Biden vowed to defeat domestic terrorism. The how is the hard part.
The White House plans to make the fight against homegrown extremism a priority. But Democrats are still discussing how to do it.
In his inaugural address Wednesday, President Joe Biden declared the “rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism” a looming threat the country “must confront” and “defeat.”
The moment comes more than a year after Biden launched his campaign for the presidency with a video decrying a 2017 neo-Nazi and white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va. “In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime, Biden said at the time.
As president, he’ll have to figure out how to address it with deeds and not just words — a difficult task, as the Biden team is now learning. Congress may have a hard time delineating just who qualifies as a domestic terrorist, too — and what new legal tools, if any, to authorize, interviews with influential lawmakers make clear.
People close to the transition say the Capitol insurrection drove home the acuteness of the threat for the new administration, which has already decided to elevate the issue by making it a top priority for the National Security Council.
New personnel with expertise in domestic extremism will be brought on to support the counterterrorism directorate and homeland security advisers, the sources said, likely within the next few weeks.
The increased emphasis reflects President Biden and his team’s alarm at what the Jan. 6 assault on Congress revealed about the country they are now tasked with leading. “Don’t you dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists,” as Biden put it in remarks the next day.
The shift is unlikely to be drastic, or even instant. The new NSC and Justice Department teams won’t be able to reorient toward countering domestic terrorism until they are fully settled in and briefed on the latest intelligence.
READ MORE: Biden vowed to defeat domestic terrorism. The how is the hard part.
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Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Thursday, January 21st 2021 at 9:20AM
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