The mass shooting in El Paso, the largest domestic terrorist attack against Hispanics in modern history, has made it clear how poorly prepared the U.S. is to fight it, reports the New York Times. The U.S. spent nearly 20 years intensely focused on threats from Islamic extremists. Those attacks have waned, replaced by violence from white supremacists. On Monday, President Donald Trump pledged to give federal law enforcement authorities “whatever they need” to combat domestic terrorism. “We need to catch them and incarcerate them before they act on their plans,” former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the Times. “We need to be proactive by identifying and disrupting potential terrorists before they strike, and we can accomplish that by monitoring terrorist propaganda and communications.”
Federal officials have broad powers to disrupt foreign terrorist plots, given to them in the Patriot Act passed after the 2001 attacks. They can use wiretaps or an undercover online persona to talk to people anonymously in chat rooms to search for jihadis. Domestically, officials have far fewer options. A federal statute defines domestic terrorism but carries no penalties. The First Amendment makes preventing terrorist acts by Americans more challenging. Domestic terrorists are charged under laws governing hate crimes, guns and conspiracy, not terrorism. “It’s a big blank spot,” said Mary McCord, a former national security prosecutor who has drafted a proposed statute to criminalize domestic terrorism not covered by existing laws. Right-wing extremists killed more people in 2018 than in any year since 1995, says the Anti-Defamation League. The attack in El Paso and an April shooting in a synagogue in Poway, Ca., have claimed as many lives as all extremist homicides “of any stripe” in 2018, reports the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.