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“THE INTERN IN CHARGE”: MEET THE 22-YEAR-OLD TRUMP’S TEAM
PICKED TO LEAD TERRORISM PREVENTION  
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Hannah Allam
June 4, 2025
ProPublica
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_ One year out of college and with no apparent national security
expertise, Thomas Fugate is the Department of Homeland Security
official tasked with overseeing the government’s main hub for
combating violent extremism. _

Thomas Fugate at a Trump rally during the campaign , Credit:Via
Fugate’s Instagram account

 

When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in
politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting
opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and
upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space.

His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the
22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a
Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s
main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant
program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who
interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security
role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs
and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts
to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of
targeted violence.

Fugate’s appointment is the latest shock for an office that has been
decimated since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and
began remaking national security to give it a laser focus on
immigration.

News of the appointment has trickled out in recent weeks, raising
alarm among counterterrorism researchers and nonprofit groups funded
by CP3. Several said they turned to LinkedIn for intel on Fugate —
an unknown in their field — and were stunned to see a photo of “a
college kid” with a flag pin on his lapel posing with a sharply
arched eyebrow. No threat prevention experience is listed in his
employment history.

Fugate’s profile picture on LinkedIn Credit:Via Fugate’s LinkedIn
page

Typically, people familiar with CP3 say, a candidate that green
wouldn’t have gotten an interview for a junior position, much less
be hired to run operations. According to LinkedIn, the bulk of
Fugate’s leadership experience comes from having served as secretary
general of a Model United Nations club.

“Maybe he’s a wunderkind. Maybe he’s Doogie Howser and has
everything at 21 years old, or whatever he is, to lead the office. But
that’s not likely the case,” said one counterterrorism researcher
who has worked with CP3 officials for years. “It sounds like putting
the intern in charge.”

In the past seven weeks, at least five high-profile targeted attacks
have unfolded across the U.S., including a car bombing in California
and the gunning down of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington.
Against this backdrop, current and former national security officials
say, the Trump administration’s decision to shift counterterrorism
resources to immigration and leave the violence-prevention portfolio
to inexperienced appointees is “reckless.”

“We’re entering very dangerous territory,” one longtime U.S.
counterterrorism official said.

The fate of CP3 is one example of the fallout from deep cuts that have
eliminated public health and violence-prevention initiatives across
federal agencies.

The once-bustling office of around 80 employees now has fewer than 20,
former staffers say. Grant work stops, then restarts. One senior civil
servant was reassigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency via
an email that arrived late on a Saturday.

The office’s mission has changed overnight, with a pivot away from
focusing on domestic extremism, especially far-right movements
[[link removed]].
The “terrorism” category that framed the agency’s work for years
was abruptly expanded to include drug cartels, part of what DHS
staffers call an overarching message that border security is the only
mission that matters. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has largely
left terrorism prevention to the states
[[link removed]].

ProPublica sent DHS a detailed list of questions about Fugate’s
position, his lack of national security experience and the future of
the department’s prevention work. A senior agency official replied
with a statement saying only that Fugate’s CP3 duties were added to
his role as an aide in an Immigration & Border Security office.

“Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional
leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and
Partnerships office,” the official wrote in an email. “This is a
credit to his work ethic and success on the job.”

ProPublica sought an interview with Fugate through DHS and the White
House, but there was no response.

The Trump administration rejects claims of a retreat from terrorism
prevention, noting partnerships with law enforcement agencies and
swift investigations of recent attacks. “The notion that this single
office is responsible for preventing terrorism is not only incorrect,
it’s ignorant,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in an email.

Through intermediaries, ProPublica sought to speak with CP3 employees
but received no reply. Talking is risky; tales abound of Homeland
Security personnel undergoing lie-detector tests in leak
investigations, as Secretary Kristi Noem pledged in March
[[link removed]].

Accounts of Fugate’s arrival and the dismantling of CP3 come from
current and former Homeland Security personnel, grant recipients and
terrorism-prevention advocates who work closely with the office and
have at times been confidants for distraught staffers. All spoke on
condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the Trump
administration.

In these circles, two main theories have emerged to explain Fugate’s
unusual ascent. One is that the Trump administration rewarded a Gen Z
campaign worker with a resume-boosting title that comes with little
real power because the office is in shambles.

The other is that the White House installed Fugate to oversee a pivot
away from traditional counterterrorism lanes and to steer resources
toward MAGA-friendly sheriffs and border security projects before
eventually shuttering operations. In this scenario, Fugate was
described as “a minder” and “a babysitter.”

DHS did not address a ProPublica question about this characterization.

Rising MAGA Star

The CP3 homepage boasts about the office’s experts
[[link removed]] in disciplines including
emergency management, counterterrorism, public health and social work.

Fugate brings a different qualification prized by the White House:
loyalty to the president.

On Instagram, Fugate traced his political awakening to nine years ago,
when as a 13-year-old “in a generation deprived of hope,
opportunity, and happiness, I saw in one man the capacity for real and
lasting change: Donald Trump.”

Fugate is a self-described “Trumplican” who interned for state
lawmakers in Austin before graduating magna cum laude a year ago with
a degree in politics and law from the University of Texas at San
Antonio. Instagram photos and other public information from the past
year chronicle his lightning-fast rise in Trump world.

Starting in May 2024, photos show a newly graduated Fugate at a Texas
GOP gathering launching his first campaign, a bid for a delegate spot
at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He handed out
gummy candy and a flier with a photo of him in a tuxedo at Trump’s
Mar-a-Lago estate. Fugate won an alternate slot.

The next month, he was in Florida celebrating Trump’s 78th birthday
with the Club 47 fan group in West Palm Beach. “I truly wish I could
say more about what I’m doing, but more to come soon!” he wrote in
a caption, with a smiley emoji in sunglasses.

Posts in the run-up to the election show Fugate spending several weeks
in Washington, a time he called “surreal and invigorating.” In
July, he attended the Republican convention, sporting the Texas
delegation’s signature cowboy hat in photos with MAGA luminaries
such as former Cabinet Secretary Ben Carson and then-Rep. Matt Gaetz
(R-Fla.).

Fugate at the Republican National Convention Credit:Via Fugate’s
Instagram account

By late summer, Fugate was posting from the campaign trail as part of
Trump’s advance team, pictured at one stop standing behind the
candidate in a crowd of young supporters. When Trump won the election,
Fugate marked the moment with an emotional post about believing in him
“from the very start, even to the scorn and contempt of my peers.”

“Working alongside a dedicated, driven group of folks, we faced
every challenge head-on and, together, celebrated a victorious
outcome,” Fugate wrote on Instagram.

In February, the White House appointed Fugate as a “special
assistant” assigned to an immigration office at Homeland Security.
He assumed leadership of CP3 last month to fill a vacancy left by
previous Director Bill Braniff, an Army veteran with more than two
decades of national security experience who resigned in March when the
administration began cutting his staff.

In his final weeks as director, Braniff had publicly defended the
office’s achievements, noting the dispersal of nearly $90 million
since 2020 to help communities combat extremist violence. According to
the office’s 2024 report to Congress, in recent years CP3 grant
money was used in more than 1,100 efforts to identify violent
extremism at the community level and interrupt the radicalization
process.

“CP3 is the inheritor of the primary and founding mission of DHS —
to prevent terrorism,” Braniff wrote on LinkedIn when he announced
his resignation.

In conversations with colleagues, CP3 staffers have expressed shock at
how little Fugate knows about the basics of his role and likened
meetings with him to “career counseling.” DHS did not address
questions about his level of experience.

One grant recipient called Fugate’s appointment “an insult” to
Braniff and a setback in the move toward evidence-based approaches to
terrorism prevention, a field still reckoning with post-9/11 work that
was unscientific and stigmatizing to Muslims.

“They really started to shift the conversation and shift the public
thinking. It was starting to get to the root of the problem,” the
grantee said. “Now that’s all gone.”

Critics of Fugate’s appointment stress that their anger isn’t
directed at an aspiring politico enjoying a whirlwind entry to
Washington. The problem, they say, is the administration’s seemingly
cavalier treatment of an office that was funding work on urgent
national security concerns.

“The big story here is the undermining of democratic
institutions,” a former Homeland Security official said. “Who’s
going to volunteer to be the next civil servant if they think their
supervisor is an apparatchik?”

Season of Attacks

Spring brought a burst of extremist violence, a trend analysts fear
could extend into the summer given inflamed political tensions and the
disarray of federal agencies tasked with monitoring threats.

In April, an arson attack targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a
Democrat, who blamed the breach on “security failures
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Four days later, a mass shooter stormed onto the Florida State
University campus, killing two and wounding six others. The alleged
attacker had espoused white supremacist views and used Hitler as a
profile picture for a gaming account.

Attacks continued in May with the apparent car bombing of a fertility
clinic in California. The suspected assailant, the only fatality, left
a screed detailing violent beliefs against life and procreation. A few
days later, on May 21, a gunman allegedly radicalized by the war in
Gaza killed two Israeli Embassy aides outside a Jewish museum in
Washington.

June opened with a firebombing attack in Colorado that wounded 12,
including a Holocaust survivor, at a gathering calling for the release
of Israeli hostages. The suspect’s charges include a federal hate
crime.

If attacks continue at that pace, warn current and former national
security officials, cracks will begin to appear in the nation’s
pared-down counterterrorism sector.

“If you cut the staff and there are major attacks that lead to a
reconsideration, you can’t scale up staff once they’re fired,”
said the U.S. counterterrorism official, who opposes the
administration’s shift away from prevention.

Contradictory signals are coming out of Homeland Security about the
future of CP3 work, especially the grant program. Staffers have told
partners in the advocacy world that Fugate plans to roll out another
funding cycle soon. The CP3 website still touts the program as the
only federal grant “solely dedicated to helping local communities
develop and strengthen their capabilities” against terrorism and
targeted violence.

But Homeland Security’s budget proposal to Congress for the next
fiscal year suggests a bleaker future. The department recommended
eliminating the threat-prevention grant program, explaining that it
“does not align with DHS priorities.”

The former Homeland Security official said the decision “means that
the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no
longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”

_Hannah Allam from Washington covers national security issues, with a
focus on militant movements and counterterrorism efforts._

_Kirsten Berg
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research._

* Counterterrorism
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* US Government
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* Trump
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