Opinion: Republican
weakness enables domestic terrorism
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 28, 2021 at 6:45 a.m. CST
The Department of
Homeland Security has acknowledged what most Republicans do not: Mobs of white
supremacists who have aligned themselves with the MAGA party are a threat to
national security.
A DHS bulletin released Wednesday reports:
“Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with
opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest
activity. … Long-standing racial and ethnic tension—including opposition to
immigration—has driven DVE attacks, including a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas
that killed 23 people.” (And let’s not forget the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre and the pipe bomber threats that preceded these events, both
of which featured terrorists spouting anti-immigrant rhetoric.)
DHS specifically
warns that “these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and
some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol
Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government
facilities.”
Sen. Mark R. Warner
(D-Va.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tells me,
“This step is wildly overdue, and I applaud the Biden administration for taking
it.” Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance agrees:
“Law enforcement has
to base its work on data, not ideology.” Vance adds, “While Republicans may be
ready to move on, our national security depends on facing threats and dismantling
terror groups. It’s good to see the new administration taking the threat posed
by white supremacist domestic terrorists seriously.”
Though the Senate did
not have a specific “heads-up” about the bulletin, Sen. Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.) tells me this kind of bulletin was very much expected given the rise
in domestic terror and violent threats. “This is more than a red flag,” he
observes. “This is a blaring warning.” The rise in white-supremacist violence,
Blumenthal says, was “stoked and inflamed by four years of Donald Trump.”
Meanwhile, the
Republican attitude about the attack on the Capitol is entirely at odds with
the reality of the threat we face. As the danger of domestic terrorism rises,
Senate Republicans are still foot-dragging on the confirmation of Alejandro Mayorkas to be homeland security
secretary. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) reminded
his colleagues on
Wednesday: "It has been three weeks since a mob of domestic terrorists
stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to thwart our democratic system of
government. In the weeks since, the underlying threat of violence to our
government remains a great concern.” Schumer went on: “My friends on the other side don’t
have to agree with Mr. Mayorkas on the finer points of every policy, but surely
we can all agree that he knows the department, he understands the threats to
our nation’s security, and has what it takes to lead DHS. The Senate must
confirm his nomination in very short order, and we will make sure that
happens.”
This raises the
question: Are Republicans comfortable with the moniker “weak on terror”? It
seems so, at least when it is white supremacists who are the terrorists. Given
the growing threat of domestic terrorists linked to the Jan. 6 action,
Republicans’ indifference toward addressing domestic terrorism and punishing
the former president for stoking a violent insurrection is as breathtaking as it
is predictable. The Republican Party’s notion of “law and order” seems to have
evaporated.
As Blumenthal
observes, Republicans “would very much like to ‘move on’ … But there is no
wishing this away.”
Perhaps their excuse
for acquitting the former president is not so much based on the argument that
the Senate cannot convict a former president (a flimsy rationale easily
rebutted by precedent and the text of the Constitution), but instead on their
own aversion to tackling white supremacists. After courting the MAGA crowd,
doing their bidding in seeking to overturn the election and taking offense at President Biden’s innocuous comments denouncing
white supremacists who attacked the Capitol, perhaps Republicans are nervous
that the impeachment trial hits a little too close to home. When Sen. Josh
Hawley (R-Mo.) raises a fist in solidarity with the Confederate flag-waving,
noose-carrying crowd, the problem goes well beyond the former president.
By averting their
eyes from the former president who instigated an attempted violent coup, they
are “putting themselves on the wrong side of the American people and also of
history,” Blumenthal says. Even if the Senate cannot convict the ex-president,
“There is real virtue in a public trial regardless of the outcome.”
Indeed, one could
make the case that it is not simply Trump who should be on trial. The
Republican Party as a whole needs to be held responsible for feeding
anti-immigrant sentiment, coddling armed white supremacists, perpetrating the
Big Lie that the election was stolen and, yes, refusing to hold the instigator
of a domestic terrorist attack responsible. They are not simply weak on
domestic terrorism; their indifference makes us all less safe.
