Senate Republicans shot down a bill aimed at creating domestic terrorism offices within federal law enforcement agencies, a move Democrats framed as a response to a recent shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 10 people dead.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pitched the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 350) as a way to curb gun violence.
“The bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We need to call it what it is, domestic terrorism. It was terrorism that fed off the poison of conspiracy theories like white replacement theory,” Schumer said on the floor prior to the vote.
The vote ultimately broke down along party lines, without a single Republican voting in favor.
Had it passed, the legislation would have established an interagency task force within the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI to analyze and combat white supremacist infiltration in the military and federal law enforcement agencies.
The Senate’s GOP caucus argued that the bill would allow for the unethical surveillance of political groups, creating a double standard by which the government cracks down on the Right while the Left is allowed to continue its activities.
The vote came a week after the House passed the bill along partisan lines, 222 to 203. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) was the only Republican to vote in favor.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) denounced the legislation as an “insult” to police officers and members of the armed forces.
“It would be the Democrat plan to name our police as white supremacists and neo-Nazis. I met policemen throughout Kentucky and I’ve not met one policeman motivated or consumed with any kind of racial rage,” he said.
“What an insult it is to put a bill before the House and say our Marines are consumed with white supremacy and neo-Nazism,” Paul added.
The “domestic terror” designation has become a common ploy for the Left to try to crack down on right-of-center speech.
As TNA recently reported, not only did the National School Boards Association write to the White House last September referring to conservative parents at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists,” but a draft letter from NSBA shows that the organization wanted the Biden administration to send the military after those parents.
Specifically, the NSBA letter called for the deployment of the Army National Guard and military police to monitor school board meetings.
“We ask that the Army National Guard and its Military Police be deployed to certain school districts and related events where students and school personnel have been subjected to acts and threats of violence,” the letter reads.
The group also asked the White House whether parents who oppose the teaching of critical race theory and the exposure of children to pornographic materials can be investigated under the PATRIOT Act.
Reads the final, published version of the letter:
As such, NSBA requests a joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI, including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division, as well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional authority and oversight. Additionally, NSBA requests that such review examine appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, an Executive Order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.
The bill that Republicans killed in the Senate would only have enabled the continued politicization of law enforcement around the country, further turning the feds into the Democratic Party’s personal enforcers.
Of course, the military is already in the process of being purged of men and women who do not subscribe to progressive dogma.
These directives are coming all the way from the top. While the military could not coordinate a successful withdrawal from Afghanistan that didn’t involve the deaths of 13 troops, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has plenty of time to devote himself to the study of “white rage.”
