Since the inauguration, the Trump administration has quickly moved to dramatically transform federal law enforcement. Top officials at the FBI and Justice Department have been pushed out; agents and prosecutors involved in January 6 proceedings and the president’s criminal cases are being removed, or fear retribution; and across the federal apparatus, resources are being shifted to support Donald Trump’s campaign against immigrants.
All of these moves could have drastic consequences for how federal law enforcement polices violent crime — and there are disturbing implications. The Trump administration appears to be following the Project 2025 plan for the FBI, an agency that foils dozens of domestic terror plots each year and has taken great pains to convey its political neutrality. The bureau avoids terms like “far right” and does not track white nationalist violence as a standalone category. All the same, as The Trace’s Will Van Sant and Capital B’s Brandon Tensley reported in October, “Project 2025 calls for the next Republican administration to hollow out the FBI and sap it of any independence. … The result: Its director would report to a political functionary who may be more interested in doing Trump’s bidding than in quashing the ongoing menace of white nationalism.”
That seems well underway. Current and former federal law enforcement officials told Vanity Fair that the FBI is poised to shift its focus away from far-right extremism, which data indicates has been a growing domestic threat over the past five years; a current FBI agent said the agency is likely to instead move “toward things like BLM and antifa.” That would essentially be a return to the form of the first Trump term, with an important difference: This time, the president is stuffing as many loyalists as he can into his administration, regardless of experience, and Senate Republicans are expressing few qualms about confirming his nominees. That includes Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, who has pushed far-right conspiracies and was this week accused of orchestrating firings at the FBI without holding office. On Thursday, a Senate committee advanced Patel’s nomination on a party-line vote.
The fallout, however, doesn’t just touch national security. Earlier this month, Lawfare’s Roger Parloff wrote about one example that illustrates how it extends locally, too. In a bout of firings on January 31, the Justice Department’s Washington, D.C., office lost over a dozen young assistant U.S. attorneys, most of whom were slated to rotate into the division that prosecutes violent, nonfederal crimes in the district. Their loss means that, among other things, there are fewer people available to take on gun crimes.
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From The Trace
Detroit Ended 2024 With the Lowest Number of Homicides Since 1965. Now It May Lose a Crucial Program: The $10 million initiative is funded by the Joe Biden-era American Rescue Plan Act, an economic stimulus package set to expire this year.
Some Chicago Gunshot Victims Don’t Trust Ambulances: Survivors are choosing to transport themselves to the hospital instead of waiting for emergency services. Experts say the Chicago Fire Department isn’t doing everything it can to improve slow response times.
At the Salon, Philadelphia Women Sound Off on How Safe Their City Feels: Stylists and clients at two beauty salons spoke to a Trace reporter about how the city’s decline in homicides has translated into real life.
News Deserts + High Gun Violence: Staffer Aaron Mendelson explains how the Gun Violence Data Hub shaped its strategy for reaching out to local news outlets.
What We’re Reading
Trump’s Pardons and Purges Revive Old Question: Who Counts as a Terrorist?: The Trump administration has purged federal law enforcement agencies of prosecutors and investigators who had pursued domestic far-right groups. Experts on violent extremism say the actions place the country at a critical juncture: “Does this become a four-year period where these groups can really use the time to strengthen their organization, their command and control, stockpile weapons?” [ProPublica]
MAIT: How Wisconsin’s investigations into police shootings protect officers: Cops under investigation get special privileges, can change their stories, and are rarely charged. [Wisconsin Watch]
Bullets and Barriers: How One City Is Trying to Reduce Gun Violence: Birmingham, Alabama, which had a record year for homicides, is trying to curb shootings by blocking streets. But the effort has come to mean something else. [The New York Times]
A year since Kansas City’s Super Bowl parade shooting, survivors haven’t been able to move on: A year after the February 14 shooting, survivors and their families are still reeling. Parents are anxious about their kids’ safety; the initial outpouring of financial support for victims has dried up; and many survivors feel ambivalent about the Chiefs, and wonder why the team they celebrated last year hasn’t acknowledged what they’ve been going through. [KCUR and KFF Health News]
The Strangest Details From A$AP Rocky’s Felony Trial: The rapper’s not-guilty plea for two counts of felony assault with a firearm comes from his defense that it was a prop weapon and no bullets were discharged. But that’s not even the most dramatic part of the trial. [Vulture]
In Memoriam
Julian Green, 22, was easy to love. He was unhesitatingly generous — loved ones remembered how he’d treat colleagues to lunch, or give them $50 to treat themselves; even as a kid, they told the Tallahassee Democrat, Green was quick to give what money he had to folks asking for help on roadways. Green was shot and killed during an armed robbery earlier this month; he was on the job, delivering beer to a convenience store in Gadsden County, Florida. A cashier, Laura Darley, was also killed, and two others were injured. Green was a wrestler for his high school team in nearby Tallahassee, and had once dreamed of wrestling at the collegiate level; he was also a musician, a drummer who dabbled in other instruments. He made fast connections in the unusual jobs he’d held before: When he worked at a state prison, his sister said, Green was one of few correctional officers to forge strong bonds with those incarcerated; in his few months working at a funeral home, he became part of the family, its director said. “As far as who we lost,” a pastor at Green’s church said, “we lost a great man.”
Spotlight on Solutions
A few years ago, rural Scott County, Tennessee, transformed its process for handling domestic violence cases — and became an unlikely model for how to keep victims safe, WPLN and ProPublica reported last summer. The county took steps to address the unique barriers to addressing domestic violence in rural areas. Key to that effort was better ensuring that people subject to domestic violence charges or protection orders were separated from their guns.
Now, WPLN reports, two GOP Tennessee lawmakers have filed legislation to take Scott County’s approach to enforcing firearm dispossession statewide. “This is just a clear example of when a community gets behind enforcing the law, it doesn’t matter how big you are, how small you are,” Judge Scarlett Ellis, who oversees Scott County’s domestic violence court, told the station. “Changes can be made.”
Pull Quote
“There’s a big gap in terms of feeling confident and trust with [first responders], to take our lives in their hands and make sure that we’re OK. The unknown that you’re walking into, with that situation being life or death, is very scary.”
— Cheo Patrick, the CEO of a crisis management consultant company and a gunshot wound survivor who has personal experience with emergency response times in Chicago, on public distrust in the city’s emergency services, to The Trace
