A Bad Precedent - When Politics Trump Preparedness
For the first time since 9/11, the security of American states and cities is actively being shaped not by risk assessments and intelligence, but by political loyalty. The deliberate reallocation of homeland security grant funding for political reward or gain isn’t just poor policy–it’s a perilous precedent that can have irreparable damage to American defense.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, a massive push emerged from local and state law enforcement intelligence professionals to “get a seat at the table” with federal officials in the combat against terrorism. A series of documented calls for intelligence reforms in subsequent years led to the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP), the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the reorganization of the U.S. Intelligence Community under a new entity and leader – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Local officials, new federal entities, and existing federal partners, including officials from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), collaborated and narrowed towards the concept of fusion–integrating intelligence, public safety, and law enforcement professionals from multiple levels of federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government.
By 2004, the fusion center model had moved from concept to implementation, with the first state and urban centers established in early-adopting jurisdictions such as Arizona, Georgia, New York, California, and Illinois. As provision of critical funding through DHS in the form of State Homeland Security Grant Program (SHSP) and Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI)--core components of the umbrella funding mechanism called the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP), the number of unique fusion centers nationwide expanded from a handful to 70. Today, there are 80 recognized fusion centers across the continental U.S. and U.S. territories.
Fusion centers nationwide remain deeply reliant not only on state funding, but the annual SHSP and UASI funding provided by DHS. These funds help sustain the personnel, tools, and critical resources necessary to defend states and major cities across the nation and provide U.S. state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) law enforcement and emergency management partners with critical intelligence to safeguard the country. These intelligence centers are now staffed with state and local law enforcement and intelligence professionals and supplemented with personnel from partner regional agencies and designated liaisons from federal partners, including but not limited to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).
While the core mission of this nationwide network of fusion centers began from a pure counterterrorism mission, these intelligence centers remain at the forefront of national defense and homeland security in missions related to counterterrorism, suspicious activity reporting per the Nationwide SAR Initiative (NSI), targeted violence prevention (TVP), behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM), counter-narcotics and transnational crime, gang intelligence and organized crime, critical infrastructure protection (CIP), cybercrime and intelligence, emergency management support, counter-human trafficking and smuggling, and intelligence analysis. Every single day, fusion centers across the nation conduct operations, collect, analyze, produce intelligence, and coordinate with their partners to mitigate and interdict threats before they metastasize. The number of threats assessed and acted upon by fusion center personnel that never make the news is staggering.
Today, the continuity of fusion centers, which provide critical operations and intelligence in support of homeland security missions, is threatened by the unprecedented polarization of U.S. politics. This month, Reuters reported that President Trump’s administration plans to reallocate roughly $1 billion of terrorism prevention funds (allocated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and (DHS) from Democratic-led states to Republican-led states. Administration officials argue that the new allocation model reflects changing threat priorities—specifically, counter-cartel operations and border security. Yet, data shows that major urban areas facing persistent extremist and infrastructure threats suffered the steepest losses.
Despite recent reports making headlines nationwide, the politicization of UASI and SHSP funding allocations began well before October. On August 4, 2025, the DHS released its annual Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Homeland Security Grant Program, which includes the SHSP and UASI funding. According to data collected from government relations firm Brooks Bawden Moore LLC, of the eight states and territories to receive notably higher allocations of SHSP funding in 2025–half are Republican-governed and three Democrat-governed states with funding bumps (still notably lower than their Republican counterparts) are considered critical areas for the Trump administration’s push for counter-cartel and illegal border crossing operations (Arizona, California, and Guam). In contrast, all of the states that saw reductions in SHSP funding allocations for FY 2025 are Democrat-governed (Washington, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York).
While overall FY 2025 UASI funding rose dramatically—with nineteen designated urban areas receiving increases exceeding 100 percent—the only jurisdictions to experience reductions were six of the nation’s most established, Democratic-led metropolitan regions. These included the San Francisco Bay Area (–0.93%), Newark and Jersey City (–16.71%), Los Angeles (–34.90%), New York City (–40.96%), Chicago (–43.63%), and the National Capital Region (–44.09%). Collectively, these areas represent the country’s most mature urban intelligence and homeland security ecosystems—home to fusion centers, major transit systems, and critical-infrastructure nodes that form the backbone of America’s counterterrorism and preparedness posture.
In contrast, the regions that saw the most significant UASI funding increases reflect a mix of legitimate operational expansions and politically advantageous redistributions. For example, metros like Phoenix, Austin, and Jacksonville were bolstered under the banner of border and transnational crime threats. Additionally, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Columbus benefited from a renewed administrative focus on critical infrastructure and industrial resilience, while New Orleans and Honolulu gained through disaster and maritime-security framing. Yet, when viewed in aggregate, the 2025 UASI distribution aligns more closely with political geography than threat geography, concentrating new investment in Republican-led and electorally strategic swing jurisdictions rather than the nation’s historically highest-risk urban centers.
The interactive chart below illustrates how SHSP and UASI allocations have shifted between FY 2024 and FY 2025 - underscoring an explicit partisan divide in who gained and who lost.
While the interactive map visualizes shifts in SHSP and UASI funding between FY 2024 and FY 2025, it cannot yet account for the proposed changes in FY 2026. In July, ECHO contributor Knight issued a stark warning about the downstream effects of diverting critical preparedness funds from established homeland security priorities toward executive-driven law enforcement initiatives along the southern border:
“Fusion centers, High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA), Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) projects, and even grant programs that support training for state and local law enforcement are status quo, on the decline, or set to be slashed or cut altogether in FY26 and beyond.”
An ECHO source of high validity with close proximity to the National Fusion Center Association (NFCA) recently indicated that, if the proposed FY 2026 budget reductions remain intact, approximately 15 to 20 fusion centers nationwide could cease operations. For those capable of remaining open, the continued erosion of UASI and SHSP funding would produce cascading operational effects: staffing reductions; analytical coverage gaps in high-risk urban areas; diminished counterterrorism readiness due to reduced suspicious activity reporting, processing, and analysis; and widening disparities in intelligence production and situational awareness between red- and blue-state regions.
Let me be clear: when politics dictates homeland security, we all become less safe.
The politicization of funding meant to safeguard Americans from terrorism, targeted violence, narcotics and human trafficking, and cyber or infrastructure threats sets a dangerous precedent with real-world consequences. Political victories are temporary—but the loss of capability to detect, deter, and defend against those who would do us harm is not.
I have worked in a fusion center and have overseen units responsible for written intelligence production, counterterrorism, targeted violence prevention, and suspicious activity reporting. I’ve worked alongside the agents, officers, and analysts who labor tirelessly to protect our schools, mass gatherings, elections, houses of worship, and communities across the nation. While the proposed slashes to key homeland security funding may be partisan in origin, the consequences of reduced security are not.
No state or city is truly red or wholly blue. Homeland security professionals, policymakers, and the public must collectively advocate for restoring risk-based grant allocation formulas, insulating critical preparedness programs from political influence, and increasing transparency around the operational and strategic costs of these shifts—costs that every state and major urban area will inevitably bear.
- Bishop