President Donald Trump’s administration has cut off funding for a nonprofit program that works to rehabilitate people who were once part of white nationalist and neo-Nazi hate groups, according to reports.
Life After Hate, the nonprofit group that was founded in 2011, was scheduled to receive a $400,000 grant awarded by the Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism grant program. Life After Hate was one of more than 30 organizations slated to receive funding as part of the program.
However, according to Politico, Life After Hate was dropped from the new grant list.
The organization provides academic research, consulting, education and outreach to help radicalized individuals leave extremism movements and “begin the process of deradicalization,” according to its website.
One of the organization’s co-founders, Christian Piciolini, told Politco that the group has seen a 20-fold increase in requests for help since Trump was elected “from people looking to disengage or bystanders / family members looking for help from someone they know.”
Piciolini told ThinkProgress that the organization feared it wouldn’t get funding as part of the Countering Violent Extremism Program after Reuters reported Trump’s administration planned to re-brand the grant funding to only focus on terrorism groups carried out by people claiming to be Islamic.
As part of the re-branding, the program would be called “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,” according to Reuters.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for the Countering Violent Extremism Grant, did not offer a comment to Politico as to why Life After Hate was dropped from the program.
