Although the weaponization of respected institutions is nothing new, it remains one of the most grotesque ways people in power can attack their political opponents.

The Media Research Center (MRC) just released a report on the latest example, which comes from the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security . Using an anti-terrorism grant program, they gave $352,109 to a group whose educational materials suggested that conservatives are just one to two degrees away from Nazis and terrorists.

The University of Dayton Human Rights Center was given the grant in order to establish the Preventing Radicalization to Extremist Violence through Education, Network-Building and Training in Southwest Ohio program. According to the DHS , this program aims to raise “awareness of the radicalization to violence process” and “develop and implement modules on the risks of and protective factors for radicalization to violence related to media literacy and online critical thinking.”

On the surface, this doesn’t sound objectionable. After all, who would be opposed to grassroots programs that help prevent extremism, terrorism, and violence? The issues, however, quickly began to arise when the MRC submitted a Freedom Of Information Act request and got a hold of some of these materials.

Possibly most disturbing is “a chart used by DHS and its grantee in a training program” which explicitly equates groups such as the Republican National Committee, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, PragerU, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Quillette magazine with neo-Nazis, white supremacist websites, and racist militant groups. The training depicts a pyramid with those mainstream groups in the bottom two sections, suggesting that they lead people to embrace Nazi and militant ideologies, which are in the upper two sections.

In other words, according to this program funded by the DHS, conservatives are only slightly better than Nazis and terrorists.

I wonder what the reaction would be if they promoted a similar graphic depicting “the pyramid of far-left radicalization,” which suggested that by being involved with the Democratic National Committee, one is in a pipeline toward becoming a communist or anarchist revolutionary who is eager to loot and riot. Most people would rightly understand that is absurd. Yet, in many elite institutions today, the suggestion that watching Fox News may lead someone to become a neo-Nazi is not seen as so far-fetched.

According to the MRC, “The seminar also compared former President Donald Trump to Pol Pot and suggested Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might wish to start a second Holocaust.” Additionally, seminars that are a part of this program feature lectures by someone who is a self-proclaimed member of antifa.

These are your tax dollars hard at work.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time the Biden administration has used its power to target conservatives. In 2021, after Joe Biden described a Georgia voting law as “Jim Crow 2.0,” the DOJ sued the state, claiming the law had “Racially Discriminatory Provisions.” The overtly political nature of this lawsuit was exposed after the 2022 midterm elections when data revealed that black voter turnout rose relative to the 2018 midterm elections, and polls showed that 0% of black voters in Georgia said they had a poor voting experience.

Also in 2021, after parents began to show up at school board meetings to object to certain material being taught in school, a group formed by the Department of Justice wrote a letter to the White House that said “the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” While there was certainly conduct at those meetings that can be condemned, that statement is blatantly hyperbolic. They later apologized.

Trust in our institutions requires trust that they are there to serve all of our best interests. But when they are weaponized for political purposes, it does nothing but erode trust and divide Americans.

Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.