Well, lets look at both questions here: First, the Cloudflare part is simple: they offer more than DDOS protection. They can seemingly keep your site visible even if your site itself is down, they offer analytics, and so on. And lets not forget that they probably have some savvy salesmen that can convince some lawyers to pay up and use the service. As for why a lawyer's office would run a site like that. DHS connection is certainly a possibility that I wouldn't dismiss. Another possibility is simply personal interest, or the pet project of a wife, daughter, or friend of the attorney's. Or it could be professional. Sure, they may mainly focus on personal injury law, but maybe they are on good terms with a client that came to them about helping with the website hosting stuff where they can trust some measure of attorney-client privilege if someone comes around asking about the site and so on. Instead of speculating, why not write them a letter and ask? Google up a few other similar aggregators, and name drop them. Write to someone mentioned on the site, explain that you're writing an article about up and coming political-oriented news sources, and would like to include them. Fucking social engineer some info, and cross-check it against facts you already know.
But the burning question is why would an apparently legitimate (Search news for "Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty & Proctor"), personal injury law firm be operating a site that consolidates hot-button current activist issues in the first place, and WHY does it feel the need to protect itself at all with Cloudflare or any dDos circumvention tools? If you're regurgitating other people's news no one's going to be interested in wasting their time, fr any length of time, dDosing you.
Could it be one of the DHS's lesser-known corporate cyber-cop partners?
That's my best guess.
Rr