GOP bill would create new DHS office to counter domestic ‘violent extremism’

Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul wants to create a new arm of the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combatting domestic violent extremists.

The lawmaker introduced this month the Countering Violent Extremism Act, which would create a new Office of Coordination for Countering Violent Extremism under DHS authority. According to the bill, the new law enforcement entity would be responsible for activities including:

• “identifying risk factors that contribute to violent extremism in communities in the United States”
• “assessing the methods used by violent extremists to disseminate propaganda and messaging to communities at risk for radicalization and recruitment”
• and “establishing a counter-messaging program” to combat domestic violent extremists

“We think there should be a better countering violent extremism effort, that there should be a lead agency tasked to handle that,” McCaul said earlier in the month following a congressional hearing on ISIS’s use of social media for recruitment.

The lawmaker’s bill would create that lead agency and fund it with $10 million per year for the next five years.

While the Texas lawmaker and his fellow Republicans’ main goal with such legislation is ferreting out Islamic extremists living in the U.S., the bill is likely to gain support among congressional Democrats whose main domestic terror concerns center around a perceived growing threat of “right wing extremism” in the U.S.

A group of Senate Democrats recently initiated a push for congressional inquiry into whether the threat of white supremacist domestic terror is on the rise in the wake of the killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17.

“If this same act had been perpetrated by someone claiming a desire to harm Americans in the service of Islamist principles, it would immediately be labeled an act of terror,” the senators, led by ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said in a written petition for hearings. “A violent act motivated by a racist desire to intimidate a civilian population falls squarely within the definition of domestic terrorism.”

 

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