The MAGAfication of Homeland Security: Loyalty Over Safety

How Trump is turning DHS into a loyalty test, and why a 22-year-old with no security experience is now running terrorism prevention.

In the America Donald Trump is building, experience is expendable, and loyalty is law. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the newest appointee to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to combat terrorism is a 22-year-old who used to mow lawns.

Thomas Fugate, a recent college grad with a background in gardening and grocery stocking, is now in charge of the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), an office once tasked with identifying and stopping domestic extremism, including white supremacist and far-right violence. During Trump’s first term, this role was typically filled by specialists with experience in intelligence, law enforcement, or counter-extremism policy. Under Trump 2.0, it goes to a kid whose résumé wouldn’t pass muster at a city council internship.

Don’t let the absurdity fool you: this isn’t just a joke. It’s a strategy. Fugate’s rise isn’t about merit. It’s about MAGA. His appointment is the latest in a calculated effort to install loyalists and dismantle the federal government from within.

We’ve seen this play before. It’s the reemergence of Schedule F-style governance — purge the professionals, promote the faithful. Homeland Security is being repurposed not to protect Americans from extremism, but to protect Trump’s political project from oversight, dissent, and the truth.

Nowhere is that reengineering more obvious or more dangerous than in what’s happened to CP3.

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The Hollowing of CP3: From Prevention to Propaganda

When the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) was established, it had a clear and urgent mission: to identify and disrupt domestic terrorism before it begins. It was designed after years of rising white supremacist violence, mass shootings, and far-right extremism. It’s an institutional response to tragedies like Charlottesville, El Paso, and Buffalo.

At its peak, CP3 had more than 80 staff members, including analysts, policy experts, community liaisons, and former law enforcement officers. It ran educational initiatives, funded local prevention programs, and helped state agencies identify early warning signs of radicalization. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working.

CP3’s work was grounded in early intervention, not policing ideology, but helping communities recognize and respond to behavioral red flags that often precede violence. It funded programs in schools, houses of worship, and civic centers to build resilience against radicalization, with a strong focus on preventing hate-based violence. In recent years, the office invested in partnerships to combat the spread of white nationalist and anti-government extremism, which DHS and the FBI both identified as the most lethal domestic threats. This made CP3 a frequent target of right-wing pundits and MAGA-aligned lawmakers, who falsely accused it of “woke surveillance” despite its nonpartisan, prevention-first framework.

That is, until Trump returned to power.

Since January, CP3 has been gutted. Reports indicate the department now has fewer than 20 employees, many of whom are politically vetted loyalists. Budgets have been slashed. Grant programs have stalled. And leadership has been handed to Thomas Fugate, a man with no known experience in security, law, psychology, or violence prevention.

This isn’t neglect. It’s sabotage. Trump and his inner circle have long dismissed the threat of far-right violence, even as the FBI and DHS repeatedly warned that white supremacists are the deadliest domestic terror threat in the country. CP3, once a firewall against that threat, is being turned into a firewall against accountability.

We’ve reported on the diprioritization of far white extremism here:

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Fugate’s appointment signals what this administration values most: obedience over expertise, ideology over impact, narrative over national safety. It’s not just that the office is being emptied. It’s being actively repurposed, likely for surveilling critics, controlling speech, and reframing dissent as extremism, as well as public oversight as a threat.

But Fugate isn’t just a bad fit for this role; he’s a symbol of something bigger unfolding across the entire federal government.

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The MAGAfication of Government: Purge the Pros, Install the Faithful

Thomas Fugate isn’t the exception. He’s the blueprint.

Across the federal government, Trump’s second term is turning long-standing agencies into loyalty labs. Seasoned professionals are being sidelined, reassigned, or purged entirely. In their place, the administration is promoting ideologically vetted loyalists, some barely out of college, some fresh from political campaigns or right-wing think tanks, whose primary qualification is that they won’t say “no” to power.

Thomas Fugate fits the mold perfectly. He graduated in 2024 with a degree in political science from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He worked briefly as a gardener and a grocery store clerk before landing a job as a confidential assistant in the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration office. Less than a year later, he’s leading CP3, a position that previously required national security credentials, cross-agency coordination, and a deep understanding of radicalization. Under Trump, those qualifications have been replaced with a single test: Are you loyal?

This pattern has a name: Schedule F. Originally proposed during Trump’s first term, and now revived in spirit if not in law, Schedule F is a framework for reclassifying civil servants so they can be fired en masse and replaced with political appointees. The goal is simple: strip away institutional resistance to MAGA policies, whether it's in DHS, DOJ, State, or the IRS, and replace it with unwavering compliance.

At the Department of Justice, legal analysts with decades of nonpartisan experience have been pushed out to make room for attorneys who helped challenge the 2020 election. At the State Department, diplomatic experts have been demoted while fringe ideologues rise. In the Department of Education, experts in civil rights have been replaced by activists seeking to dismantle protections for LGBTQ+ students and students of color.

Trump’s second administration isn’t about changing policy. It’s about changing the people who write, enforce, and interpret the rules. The playbook is clear: weaken oversight, discredit expertise, and build an executive branch that serves the man, not the mission.

That’s why a 22-year-old political foot soldier can now run a counterterrorism office. Not because he’s qualified, but because he’s loyal, disposable, and unthreatening to the larger project. This is what authoritarian consolidation looks like in a bureaucracy: one quiet replacement at a time.

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From Bureaucracy to Battlefield: Why This Moment Matters

The MAGAfication of government isn’t happening in secret. It’s happening in plain sight, under titles like “reform” and “efficiency.” But make no mistake, what’s being dismantled is not red tape. It’s the infrastructure of democracy itself.

Institutions like CP3 were built in response to violence. They exist because we’ve lived through the consequences of ignoring threats, through bombs in Oklahoma City, torches in Charlottesville, and bullets in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Jacksonville. And yet today, the very office tasked with preventing the next act of domestic terror is being led by someone who wouldn’t even meet the minimum hiring standards of the teams he now oversees.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in the United States. Not a sudden coup, but a deliberate campaign to break the parts of government that serve the people, and replace them with parts that serve the powerful.

By gutting CP3, Trump isn’t just leaving the nation vulnerable to extremist violence; he’s redefining what counts as a threat. Hate-fueled attacks are minimized. MAGA-aligned militias are reframed as patriots. Meanwhile, protest movements, school boards, journalists, and civil rights groups face growing scrutiny.

This isn’t just dangerous. It’s strategic. A government that no longer sees white nationalism as a threat is a government that can weaponize fear against anyone who challenges its agenda. The result is a chilling inversion: the protectors are purged, and the enablers are promoted.

Which brings us back to where we started, to the appointment that reveals the whole game.

Unless we expose it, fight it, and resist it at every level, this quiet transformation will become permanent.

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This Is the Test. Pass It.

Thomas Fugate’s appointment is not just an embarrassment. It’s a warning. A 22-year-old with no national security experience now oversees terrorism prevention, not because he’s ready, but because he’s obedient. That’s not government. That’s authoritarianism with a staff badge.

What’s happening inside DHS is happening across the federal government: systems meant to protect the public are being turned inward, hollowed out, or repurposed to protect power. It’s quiet. It’s bureaucratic. And that’s why it’s so dangerous. There are no tanks in the streets. Just desks being filled with loyalists, and doors quietly closing on democracy.

Here’s what you can do right now:

• Call your members of Congress.
  Demand immediate oversight of CP3 and transparency into the qualifications (or lack thereof) of all DHS appointments. Congress can hold hearings, demand answers, and freeze budget appropriations for politically hijacked offices.

  U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
  Sample script:
  “Hi, I’m a constituent from [your city], and I’m calling to demand Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security’s CP3 office. It’s unacceptable for critical national security roles to be handed out based on political loyalty rather than expertise. Please support hearings and public transparency.”

• Support independent watchdogs and FOIA efforts.
  Groups like ProPublica, CREW, and American Oversight are already digging into Fugate’s appointment and broader MAGA staffing efforts. Donate, share their work, and amplify investigations that hold power accountable.

• Talk about it loudly and relentlessly.
  This can’t stay a niche outrage on policy Twitter. Tell your friends. Post on social. Write to your local paper. The more people understand the depth of the sabotage, the harder it is to normalize.

• Protect the firewall & be the firewall.
  The professionals are being pushed out. That leaves us, the press, the public, the people who still believe that qualifications, facts, and safety matter. The difference between a hollowed-out democracy and a living one is how we respond when the scaffolding starts to fall.

This is the test, not of Trump, but of us.

Whether we notice. Whether we care. Whether we act.

One quiet replacement at a time, the system is being rewritten. The question now is, will we let it?

Bibliography:

• Brumfield, Ben. “Young UTSA Grad’s First Big Job? He’s Head of Federal Counterterrorism Office.” San Antonio Express-News, June 2, 2025.

• “‘The Intern in Charge’: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention” ProPublica, June 3, 2025.

• “22-Year-Old to Lead DHS Office: Trump Picks Ex-Gardener Thomas Fugate to Head Prevention Team.” Times of India, June 3, 2025.

• “Meet Thomas Fugate: 22-Year-Old Ex-Gardener and Grocery Store Assistant to Lead US Terror Prevention.” The Economic Times, June 3, 2025.

• “Trump Admin Taps 22-Year-Old One Year Out of College for Terrorism Prevention Role at DHS.” People, June 3, 2025.

• “Trump Puts 22-Year-Old in Charge of US Counterterror Office, Sparking National Security Concerns.” The Independent, June 3, 2025.