Dems Grill Trump DHS Nominee About White Supremacists, ‘Homegrown’ Extremists Despite Rising Foreign Terrorist Threats
Democrats downplayed the rise of foreign threats and instead repeatedly talked about white supremacists and other domestic extremists Friday as they questioned Kristi Noem, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee…
Democrats downplayed the rise of foreign threats and instead repeatedly talked about white supremacists and other domestic extremists Friday as they questioned Kristi Noem, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
During Noem’s confirmation hearing, lawmakers suggested that extremists living in the U.S. are America’s most persistent terrorist threat. The DHS’s latest Homeland Threat Assessment makes no such statement but instead emphasizes “evolving” and “dynamic” threats from “domestic and foreign violent extremists” due to war in the Middle East and other factors.
“Both DHS and FBI have consistently said that the most persistent threat to the homeland is from U.S-based individuals or small groups radicalized by a variety of ideologies from white supremacy to ISIS to Al-Qaeda,” said Senate Homeland Security Ranking Member Gary Peters of Michigan, a Democrat. Peters asked Noem how she would “address this threat of U.S.-based terrorists.”
Noem said that illegal immigration is “the number one threat to our homeland security,” adding there is an increase of illegal border crossers on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist “since Joe Biden has been president.”
“But also, we need to focus on domestic terrorism and homegrown terrorism, on the rise,” Noem added. She cited, as an example, the New Year’s Day attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen who struck and killed 15 people with a truck in New Orleans in the name of ISIS before police killed him.
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