could include increasing staffing for tip lines and our watch desk personnel or fusion liaison and the threat assessment management teams from the local and state level. we at least want one per state police district. and provide training for additional skilled workers in mental health and that's a continual gap. host more training sessions on prevention and increased community engagement and education, and once the payroll threat assessment management team or teams are in place, we also have to make sure that we have the bandwidth to handle the service efficiently and effectively because we know with training and more community engagement and education, we know we will get more increased request for service. >> and obviously, the question of ultimate responsibility and funding source between the state and federal is something for us to discuss in a bit more detail and another forum. but i guess turning back to what ms. chan khan was talking about earlier, if anyone else wants to address this as well, communities applying for grants across the board not only dhs, but that can be a cumbersome process. i'd be curious for your own experiences, how challenging was the application for tvtp funding and how did you find that relative to other grant processes you've undertaken throughout your federal interactions? >> so from our perspective, the tvtp grant, this is not very different from any other federal grant, grants. the requirements for what you have to write is actually not too bad. the process itself, there are instructions and you follow it, anytime you're applying for any federal grant, you have to follow the instructions. make sure you do this, and -- so i think there's just a place where you have to, you know, the processes because you're dealing with the government. and i think it's not just the grant process that's easy. the reality is once you get the funding you have about 200 pages of compliance, but that's the federal process and make sure that-- >> it's a lot of heads nodding on the compliance front. >> and it's just a fact of life when you're dealing with any sort of government money. no different from anything else. >> okay. and mr. chairman, i see my time is close to expiring so i yield back, thank you, again. >> thank you, mr. meijer. i recognize mr. bishop for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let's go back, mr. bragg to what we were talking about terrorism and your paper says, your testimony says current at present i am working on a research project geared towards understanding how dids information and conspiracies by far right extremists persuade their intended audiences and more importantly how we can prevent them in conspiracies and disinformation. so the concept of stocastic terrorism is part of that theory? >> not necessarily. >> and your information for dhs addressed that terrorism? >> no. >> okay. let's talk about just a little further. stocastic from what read means random. >> random though guaranteed to occur. out of statistics, random and where and when it will occur. >> if something is random, it happens without regard to a causal factor. when you're referring to a donald trump or a tucker carlson. >> 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 take a petry dish, sneeze into it and close it and three days later bacteria would grow somewhere, you can't predict when and where, attributable to the sneeze. and better example, if you're on your front porch in north carolina, right? north carolina, and you're looking out on the horizon i know it gets hot in north carolina, i've been to chapel hill and see dark clouds rolling in on the porch you know lightning is going to strike somewhere, that's attributable to the heat meeting the cold. >> we're far afield pretty much and i'll leave for the moment for somebody else to watching to decide whether the concept is different between randomness and something caused by an efficient cause. let's leave that aside for a moment. let me get a couple more examples, had no hesitation for donald trump with respect to january 6th and the shooter and tucker carlson and the buffalo attack and chuck schumer walked the line when he said you won't no what hit you when addressed to supreme court justices. why does that walk the line? >> isn't as direct as people replacing down in your country. and walk down pennsylvania avenue and these are implied directives. >> let me keep going. >> maxine waters she said wherever these people show up push back on them tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere, that's not stacastic terrorism? >> and i said these were incidents. >> how about this eric-- i'm going ask you one more, eric swalwell says the republicans won't stop with banning abortions, they want to ban interracial marriage. is he? >> no, not with that quote. >> is james, the guy in the buffalo, new york subway, who shot in the some subway he did, was he inspired by terrorism of black lives matter and critical race theory? >> i'm not familiar with the frank james case. explain to me what happened and the quotes you're attributing to his actions. >> you're not aware of the brooklyn subway attack that happened three months ago? >> no, i'm not familiar with it. >> all right. let me see, okay. to-- 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 stocastic terrorism? >> and if you can't see the difference between that and we are going to walk down pennsylvania avenue. one is justified motion and action. and theory that underpins why my theory is that they're terrorism and others aren't. >> our time probably doesn't allow that, i've got 20 seconds. let me get at it one other way, is calling republicans white supremacists itself a form of stacostic terrorism? >> no, just like calling democrats communists and socialists isn't. >> all right, the woman who runs the account on twitter, lives of tik tok, washington post said she identified her, said she was a domestic terrorist and she's had a spate of death threats. is "the washington post" an stocastic terrorist? . by identifying-- >> that's the last one, go ahead and answer this. >> i could do this all day, mr. chairman, but that last one, there needs to be implied directive towards what's happening and again more than happy to send information to the panel and to mr. bishop and like i said, i like having these conversations, i know it's kind of a gotcha game, but i enjoy having these conversations because ultimately it means less violence from both sides, but i'll be happy to-- >> dr. braddock, after the hearing, you're more than welcome to supply written answers to any of the questions that-- >> i really actually want to and for mr. bishop, i know we don't have time, but i'll send you the materials that link implied messaging to actions so you have a better idea where i'm coming from because it's kind of a lecture. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. bishop. >> look forward to that information. now i'm going to go back to -- joining us has joined us,. >> i'm here, mr. chairman. >> how are you? >> i apologize for being late, it's election day in nevada. >> and if you can to, ask the panel of witnesses some questions, welcome, ma'am. >> 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, one thing cited is the forth coming decision by the supreme court on abortion. and so, i wrote a letter, i was joined by some members of this committee, and the chairman, and chairman thompson, the secretary of homeland security, asking him to please remain vigilant and come up with a plan to deal with this to kind of get ahead of the game instead of reacting, but i'd like to go back to dr. braddock to talk about this some with his research to counter disinformation campaigns one of the great ones, from the right wing groups is great replacement theory used in the context of the abortion issue and how those come together. how can we prevent online forums from perpetuated untruths or how we can tackle the situation if we're expecting a rise in dangerous chats. could you just share some of your research or findings on those kind of topics? >> sure, absolutely. and mr. bishop would like this, this applies to both the left and right, innoculation is useful for any kind of ideology, in my research that advocates for violence. ultimately violence that perpetuates from a violent extremist ideology. i kind of mentioned what innoculation is, attitudal innoculation, a strategy there are two major elements to it, one, you essentially want a target who hasn't been expo he is today an idea before or has been exposed to a minimally, there's a third actor 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 that somebody tries to persuade it, we really don't like it and become resolute in our beliefs and attitudes and that's what i like about it, you can approach people and i have approached people and said, listen, i may not agree with your political points of view, that's okay. you can have whatever beliefs and attitude you have i've got to make sure you don't engage in violence and there are people out there who would have you engage in violence, step one. step two, counter arguments against what they're going to encounter. my research and 60 years of research and other context has shown when do you this, there are a couple of pretty cool things that happen. number one they experience what's called reactants. the best way to explore, you want to window shop, and when somebody comes up, they have the propaganda and get angry. and credibility to the person that might try to persuade them down the line and less credible. and the most important thing for me, number three they report significantly less intention to support that group or that person with violence. they might still ideologically believe whatever they want to believe, they report less intention to get violence on the back of it. so i argue and i've argued that one of the key things that we need with respect to the disinformation and elsewhere, is comprehensive media literacy in schools to help kids understanding information that might be false. it's not their false, it's not the school district's fault. it's not-- digital technologies advanced so quickly and web 2.0 and people create their own content has advanced so quickly, we can't keep up with it. we need to arm the people who don't have the capacity to get true to false in any capacity and we need to help with that innoculation at least the research thus far would benefit that. now, there are boundaries around innoculation as any counter persuasion strategy or any communication strategy, but that's what research is for and that's what we're parsing out. >> and the department of homeland security's paying attention to this? are there grants for this or how can we pursue that suggestion? >> i hope they are, they gave mow more than half million dollars to research it so i hope they're paying attention. >> i don't want your findings just to go on a shelf somewhere. >> no, i'm actually-- that's one of the things that we mentioned, john wilder, a couple of times my program manager, we're cognizant of, this needs to reach the people that need it. i've gone around the country, lft wing, right wing, in between, to help them develop innoculation in their communities against disinformation that they face. what i've learned from the individuals undergone the training, reported back to me that they intend on using it and talking about the disinformation they've faced and it's not just coming from-- my focus on the project the right wing, they see it all over the place and they want to help prevent people taken in by it and engaging on behalf of it. and i'm looking at police attitudes and people can believe whatever they want. these trainings are meant to help people to help others prevent them from engaging in violence on behalf of any disinformation they encounter. >> very interesting. thank you very much for allowing me to come back, mr. chairman. learned a lot. you this very much, ma'am, good luck today in your election. >> thank you. are you there would you like to add-- ask five minutes of questions, ma'am? going once, going twice. i want to thank the witnesses for their testimony today, 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 the committee record will remain open for another 10 days and without objection, the committee stands adjourned. thank you very much, good afternoon to all. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> homework can be hard, but squatting in a diner for internet work is harder, that's why we're providing lower income students access to affordable internet so homework can just be homework. cox, connect to compete. >> cox, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> the senate returns later today at 3 p.m. eastern. they're expect today take up bipartisan gun legislation if an agreement on the bill's text has been reached. senators also plan to vote later in the week on president biden's flom nominee to serve as the head of bureau of alabama tobacco firearms. and expanding health care and disability benefits for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals mainly from burn pits. also an amber alert or shooters nationwide. and watch coverage of the house on c-span, the senate on c-span2 and watch on our free video app c-span now or online at c-span.org. >> the january 6th committee holds their next public hearing today. to examine alleged effort by donald trump to pressure state election officials and use alternative electors to block the 2020 election results. georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger and his director gabe sperling are expected to testify as well as rusty bowers, you can also stream the hearing on our free video app c-span now or online, at c-span.org. >> c-span's audio from the video library comparing the past to today. on this episode, watergate and g gordon liddy. >> watergate happened june 17th, 1972, police arrested burglars at the headquarters at watergate complex in washington d.c., but first, we remember g gordon ride in this episode of c-span's, the weekly. and served five years of a 20-year sentence and then liddy reinvented himself as a radio talk show host. he used that to offer provocative memories of history and watergate. >> it occurred to me that they might have me assassinated and i didn't want any amateur doing it with a shotgun on a sunday morning through a kitchen window and take out not only me, but mrs. liddy and a couple of kids and i said wanted to stand on remote street corner and do it without harming any of the taxpayers and dean's comment was, i don't think we've gotten there to that point yet. >> you can find that on our free mobile app or wherever your get your podcasts. >> agriculture secretary tom vilsack testified on the opportunities and challenges facing farmers in rural communities. he also outlined action taken to address the nation's baby formula shortage. the senate agricultural committee runs about two hours. >> [inaudible conversations] >> good morning.