Skip to main content

US to Take Steps against White Supremacists and Militia Groups

A helicopter flies above the US Capitol during the dress rehearsal ahead of US President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration in Washington, US, January 18, 2021. Rod Lamkey/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo


Five months after the attack on the US Capitol, the Biden administration on Tuesday will unveil new steps to combat the "elevated threat" posed by domestic terrorism, but will not - for now - seek legislation to battle home-grown threats.

Instead, in a national strategy to be publicly unveiled by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the administration is seeking increased information sharing, additional resources to identify and prosecute threats, and new deterrents to prevent Americans from joining dangerous groups, Reuters reported.

The new approach comes after the administration conducted a sweeping assessment earlier this year of domestic terrorism that labeled white supremacists and militia groups as top national security threats. The issue took on new urgency after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump who were trying to overturn Joe Biden's election victory.

The strategy calls for better information-sharing among state, federal and local governments, along with better coordination among the federal government and social media companies.

But it stopped short of calling for new laws to combat domestic threats.

"We concluded that we didn't have the evidentiary basis, yet, to decide whether we wanted to proceed in that direction or whether we have sufficient authority as it currently exists at the federal level," a senior administration official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.

In his budget proposal released last month, Biden is also seeking $100 million in additional funding to train and hire analysts and prosecutors to disrupt and deter terrorist activity.

"The threat is elevated," the administration official said. "Tackling it means ensuring that we do have the resources and personnel to address that elevated threat."

The administration is also improving the federal government's screening methods to better identify employees who may pose insider threats. They are looking to share those techniques with private companies.

That effort includes an ongoing review by the US Department of Defense over how and when to remove military members who are found to be engaged in known domestic terrorist groups.

The Defense Department review is looking at, among other things, how to define extremists, the senior administration official said.

"They are doing this in a way they feel ratchets up the protection but also respects expression and association protections," the official said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NATO Chief: No New Cold War With China

Flags of NATO member countries flutter at alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday there is no new Cold War with China but the western allies will have to adapt to the challenge of Beijing's rise. "We're not entering a new Cold War and China is not our adversary, not our enemy," Stoltenberg told reporters after a NATO leaders' summit. "But we need to address together, as the alliance, the challenges that the rise of China poses to our security." NATO leaders are expected on Monday to brand China as a security risk to the Western alliance for the first time, a day after the Group of Seven issued a statement on human rights and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation. G7 leaders, meeting in Britain over the weekend, scolded China over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and demanded a...

Can Biden-Erdogan meeting break the diplomatic impasse on key issues?

Turkey is a US ally and a NATO member, but under President Erdogan’s assertive foreign policy, Ankara has shown the capacity to go its own way if necessary. American and Turkish leaders, Joe Biden and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will meet on June 14 at the NATO summit amid a backdrop of serious disagreements on various issues, ranging from Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400s to Washington’s ongoing support of the YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, a terror group in northern Syria. There are also other issues like Biden’s recent acceptance of the 1915 incidents concerning armed fighting between Armenians and Turks during WWI as a genocide, and Washington’s previous criticism of Turkey’s assertive eastern Mediterranean policy. Despite those differences, Turkey and the US continue to have close commercial relations and across Central Asia and the Caucasus, both countries have similar political stances. Ankara, like Washington, has been also opposing Russian intervention in both the Ukrainian and ...

EU Advises Against Astrazeneca Shot in People With Rare Blood Condition

A vial of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is seen at a vaccination center in Westfield Stratford City shopping center, amid the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Britain, February 18, 2021. (REUTERS/Henry Nicholls) Europe's drug regulator on Friday advised against using AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in people with a history of a rare bleeding condition and said it was looking into heart inflammation cases after inoculation with all coronavirus shots. The European Medicines Agency's (EMA) safety committee in its evaluation said that capillary leak syndrome must be added as a new side effect to labelling on AstraZeneca's vaccine, Reuters reported. It is a condition in which blood leaks from the smallest of vessels into muscles and body cavities and is characterized by swelling and a drop in blood pressure. The regulator first began looking into these cases in April and the recommendation adds to AstraZeneca's woes after its vaccine has been dogge...