An attack on Sunday that injured eight people at a mall in Boulder, Colorado, has been described as a “targeted terror attack” by the FBI, according to the Associated Press.
The incident highlights actions taken by the Trump administration that have hobbled federal law enforcement in fighting terrorism while also shining a spotlight on the shortcomings of the personnel that President Donald Trump has put in charge of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
On Sunday, a man reportedly yelling “Free Palestine” used a makeshift flamethrower to attack participants at a “Run for Their Lives” event who were advocating for the release of hostages being detained by Hamas in Gaza since 2023. Several people injured in the attack were hospitalized and the suspect was arrested.
Since taking office in January, Trump has made policy decisions that hobble law enforcement attempts to fight crimes that are classified as terrorism.
Historically, combating domestic terrorism has been a joint effort by federal, state, and local government. But under Trump, local law enforcement is shouldering more of the burden.
Instead, Trump’s obsession with attacking immigration has led to critical federal funding being diverted away from combating extremism and instead directed toward immigration issues. At the same time, the administration has cut back on resources like a national database that tracked domestic terrorism, bending to conservative complaints that the federal government focused too much on dangerous threats posed by right-affiliated groups.
The Trump administration has also cut grants for studies exploring ways to combat domestic terrorism and protect the public from violent extremism.
At a recent event discussing efforts in Michigan to fight hate crimes, Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab explained, “The federal government is gone on this issue.”
Early in his administration Trump made it clear that he was going soft on domestic terrorism.
He chose—even over the objections of some Republicans—to issue pardons to more than 1,500 of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Several of those people who sought to overturn the official results of the 2020 election that Trump lost have gone on to commit new crimes.
The senior official tasked with directly combating domestic extremism, FBI Director Kash Patel, got his nomination by promoting baseless pro-Trump conspiracies and penning a series of children’s books that were essentially fan fiction fantasies about Trump. His underling, Assistant FBI Director Dan Bongino, also got Trump’s attention by promoting Trump-friendly conspiracies on his podcast and recently complained to Fox News that his new job is too hard.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has domestic terrorism as part of her portfolio, has spent most of her time in office appearing on Fox News to promote the administration’s agenda. When she isn’t doing that she has been calling for Trump’s Democratic critics to be silent and arguing that protests against Trump donor Elon Musk could lead to criminal charges.
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The administration’s rhetoric in condemning attacks also raises questions. The Justice Department said in a statement the Boulder attack was a “needless act of violence, which follows recent attacks against Jewish Americans”—but Trump has a long history of antisemitic remarks and anti-Jewish bigotry, even infamously praising Nazis as “very fine people.”
Trump and his team are compromised on the issue of combating violent extremism and opposing antisemitism, with vulnerable Americans left in the crosshairs.
The event has been described as a “targeted terror attack” by the FBI.
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