The Justice Department has removed a January 2024 study that found far-right attacks accounted for more ideologically motivated homicides than other types of U.S. domestic extremism, according to reporting by 404 Media and HuffPost.
The report, titled “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism,” was hosted on the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) website but was no longer accessible online as of recent checks, 404 Media reported. The study’s opening paragraph states, “The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” and adds that “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
The study was still available on the OJP site as recently as Sept. 12, 404 Media reported, and can currently be accessed via the Wayback Machine archive. Daniel Malmer, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina who studies online extremism, posted that the document had disappeared from the site on social platform Bluesky. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The OJP web page where the study had been hosted now contains a notice saying the office is reviewing its websites and materials "in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance," and that "during this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable." The notice was cited by 404 Media and is visible on the OJP site.
The reported removal comes as the Biden-era reversal on some federal practices has given way to new directives under President Donald Trump intended to eliminate what his administration calls "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility" policies across federal agencies. Those executive actions have prompted multiple agencies to audit and, in some cases, temporarily remove online content while they review materials for compliance with new guidance.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon removed and later restored web pages highlighting the contributions of Black veterans and Navajo Code Talkers after similar reviews, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention briefly removed and then restored an infectious-disease tracking tool during an agency audit. Critics and some researchers say that such removal of content can limit public access to governmental research and historical records.
The study’s findings directly challenge assertions by some political leaders that left-wing violence is the dominant source of domestic ideological killings in the United States. In recent weeks, President Trump and other conservative figures have intensified rhetoric accusing the political left of perpetrating much of the country’s political violence. The removed document cited in January concluded that far-right extremists had been responsible for a larger share of ideologically motivated homicides since 1990 than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.
Researchers and watchdogs who monitor extremist activity have for years flagged the rise in violence associated with far-right groups and individuals, a trend documented in multiple academic studies and federal reporting. The NIJ-focused study compiled these patterns into an overview intended to inform policymakers and the public; its removal from the agency website has drawn attention from academics and advocates who track extremism.
Access to the study through archival services means the text remains available to researchers and reporters, but its disappearance from the departmental site raises questions among experts about the scope and intent of the OJP review. Officials have framed the removal as a temporary step during compliance checks rather than as a content-based deletion.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have disagreed about how federal law enforcement should identify and respond to domestic extremist threats, with some Republicans arguing the government has become overly focused on white supremacist or far-right violence and others saying the threat has been consistently underappreciated. Analysts say a full public accounting of agency reviews and the criteria used to withdraw materials would help clarify whether removals are administrative housekeeping or politically motivated omissions.
The Justice Department has not provided a timeline for the completion of the OJP website review or for when the removed publications might be returned to public view. Meanwhile, researchers and civil liberties groups continue to collect and cite archived versions of the study as they assess the trends and policy implications documented in the report.