US intelligence has warned that the threat posed by racist extremists and militias in the United States is growing sharply.
The threat posed by militant extremists and racist extremists is the deadliest threat of deadly domestic terrorism in the United States, US spy agencies have warned, according to Reuters.
President Biden requested the intelligence community complete the assessment shortly after taking office, and his administration has made fighting domestic terrorism a priority.
— A new intelligence report delivered to Congress on Wednesday by the Biden administration warned about the rising threat of militias and white supremacists, adding urgency to calls for more resources to fight the growing problem of homegrown extremism in the United States.
In particular, the intelligence assessment highlighted the threat from militias, predicting that it would be elevated in the coming months because of “contentious sociopolitical factors,” likely a reference to the fallout from the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the increasingly partisan political climate.
Racially motivated violent extremists, such as white supremacists, were most likely to conduct mass casualty attacks against civilians while militias typically targeted law enforcement and government personnel and facilities, the report said. Lone offenders or small cells of extremists were more likely than organizations to carry out attacks, it said.
President Biden requested the comprehensive threat assessment shortly after he took office in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, which laid bare the toxic domestic extremism that has shaken the country. Only the brief executive summary was declassified and made public while a classified version was sent to Congress and the White House.
The top-line assessment echoed earlier analyses by the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security warning of the looming dangers of domestic terrorism, including after followers of President Donald J. Trump embraced his baseless claims of election fraud. An internal F.B.I. report that appeared to have been compiled before Jan. 6 and was published days after the breach predicted the violence to come, saying the events in 2020 were “likely to embolden U.S. domestic violent extremists in 2021.”
The Homeland Security Department also previously issued a rare terrorism bulletin warning that extremists continue to be galvanized over “the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives,” a clear reference to Mr. Trump’s false accusations that the election was stolen.
Domestic extremism “poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to the homeland today,” Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, told a House committee on Wednesday.
“The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and on American democracy is a searing example of this threat,” Mr. Mayorkas said.
The F.B.I. said in a statement that the “threat is persistent and evolving.”
The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security have warned that the Jan. 6 riot could have lasting consequences. Some domestic violent extremists “have been emboldened in the aftermath of the breach of the U.S. Capitol,” Jill Sanborn, the head of counterterrorism at the F.B.I., told Congress this month.
