House passes domestic terrorism bill in response to Buffalo shooting
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Link copied May 19, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC / Updated May 19, 2022, 3:08 AM UTC By Zoe Richards
The House passed legislation Wednesday night to address the growing threat of white supremacist and other domestic extremist groups after the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.
The measure passed 222-203 just days after a gunman shot 13 people, 11 of whom are Black, at a supermarket in Buffalo. An 18-year-old white man is in custody.
"I and many others in this body know what it is to experience acts of racial hatred and witness events of domestic terrorism," Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said on the House floor Wednesday. "We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to white supremacist vigilantes. It impacts all of us. While the gunman in Buffalo was aiming for people who looked like me, others who did not look like me fell victim to this evil act."
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act would create domestic terrorism offices within the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to facilitate better coordination and help the agencies identify risks and homegrown threats.
The measure, introduced by Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., would direct those offices to submit a joint report twice a year detailing their findings on domestic terrorism threats.
The White House said Wednesday it supports the bill, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate would vote on it next week.
The partisan vote in the House, however, suggests a steep climb in the Senate. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was the only House Republican to vote for the bill.
The bill's three Republican co-sponsors — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Fred Upton of Michigan — ended up not voting for it Wednesday.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who opposed the legislation, argued it could enable the Justice Department to "target" parents who dissent at school board meetings.
"That is what is at stake here. That is why we're opposing what Democrats are trying to do," Roy said, apparently referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland's memo last year about strategy sessions to address threats against school officials.
The House first passed the legislation by voice vote in 2020, but Republicans blocked a version of the bill that Democrats put forward in the Senate.
The bill took on new urgency this week after the Buffalo shooting, particularly as Democrats find themselves unable to pass any gun control measures over stiff GOP opposition.
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have repeatedly raised concerns about the threat of domestic terrorism in congressional testimony.
Mayorkas said last year that "domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today."
Wray later said the FBI had at least 2,000 open domestic terrorism investigations, adding that the problem had been "metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it's not going away any time soon."
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Mayorkas should be impeached once Republicans take over after midterms simply for being an incompetent, lying, jackass, who is more concerned with dispersing illegal immigrants around the US, than actually enforcing our immigration laws and borders. Nothing he says should be taken as factual.
Wray and the Federal Bureau of Incompetence. They who need to create far right domestic terrorist scandals through entrapment. Of those 2000 open domestic terrorist investigations:
Democrats policy of "Never let a good crisis go to waste"; and "Growing Big Brother government" is on full display here.
Mid terms can't come quick enough to remove these power hungry idiots from power.
If the gop won every Democratic Senate seat up for election this year they still would not have the votes necessary to remove Mayorkas without Democrats.
Great defense of Mayorkas. Of course it is impossible to defend the indefensible.
Impeached is impeached according to the Democrats. Doesn't matter if it is just in the House. If the Democrats block his impeachment once; then Republicans should do it two or three more times just to make sure the message gets through. Keep him front and center for the public and voters to see what the Biden administration is doing to this country.
I disagree. He should be peached immediately to halt the damage he is causing
“…should be peached immediately…”
… the reasoning is a bit fuzzy, no?
It's totally political. We already have laws for this on the books.
This bill doesn’t sound like it would actually accomplish much. It’s not as if the FBI doesn’t care about domestic terror or isn’t prioritizing it already. They already identify risks and threats, and issue reports on their findings. And I don’t see how any of this would have prevented what happened in Buffalo.
It just looks like another rush to claim that legislators “did something” to solve a problem and the other side “opposed” solving the problem. It’s all just posturing. This is especially important during an election year.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
Ernest Benn
Agree.
It's just political posturing and virtue signaling by the Dems.
It's an unworkable solution to a non-existent problem.
I wonder if that will include antifa and BLM.
this will never make it thru the senate, since most of the trumpsters are already domestic terrorists.
Congratulations. You win the lamest trolling comment of the day.
I wonder what the excuse will be when another black nationalist shoots up someplace and kills or injures a lot of people, just like the dude that shot up the NY subway short time ago.
You know, the one that when the media realized it was a black dude, the story magically went away.
“I wonder what the excuse will be when another black…”
…it would never be as specious as anything that could follow such a preface.
How so?
Everyone with at least a half a brain cell (this excludes most liberals) knows that when a black causes a mass shooting, the media will initially report that it happened, but then shut the story down when they find it is a black dude.
My example above is only one, but does anyone know what happened to the black dude that wan over and killed a bunch of whites during a Christmas parade, admitting it because he hates whites?
Another black violence story shut down
Where are the stories on the mass epidemic of black on black killings EVERY SINGLE DAY in black run democratic cities?
Nowhere to be found.