[Senate Hearing 117-262]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-262

               DOMESTIC TERRORISM AND VIOLENT EXTREMISM:
                   EXAMINING THE THREAT OF RACIALLY,
ETHNICALLY, RELIGIOUSLY, AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ATTACKS PARTS I AND 
                                   II

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS


                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                   AUGUST 3, 2021 AND AUGUST 5, 2021
                               __________

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
        
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
47-624PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2023           
        

        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                   GARY C. PETERS, Michigan, Chairman
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware           ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire         RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada                  JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
ALEX PADILLA, California             MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RICK SCOTT, Florida
                                     JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

                   David M. Weinberg, Staff Director
                    Zachary I. Schram, Chief Counsel
         Christopher J. Mulkins, Director of Homeland Security
               Alan S. Kahn, Chief Investigative Counsel
             Soumya Dayananda, Senior Investigative Counsel
                Pamela Thiessen, Minority Staff Director
    Andrew Dockham, Minority Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director
       Kirsten D. Madison, Minority Director of Homeland Security
          Erin E. Kuhls, Minority Senior Investigative Counsel
        Shani M. Rosenstock, Minority Professional Staff Member
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                     Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk


                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Peters............................................   1, 103 
    Senator Portman...........................................   3, 104 
    Senator Hassan............................................  21, 120 
    Senator Rosen............................................   24, 123 
    Senator Ossoff............................................  28, 128 
    Senator Hawley...............................................    31
Prepared statements:
    Senator Peters...........................................   37, 135 
    Senator Portman...........................................  39, 136 




                               WITNESSES
                        Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Wade Henderson, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, 
  The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights............     5
Hon. Eric Fingerhut, President and Chief Executive Officer, The 
  Jewish Federations of North America............................     7
John Yang, President and Executive Director, Asian Americans 
  Advancing Justice..............................................    10
Paul Goldenberg, Senior Fellow, Rutgers University Chairman and 
  President, Cardinal Point Strategies...........................    12
Seth G. Jones, Ph.,D., Senior Vice President, Harold Brown Chair, 
  and Director, International Security Program, Center for 
  Strategic and International Studies............................    15

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Fingerhut, Hon. Eric:
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    53
Goldenberg, Paul:
    Testimony....................................................    12
    Prepared statement...........................................    78
Henderson, Wade:
    Testimony....................................................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................    42
Jones, Seth G. Ph.D.:
    Testimony....................................................    15
    Prepared statement...........................................    81
Yang, John:
    Testimony....................................................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    64

                                APPENDIX

Mr. Jones Information for the Record.............................    89
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
    Mr. Fingerhut................................................    91

                               WITNESSES
                        Thursday, August 5, 2021

Elizabeth Neumann, Former Assistant Secretary, Counterterrorism 
  and Threat Prevention, U.S. Department of Homeland Security....   106
Maya Berry, Executive Director, Arab American Institute..........   109
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director, Anti-Defamation 
  League.........................................................   111
Brian Levin, Director, Center for the Study of Hate and 
  Extremism, California State University, San Bernadino, 
  California.....................................................   113

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Berry, Maya:
    Testimony....................................................   109
    Prepared statement...........................................   151
Greenblatt, Jonathan:
    Testimony....................................................   111
    Prepared statement...........................................   157
Levin, Brian:
    Testimony....................................................   113
    Prepared statement...........................................   182
Neumann, Elizabeth:
    Testimony....................................................   106
    Prepared statement...........................................   138

                                APPENDIX

Statements submitted for the Record
    American Jewish Congress.....................................   214
    Muslim Public Affairs Council................................   220
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
    Ms. Neumann..................................................   277
    Mr. Greenblatt...............................................   278

 
                     DOMESTIC TERRORISM AND VIOLENT
                   EXTREMISM: EXAMINING THE THREAT OF
 RACIALLY, ETHNICALLY, RELIGIOUSLY, AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ATTACKS 
                                 PART I

                              ----------                              


                        TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2021

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., via 
Webex and in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. 
Gary C. Peters, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Peters, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen, Padilla, 
Ossoff, Portman, Johnson, Lankford, Scott, and Hawley.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appear in the Appendix 
on page 37.
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    This is the first of two hearings the Committee will hold 
this week to continue examining the current domestic terrorism 
threat in the United States and the actions the Federal 
Government should take to address this alarming rise of 
extremist violence, including white supremacist violence, anti-
government violence, anti-Semitic and other faith-based 
violence, and violence targeting communities of color.
    Today we will hear from experts representing faith-based, 
civil rights, academic and policy research organizations on how 
increasing violent attacks motivated by ethnicity, race, 
religion, and politics have impacted countless Americans.
    I would like to thank each of our witnesses for joining us 
today and for their work in the public and private sectors to 
protect the American people. I look forward to hearing each of 
your perspectives on how to better define this threat and its 
roots, how it spreads, the impact it has on communities, and 
what more the Federal Government should do to address domestic 
terrorism while respecting American's civil rights and their 
civil liberties.
    In the last few years, our Nation has witnessed horrific 
acts of violence such as the massacres at the Emanuel African 
Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, the Tree of Life 
Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and a shopping center in El Paso that 
targeted Black, Jewish and Latino Americans respectively. Even 
more recently we have seen rising violent attacks in Asian 
Americans and a growing anti-government movement that planned 
and executed an attack on the seat of our democracy earlier 
this year.
    While these only represent a handful of attacks driven by 
white supremacy and violent extremism, each one takes an 
unimaginable toll on the victims and their families.
    Communities across the country live in fear that they could 
be attacked or murdered on the street, in their place of 
worship, or while going about their daily lives, just because 
of who they are.
    I am particularly concerned that these attacks, along with 
the growing climate of hateful rhetoric, intimidation and 
targeted violence that we are seeing across the country are a 
signal of something worse to come. If the Federal Government 
does not take swift action to address this festering threat, I 
fear we will see more tragic attacks and lose more lives to 
domestic violent extremism (DVE).
    But effectively combating this growing threat requires the 
Federal Government to accurately assess it, track, and publicly 
report these incidents and use that data to ensure that we are 
devoting the appropriate resources and personnel to tackle the 
threat.
    Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) have 
tracked data relating to domestic violent extremism and 
concluded that our Nation is facing the highest levels of 
violence based on religion, race, ethnicity and politics in 
decades.
    I am disappointed that despite these clear warning signs, 
the Federal Government has failed to effectively track rising 
domestic terrorism threats. I have been raising concerns about 
this failure for years. I worked alongside Senator Johnson to 
write a provision signed into law as part of the 2019 National 
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to require the Department of 
Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
(FBI), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence 
(ODNI) to better track and publicly report this critical data. 
Despite passing the law, the first report was nearly nine 
months overdue and did not provide all of the requested data.
    We need to get serious about taking on these heinous 
threats and the violence that stems from them. In my view, we 
must change the way the Federal Government approaches domestic 
terrorism. That will require not only improving the way 
government tracks the threat, but also better understanding how 
these hateful ideologies spread across social media platforms 
and how that online transmission can lead to real-world 
violence.
    This is an issue that this Committee will continue to 
examine throughout the year and I look forward to taking what 
we learn from our witnesses today and using it to inform our 
efforts going forward.
    Whether we are conducting oversight or working on 
additional policy solutions, we must ensure that we are doing 
everything in our power to address the grave threat posed by 
domestic terrorism.
    With that, I turn it over to Ranking Member Portman for his 
opening comments.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\

    Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your 
holding this hearing to examine the persistent and concerning 
threat posed by domestic terrorists and violent extremists. 
This is a threat to communities all across our country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Portman appears in the Appendix 
on page 39.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Today we will hear from representatives from certain 
communities that have been affected by the violence they have 
experienced. While I am very much looking forward to hearing 
their testimony, it is important we recognize all communities 
that have been impacted by domestic terrorism and violent 
extremism. Not all of those are represented here today.
    It is important to recognize the threat of all types of 
domestic terrorism. Interestingly, in the last week here in the 
U.S. Senate we have been learning more about one of those 
domestic terrorist threats listed by the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation that we will not hear about today. This is eco-
terrorism. It turns out that one of the nominees from the Biden 
administration nominated to run the Bureau of Land Management 
(BLM) had been involved in eco-terrorism, putting spikes into 
trees that then caused injury to loggers and others who were 
involved in timbering.
    There are lots of kinds of terrorism.
    Domestic terrorists and violent extremists are not a new 
phenomenon, nor are the methods that are used to advance their 
causes.
    As Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 
(PSI), which is a Subcommittee of this Full Committee, I held a 
hearing in July 2016 examining foreign terrorists use of our 
Internet and social media platforms for radicalization and 
recruitment. That hearing was also aimed at understanding the 
threat and how the Federal Government was and should be 
addressing that threat. We heard directly from witnesses at the 
Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, and the Department of State. This was a 
bipartisan investigation and it was shocking.
    I am disappointed that we will not hear testimony today 
from a single government official about how the Federal 
Government is addressing the domestic terrorism and violent 
extremism threat.
    Each of the witnesses at that July 2016 Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations hearing highlighted the 
challenges we face in combating terrorism and violent extremism 
in the age of the Internet, including the reality that the 
digital environment often accelerates recruitment and 
radicalization efforts and the speed with which individuals 
online can mobilize to violence, often referred to as the 
``Flash to Bang effect.''
    Five years later, we are still seeing the same weapons 
being used within our own communities and we are also 
increasingly seeing many domestic violent actors connecting 
with and learning from foreign groups and individuals. Domestic 
terrorists and violent extremists inspired by range of 
ideological beliefs, on the right and on the left, are 
increasingly using these digital platforms to spread hate and 
incite violence here at home.
    As Americans, we value our First Amendment rights, of 
course, including the right to express our beliefs. But nothing 
gives someone a right to carry out acts of violence.
    We must also acknowledge recent violence in the form of 
assaults on government, specifically law enforcement. Violent 
extremists from all segments from the ideological spectrum are 
increasingly targeting the military, law enforcement, and 
government personnel. I wrote a letter to the Department of 
Homeland Security, to the Secretary of Homeland Security 
Mayorkas in May requesting information on what the department 
was doing to deter and combat these violent attacks, including 
on their personnel. Any attack on our Nation's law enforcement 
or other government officials is an attack on the rule of law 
and on our American ideals.
    The safety and security of our communities has been a key 
priority for this Committee and for me. After the Pittsburgh 
Tree of Life tragedy in October 2018, I brought together 
leaders of faith-based groups and nonprofit entities across 
Ohio for a faith security conference in Columbus to discuss how 
to best respond to these threats. We had the Department of 
Homeland Security there. We had the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation there. We talked about what could be done.
    At that conference, we said that Congress can and should do 
more. I redoubled our efforts here in Congress to provide 
communities with the resources needed to protect themselves 
from acts of violence. I have worked to establish and support 
the Department of Homeland Security's Nonprofit Security Grant 
Program (NSGP), which allows nonprofits to apply for funds they 
use to secure those facilities. Last year, our bipartisan 
Protecting Faith-Based and Nonprofit Organizations From 
Terrorism Act, with Chairman Peters, was signed into law which 
authorized a record $75 million annual for five years for this 
grant program.
    Further, in wake of the recent violence against religious 
communities, I sponsored the bipartisan Pray Safe Act with 
Senators Hassan, who is with us today, Senators Johnson, 
Rounds, Peters, and Rosen to establish a Federal clearinghouse 
so that faith-based entities can access safety and security 
best practices, available Federal grant programs, and training 
opportunities. The threats and senseless attacks on all faith-
based organizations and houses of worship must stop. But in the 
interim, I urge my colleagues to support this important 
bipartisan legislation to provide that critical information.
    I am pleased to see my former Ohio colleague in the U.S. 
House of Representatives among our witnesses today, Eric 
Fingerhut, and I appreciate his personal commitment to and the 
Jewish Federations of North America's (JFNA) support of the 
Pray Safe Act and the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
    Let me clear, there is no place for hatred or bigotry of 
any kind toward our fellow citizens. In confronting these 
challenges, we must take a holistic approach to these threats. 
Today's witnesses will speak to this topic. We also need to 
hear and learn from government witnesses, who are not here 
today, about the magnitude of the threat and how the Federal 
Government is responding to it. Only after hearing these 
relevant perspectives can we develop a comprehensive strategy 
to combat these troubling threats.
    I appreciate the witnesses being here today. Again, I look 
forward to your insights and perspectives and, most 
importantly, your ideas on how we can better combat terrorism 
and violent extremism in our country so that we can learn what 
more Congress can and should do to counter those threats.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
    As you are well aware, this is a complex and an important 
issue and I agree with you that we need to hear from government 
witnesses. It is our intent to bring them in when we come back 
in September, to have a hearing with them to pick up on what we 
are going to cover today, as well as on Thursday.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, 
so if you will stand and raise your hand, including those on 
video, I would appreciate it.
    Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this 
Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, so help you, God?
    Mr. Henderson. I do.
    Mr. Fingerhut. I do.
    Mr. Yang. I do.
    Mr. Goldenberg. I do.
    Mr. Jones. I do.
    Chairman Peters. For the record, everybody answered 
affirmatively. You may be seated. Thank you.
    Our first witness today is Wade Henderson, who currently 
serves as the Interim President of the Leadership Conference on 
Civil and Human Rights which advocates on behalf of more than 
200 national civil and human rights member organizations.
    The Leadership Conference's members include the Anti-
Defamation League, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 
(NAACP), the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social 
Services, and the American Jewish Community, among others.
    Prior to his role with the Leadership Conference, Mr. 
Henderson was the Washington Bureau Director of the NAACP.
    Welcome, Mr. Henderson. You are now recognized for your 
five minute opening statement.

  TESTIMONY OF WADE HENDERSON,\1\ INTERIM PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN 
                             RIGHTS

    Mr. Henderson. Good morning, Chairman Peters, Ranking 
Member Portman, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for 
holding this important hearing today on the Federal response to 
domestic terrorism. Last week, the House Select Committee held 
its first hearing investigating the violent January 6th attack 
on this very institution, an attack fueled by white supremacy. 
We all saw a Confederate flag unfurled in the Senate chamber 
that day. We all saw people wearing anti-Semitic paraphernalia. 
We all saw a noose constructed outside of the U.S. Capitol. It 
was unlike anything we had experienced since the Civil War.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Henderson appears in the Appendix 
on page 42.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As we heard from Capitol and Metropolitan police officers 
who were on the front lines that day, the horrific consequences 
of the insurrection are still with us now. For our diverse 
coalition, made up of more than 220 national organizations 
committed to the protection of civil and human rights, this 
violence is anything but new.
    For more than 400 years Black, Brown, and Native people and 
other marginalized groups have borne the brunt of structural 
inequality, racism, and discrimination. Policies like American 
chattel slavery, the forced removal of Native people from their 
homelands, black codes, Jim Crow segregation, redlining, 
lynchings, and racial discrimination have all contributed to 
intergenerational harm that persists today.
    Indeed, today marks the 2-year anniversary of the tragic 
attack in El Paso, Texas when a white supremacist gunman 
murdered 23 people. We know that for too long the threat of 
this violence has been weaponized not only by white 
supremacists but also by laws and programs that target us 
rather than protect us.
    To address white supremacists violence and terrorism, I 
would like to offer four recommendations today. First, Congress 
must pass the For The People Act to push back against the great 
white supremacist lie that encouraged the January 6th 
insurrection and has given rise to unprecedented attacks 
against voting rights.
    This Friday marks the anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights 
Act (VRA). The Senate must pass S1 and honor the many who gave 
their lives to protect our democracy.
    Second, Congress should demand that Federal agencies show 
how they are fighting white supremacist violence through 
existing tools and reject any new domestic terrorism charge 
with sentencing enhancements. There are already more than 50 
terrorism-related statutes on the books and over a dozen other 
criminal laws, some of which are being used to prosecute the 
January 6th insurrectionists.
    Our Nation's long history of abusing national security 
mechanisms, including the use of Counter Intelligence Program 
(COINTELPRO) against Dr. King, the post-9/11 targeting of Arabs 
and Muslims, and the FBI's prioritization of ``Black Identity 
Extremists'' serve as cautionary tales of how expanded national 
security authority leads to unjust targeting of already 
overpoliced communities.
    Third, Congress must identify ways to address and dismantle 
white supremacy in law enforcement. While many police officers 
work to fulfill their duties honorably, transformational change 
is still needed to address the culture of policing that helps 
promote white supremacy groups, as well as discriminatory 
policing practices and policies that make us all less safe.
    Congress must demand a full accounting of how law 
enforcement is addressing white supremacy in their ranks and 
the White Supremacy in Law Enforcement Act is a good first 
step. Congress and Federal agencies also identify ways to 
ensure that officers who incite racist violence are no longer 
welcome. It is why the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is 
so important.
    Finally, Congress must pass H.R. 40 to study reparations 
for African Americans and create a U.S. Commission on Truth, 
Racial Healing, and Transformation.
    May and June 2021 mark the centennial anniversary of the 
Tulsa Massacre when a white supremacist mob murdered Black 
Americans and burned businesses and homes to destroy the 
successes of the Black Tulsa community. Yet, many Americans 
still know nothing about this tragedy or others that have 
flowed from slavery until today.
    Black people have been targeted with brutal violence and 
they continue to be deprived of the benefits of economic 
growth. Congress must pass H.R. 40 and come to terms with the 
contradiction of who we say we are as a democracy and who we 
actually are. Reparations are owed, transformation is required.
    Now is the time to create the shared vision for our Nation, 
one where all people feel safe, valued, and heard.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Henderson.
    Our second witness, former Congressman Eric Fingerhut, is 
the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Jewish 
Federations of North America, which comprises more than 146 
independent federations across the United States and a network 
of 300 smaller Jewish communities around the globe. Together, 
these organizations work to protect and enhance the well-being 
of the Jewish community worldwide.
    Prior to his role, Congressman Fingerhut served as CEO of 
Hillel International, the largest Jewish campus organization in 
the world. He served as an Ohio State Senator and represented 
Ohio's 19th congressional District here in Washington.
    Welcome, Mr. Fingerhut. You are recognized for your opening 
statement.

  TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ERIC FINGERHUT,\1\ PRESIDENT AND 
   CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE JEWISH FEDERATIONS OF NORTH 
                            AMERICA

    Mr. Fingerhut. Thank you, Chairman Peters. Thank you to my 
home State Senator, Ranking Member Portman, and to all the 
Members of this distinguished Committee. This is indeed an 
important hearing which covers a truly pernicious threat to 
racial, ethnic, and religious communities and that requires a 
compelling and timely congressional response.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Fingerhut appears in the Appendix 
on page 53.
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    I speak, of course, of the rise of domestic and violent 
extremism.
    Senator Peters, Mr. Chairman, you outlined correctly the 
role of the Jewish Federations. I know that the distinguished 
Members of this Committee are familiar with the work of the 
Jewish Federation system and with our volunteer and 
professional leadership in your respective States. We thank you 
for all of the many ways that you have each supported our 
mission across the full spectrum of Jewish communal life.
    Now security has always been a core concern of Jewish 
Federations. We know that the ability and the confidence of our 
community to participate fully in Jewish religious and cultural 
life depends on feeling safe. Safe to attend synagogue, safe to 
drop our children off at the Jewish Community Center for 
preschool or daycare. Safe to walk down the street wearing 
visibly Jewish head coverings and clothing. Safe to gather in 
groups to celebrate, to mourn, to support our brothers and 
sisters in the State of Israel, and to be active in the life of 
our communities, our campuses, and our civic associations.
    Now our current era of security investments began 
immediately post-9/11, recognizing that the violent extremism 
that reached American shores that infamous day would certainly 
have consequences for our Jewish communities. Many Jewish 
federations began organizing local Community Security 
Initiatives (CSI) led by experienced and trained local 
Community Security Directors to work with each of the 
synagogues and Jewish institutions in their communities.
    Today, roughly 45 Jewish Federations have such initiatives 
and are currently raising and allocating approximately $30 
million in private funds to this effort, above and beyond what 
each school, synagogue, Jewish community center, and social 
service agency must spend on its own security. We are in the 
middle of an extensive national effort called LiveSecure to 
ensure that every Jewish Federation has such a system in place 
for its community.
    At the national level, the Jewish Federations of North 
America helped create Secure Community Network (SCN) to offer 
the support our communities needed to establish and maintain 
these initiatives, as well as to provide communications links 
to and liaison with national law enforcement. We have been 
proud to work with the Department of Homeland Security since 
its creation to advance this work.
    For the Jewish community, the rising threat not only 
includes, of course, the horrific killing of 11 Jewish 
congregants who were praying at the Tree of Life Synagogue 
building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018, but also 
includes the mass shootings at a synagogue in Poway, California 
in December 2018 and at a kosher market in Jersey City, New 
Jersey in December 2019, the deadly machete attack at a 
Chanukah celebration in Monsey, New York also in December 2019, 
the numerous physical attacks on the streets of Brooklyn and 
other communities that appear related to the clothing and 
appearance of Jewish victims, and now the most recent multiple 
stabbing of a rabbi in Boston this summer in front of the 
synagogue where he works.
    Of course, these are further exacerbated by the appearance 
of too many instances of anti-Semitic arson, vandalism and 
disrupted plots and online hate that contain implicit threats 
of violence to come. To say that the Jewish community regards 
physical safety as today's highest priority and as a matter of 
great urgency is not an overstatement.
    In 2004 Congress established the Nonprofit Security Grant 
Program. This is a coordinated, centralized program that 
promotes meaningful engagement of at-risk nonprofits with 
Federal, State, or local homeland security officials and 
provides critical resources to carry out preparedness planning 
and training, as well as the acquisition of target hardening 
investments.
    The program is groundbreaking but it is tiny by Federal 
standards. In its 17 years, it has assisted between 140 and 
1,500 nonprofits annually, at an average yearly appropriation 
of $35 million. This year Congress appropriated $180 million 
for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which supported more 
than 1,500 awards. But this is still a tiny percentage of the 
approximately 350,000 to 400,000 individual congregations 
within the United States and 1.3 million charitable nonprofits 
serving communities throughout the country.
    We respectfully request that the Congress ensure that the 
resources are there to fulfill all the legitimate and 
documented applications that are made.
    Nevertheless, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, while 
important, cannot, in and of itself, adequately mitigate the 
risks to the charitable sector of this great threat. We 
therefore respectfully request that Congress: designate the 
charitable sector as a critical part of the nation's 
infrastructure, supported by a comprehensive plan and the 
necessary resources to manage its risks, resilience, and 
security outcomes, as is afforded 16 other currently designated 
vital sectors.
    Substantially increase the funding to the Nonprofit 
Security Grant Program as I have suggested.
    To further ensure the integrity of the program, to improve 
the quality of its oversight and technical assistance to its 
stakeholders, we ask that Congress provide additional and 
specified resources to the NSGP Program Office located within 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and that 
Congress allow the State Administrative Agencies to withhold up 
to 5 percent of the NSGP awards to cover their management and 
administrative costs.
    We request that Congress increase access to DHS' 
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) 
Protective Security Advisors (PSAs) and Cybersecurity Advisors 
(CSAs). As Chairman Peters and Ranking Member Portman 
mentioned, enact the Pray Safe Act to improve stakeholder 
outreach and engagement by establishing a Federal clearinghouse 
through which faith-based organizations, houses of worship, and 
other nonprofits can access centralized information on safety 
and security best practices.
    Chairman Peters, Ranking Member Portman, Members of the 
Committee, thank you for holding today's hearing to explore 
what compelling steps the Committee and Congress should take to 
ensure the safety and security of nonprofit organizations. I 
look forward to answering your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Fingerhut.
    Our third witness is John Yang. As President of Asian 
Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), Mr. Yang works to address 
systemic policies, programs, and legislative attempts to 
discriminate against and marginalize Asian Americans and 
Pacific Islanders (AAPI) and other minority communities.
    Prior to his current role, Mr. Yang co-founded the Asian 
Pacific American Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit 
organization dedicated to addressing the legal needs of Asian 
Pacific Americans in the D.C. metropolitan area.
    Mr. Yang, welcome to the Committee. You may now proceed 
with your five minutes opening remarks.

 TESTIMONY OF JOHN YANG,\1\ PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 
               ASIAN AMERICANS ADVANCING JUSTICE

    Mr. Yang. Thank you very much, Chairman Peters, and thank 
you to Ranking Member Portman and all the other Members of this 
Committee for holding this important hearing. I appreciate the 
opportunity to testify before all of you today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Yang appears in the Appendix on 
page 64.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I also appreciate hearing from my good friend and 
colleague, Wade Henderson. His words, as always, are 
insightful, powerful, and I agree wholeheartedly with his 
assessment and recommendations.
    Miriam Webster defines terrorism as the systemic use of 
terror, especially as a means of coercion. Terror, in turn, is 
defined as a state of intense or overwhelming fear and violence 
or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or 
coercion. Under these definitions, the Asian American community 
has been living under a state of terrorism for the past 18 
months, and certainly in the first six months of 2021.
    A Pew report shows that over 60 percent or approximately 60 
percent of Asian adults have heard people express racist or 
racially insensitive views about people who are Asian than it 
was before Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). A similar Ipsos 
survey in 2020 showed that over 60 percent of Asian Americans 
witnessed someone blaming Asian Americans for COVID-19.
    In the course of talking to the Asian American community, 
whether at community events, through employee resource groups 
at companies or government agencies, or just in casual 
conversations, some difficult themes have emerged. In these 
discussions, individuals have described how they have feared 
for their elders safety as well as that of their children and 
themselves. They have described telling elders not to go out 
alone, have described their own fear in doing the same, and how 
they have isolated themselves because of these issues.
    They have told stories of being spat upon, coughed upon, 
pushed, ridiculed in front of their children, and otherwise 
treated as the other, unworthy of respect as a human being.
    This is the lived reality of the Asian American community 
right now. If domestic terrorism is understood to be creating 
fear within the community such that the community may be 
coerced, intimidated, or silenced, what has happened to the 
Asian community must be properly viewed as terrorism.
    Indeed, the statistics confirm the basis for these fears. 
Some reporting done by Stop AAPI Hate, combined with data from 
Asian Americans Advancing Justice and other organizations, over 
7,500 acts of anti-Asian hate have been reported since February 
2020. We all know about the very real physical violence against 
our community, whether it is the murder of an 84-year-old Thai 
American in California, the murder of six Asian American women 
in Atlanta, or the murder of four Sikh Americans in 
Indianapolis, not to mention the countless other acts of 
physical violence taking place throughout the country.
    This violence against the Asian American community is 
rooted in two very dangerous stereotypes about the Asian 
American community: that of the perpetual foreigner and that of 
the model minority. Asian Americans are seen as the perpetual 
foreigners such that we are see as foreigners, not of this 
country, as of the other, regardless of how long we have been 
in this country or whether we were born in America.
    On the flip side of that stereotype is that of the model 
minority, where Asian Americans are held up as the ``good 
people of color'' when it is convenient and used to plant seeds 
of division within allied communities of color. That model 
minority myth hides the complexities of our community and 
economic disparities that exist among Asian Americans.
    Although the current round of anti-Asian hate can be said 
to have its origins in COVID-19, COVID-19 is not the only cause 
of anti-Asian violence. We have very legitimate geopolitical 
differences with the Chinese government and that is likely to 
remain for the foreseeable future. If we are not careful, 
however, those differences will have consequences for our Asian 
American community and we can expect a backlash against our 
community.
    We saw that happen with the incarceration of over 120,000 
Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. We saw that 
happen in the backlash against the Arab, Muslim, South Asian 
American communities after 9/11. We saw that happen with the 
murder of Vincent Chin 39 years ago during the heightened 
automobile trade war tensions that we had with Japan.
    Indeed, just as lynching and cross burning are used as 
forms of terror against the African American community, we have 
seen the same in the Asian American community. While Asian 
Americans were doing some of the hardest work building the 
transcontinental railroad in the late 1800s, we saw Asian 
Americans being lynched and burned out of their homes in the 
western part of this country.
    We must be able to address these issues with the proper 
nuance and come together to call out xenophobia, racism, and 
hate whenever it occurs against our communities. We must call 
out misinformation and disinformation before it distorts 
reality. The dehumanization of Asian Americans by suggesting 
that we eat bats, have unsanitary habits, or deserve to be 
ridiculed must be rejected. Likewise, misinformation about who 
is attacking Asian Americans must be corrected.
    Notwithstanding attempts by some to create divisions with 
the community, between African Americans and Asian Americans, 
let me be clear about one thing: studies done by the National 
Institute of Health (NIH) and the University of Michigan have 
shown that notwithstanding these social media efforts, over 75 
percent of the attackers against Asian American are Caucasians. 
A very small percentage are African Americans. The person who 
killed six Asian American women in Atlanta was a Caucasian 
male, as was the person that killed four Sikh Americans in 
Indianapolis. African Americans are not the predominant group 
attacking Asian American and such narratives are simply false.
    Facts, education, and data are the keys to addressing 
extremism. We cannot normalize racism and xenophobic behavior 
of those that seek to silence communities of color. Normalizing 
racism and xenophobia has created the conditions where people 
feel comfortable terrorizing other communities, inserting their 
privileges to intimidate and marginalize those communities. 
These are the issues we must confront if we are to prevent 
citizens in our country from terrorizing other residents of our 
country.
    Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Yang, for your comments.
    Our next witness is Paul Goldenberg, Vice Chair of the 
Department of Homeland Security's Faith-Based Council and 
Senior Advisor to the Department's newly established Countering 
Violent Extremism (CVE) Initiative.
    Prior to his current roles, Mr. Goldenberg played a key 
role in efforts to counter violent extremism in the United 
States and Europe, including as Chief of the Office of Bias 
Crimes and Community Relations in New Jersey. He is considered 
an international thought leader in information sharing, 
conflict resolution, public safety, and counter terrorism 
policy.
    Mr. Goldenberg, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed 
with your opening remarks.

    TESTIMONY OF PAUL GOLDENBERG,\1\ SENIOR FELLOW, RUTGERS 
     UNIVERSITY AND CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT, CARDINAL POINT 
                           STRATEGIES

    Mr. Goldenberg. Thank you, Senator.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Goldenberg appears in the 
Appendix on page 78.
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    I wanted to quickly comment that we are no longer 
officially associated with the U.S. Department of Homeland 
Security, as an Secretary's Advisory Council (HSAC), has been 
formally dissolved. I wanted to be on record that we are no 
longer with the Department of Homeland Security. Thank you.
    Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Paul 
Goldenberg as a Senior Fellow with the Rutgers University 
Miller Center for Community Resilience and Protection.
    As I stated, I most recently served as a Senior Advisory to 
the United States Department of Homeland Security, where there 
I was a member of the Secretary's Advisory Council. While in 
that capacity I did, in fact, head several initiatives focused 
on domestic and international terrorism, such as the Countering 
Violent Extremism Subcommittee, the Foreign Fighter Task Force 
(FFTF), and yes, more recently had the honor and privilege of 
serving alongside United States Marine Corps (USMC) General 
John Allen where we together co-chaired the Subcommittee for 
the Prevention of Targeted Violence Against Faith-Based 
Communities.
    Before that, I did command the Nation's first ever State 
office dedicated to the investigation and prosecution of bias 
crimes and domestic terrorism situated in New Jersey.
    I am very proud and honored to be here today speaking with 
your committee on these topics and I sincerely applaud you 
Chairman and Members of your steadfast commitment and 
unwavering support to address these serious matters impacting 
our Nation's national security.
    In framing my testimony, I think it is important to look 
first beyond America's borders. Across Europe, many houses of 
worship are surrounded by elite military units standing guard 
with automatic weaponry, reinforced by heavy armored personal 
carriers. Guard towers augment the once stately and welcoming 
entryways. Flowerbeds have been swapped for barbed wire, all at 
a cost of hundreds of millions of euros and producing a 
dreadful unbelievable impact on the psyche of Europe's people.
    You see Europe has become America's canary in a mine.
    In my work with Rutgers University, along with former New 
Jersey Attorney General (AG) John Farmer, we traveled across 
Europe where we met with victims, painstakingly following the 
stories of those who suffered horrific attacks on their 
communities and houses of worship.
    Right here in the United States, as part of our work with 
the HSAC subcommittee, we had the sobering and humbling 
experience of meeting members of communities who had directly 
experienced the terror and violence, many of which were 
themselves victims of targeted attacks. Without exception, as 
these communities worked through their grief, they were so 
eager and committed to helping the members of our subcommittee 
with our work.
    You see, the adverse impact that violent extremists and 
domestic terrorists, including those inspired by white 
supremacist ideologies, are having on vulnerable communities, 
are difficult to overstate. From Oak Creek, Wisconsin to 
Whitefish, Montana; from Southern California to Sutherland, 
Texas; from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh, targeted violent attacks 
against vulnerable communities and the institutions they 
represent have struck at the very core of American freedoms, 
standing out not just for the escalating death toll, but for 
the cruelty of wounding and killing people at their most 
vulnerable, while assembled in their houses of worship for 
prayer.
    What was once unthinkable has become almost anticipated. 
The increasing influence of white supremacist, separatist, 
radical right and left extremist ideologies in inspiring acts 
of domestic terror and targeted violence is, moreover, not a 
matter of political opinion, but a demonstrable fact.
    Most attacks are committed primarily by lone attackers, as 
opposed to organized groups or through a system of cells. There 
are, however, a lot of similarities to the attacks once 
perpetrated by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, (ISIS), 
jihadists, white and black separatist groups and other 
extremists. They are acting very much alike.
    These bad actors are radicalized and freely communicate as 
part of a wide-ranging movement. The social media platforms and 
individuals that frequent and govern these sites have 
implemented a comprehensive transnational outlook very much 
like how ISIS inspired and connected with their potential 
radicals across the globe.
    White supremacist and similar violent extremist groups now 
share manifestos, conspiracy theories, hate literature, and are 
connecting daily with like-minded persons online. Beyond the 
conventional social media platforms, white supremacists and 
other violent extremists are using lesser-known platforms, as 
well as encrypted channels. Their tactic is to exploit the 
openness of the instrumentalities of freedom, in this case 
social media and the Internet, to destroy freedom itself, in 
this case the foundational freedom of religious conscience. 
They know that this is our Achilles' heel. In fact, very much 
so.
    The primary inspiration behind many of these targeted 
attacks is to force us to not merely question our fundamental 
safety and security as a Nation, as well as our ability to 
protect ourselves, our neighborhoods, and our families, but to 
change our behaviors. You see success, in the eyes of these 
domestic violent extremists and international terrorists, comes 
when we depart from our daily routines, our way of living and 
even spiritual and political beliefs. Violent extremists 
understand the power of fear. They are getting pretty good at 
it.
    As anti-Asian, racist, anti-Semitic attacks proliferate we 
need to consider the fact that no racial or religious group is 
being singled out just exclusively, although some are 
disproportionately targeted. As hatred and bigotry exists today 
on both the radical left and the extreme right sides of the 
ideological spectrum, it can be observed among the affluent, 
the poor, the more-and less-highly educated, the fervently 
religious, and the devoutly secular. It is sometimes expressed 
crudely, other times in the language of the sophisticated and 
supposed academically correct.
    Turning from the problem to solutions, closing. How do we 
work with American law enforcement to provide them with the 
needed tools to address this challenge? Notwithstanding the 
existing framework, gaps do exist in law enforcement as they 
have been hampered in addressing the rise of white supremacist 
and other domestic related attacks by the inability to classify 
such attacks as acts of domestic terror. The absence of that 
category has led law enforcement to treat attacks committed by 
violent extremists at times as isolated, unconnected incidents. 
It has also rendered of extremely limited value the Uniform 
Crime Reporting (UCR) and other reporting mechanisms, which may 
record similar events differently.
    In the absence of the ability to label white supremacist 
and other like-minded extremist groups as acts of domestic 
terrorism, I have been informed by State and local law 
enforcement that they have been unable to avail themselves of 
resources dedicated to countering these types of terrorism 
incidents, such as additional personnel, training, and 
essential technologies that are supported by Federal grant 
programs.
    I have come to learn that the goal of violent extremists is 
often not just to cause loss of life, more perilously, it is to 
wear us down. That is has begun to do psychologically, 
emotionally, and spiritually, causing our endurance, our 
determination, and morale to decay and ultimately disappear.
    As attacks perpetrated from these extremists and other 
similar separatist groups grow in number, we should be 
concerned that an adverse public reaction may generate 
something that these bad actors could never have achieved on 
their own.
    In closing, it is about educating lay leaders, community 
leaders, staff, administrators, teachers and by more 
effectively working with our nation's law enforcement 
community. We have the fundamentals to empower ourselves, 
developing a sense of ownership amongst our entire community. 
Working with State and local authorities, moving the American 
public beyond awareness to engaged citizenry should be a 
primary goal for 2022.
    Thank you very much.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Goldenberg.
    Our next witness is Dr. Seth Jones, who serves as Senior 
Vice President, Harold Brown Chair, and Director of the 
International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies.
    With decades of experience in counterinsurgency and 
counterterrorism, Dr. Jones leads a bipartisan team dedicated 
to providing independent, strategic insights and policy 
solutions that shape national policy.
    Dr. Jones also teaches at John Hopkins University School of 
Advanced International Studies and the Center for Homeland 
Defense and Security at the U.S. Naval Post-Graduate School.
    Welcome, Dr. Jones. You may proceed with your opening 
statement.

 TESTIMONY OF SETH G. JONES, PH.D.,\1\ SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 
   HAROLD BROWN CHAIR, AND DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY 
    PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

    Mr. Jones. Thank you very much, Chairman Peters, Ranking 
Member Portman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. 
This is an important subject and I am glad we are here to 
discuss this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Jones appear in the Appendix on 
page 81.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As this testimony will highlight, objective analysis, sound 
data are more important than ever to gauge the nature and the 
threat of domestic terrorism, as well as effective responses 
including responses that Congress can take the lead on.
    I am going to divide my brief comments into five sections. 
First, let me highlight the terminology I am going to use, and 
I think it is important. I am going to focus here on terrorism, 
which includes the deliberate use or the threat of violence by 
non-state actors in order to achieve a range of goals, 
generally politically goals, and to create a broad 
psychological impact.
    In my judgment, violence and the threat of violence are 
particularly important components of what I call terrorism and 
are important aspects as we get into discussions about free 
speech. Free speech is certainly protected in the United 
States. Violence, including the threat of violence, start to 
cross lines.
    I am also going to leverage as part of this a dataset that 
we have created at the Center for Strategic and International 
Studies that goes back to the mid-1990s and that incorporates 
approximately 1,000 cases, which I take to be roughly the 
universe of plots and attacks in the United States in a range 
of categories within those.
    Second, let me touch base on some of the trends in 
incidents and fatalities because I think, again, data here is 
important. What our data indicates is that in 2020, the last 
full year, the number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots 
increased to its highest level since at least 1994, which is 
the first year of our data. Though it is important to note that 
fatalities were actually relatively low. I am happy to get into 
why that is but we are seeing a rise in attacks and plots. One 
of the reasons, it is my judgment, why we are seeing lower 
fatalities, at least for the moment, is that we are seeing 
indications from a number of organizations that are 
prioritizing sending a message rather than killing large 
numbers of people the way we had seen with some of the Salafi-
jihadists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
    But that certainly could change and I think the mid-1990s, 
including the Timothy McVeigh attack in Oklahoma City, 
highlights some of the long-term challenges.
    Let me also talk about targets. As we have heard from 
others that have testified so far, our list of targets includes 
a range of individuals in the U.S. based on ethnicity, race, 
religious beliefs, and other factors. We have seen individuals 
based on the fact that they are Jewish and the targeting of 
synagogues, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino 
Americans and others, including based on their political 
persuasion so highlighting the polarization of politics, that 
they have all been targeted.
    I would also highlight that our data shows that the highest 
numbers of individuals in 2020 targeted were those in the 
military, police, and within the government, a notable 
increase. I would also highlight that we are seeing individuals 
target the military, police, and the government from all sides 
of the ideological spectrum, from anti-fascists and anarchists 
to those that are white supremacists and anti-government. 
Again, focus from all sides of the political spectrum.
    Touching briefly on the fourth area, tactics and weapons, 
we see a number of explosives and incendiaries used, we have 
seen vehicles. But in terms of lethal and fatal attacks, the 
highest numbers generally by far, both between that 1994 and 
2020 period, 66 percent of those fatalities from domestic 
terrorism were caused by firearms. 73 percent of fatalities 
from domestic terrorism between 2015 and 2020 were also caused 
by firearms.
    Let me just finish, this is the fifth area. My written 
testimony includes a number of issues worth considering from a 
congressional standpoint and we have also heard a number of 
comments from those that have testified so far. But let me 
highlight one issue which the Chairman mentioned in his opening 
remarks.
    That is I think the Federal Government has to be much more 
transparent about the state of domestic terrorism. That 
includes data that the FBI, the Department of Homeland 
Security, and to some degree also the National Counterterrorism 
Center (NCTC). We have to be more transparent as a Federal 
Government, including at the State and local level, in key 
trends: numbers of attacks and plots, fatalities, targets, 
tactics used. I find the level of transparency troubling within 
the government, different in many ways from what we see from 
our partners overseas. British intelligence, including MI5, 
have generally been quite transparent about trends. The Germans 
have been quite transparent, including the Ministry of 
Interior.
    When I was in the U.S. Government, in the Department of 
Defense (DOD), we were very transparent when I was there about 
the significant acts, which included terrorism, in Afghanistan 
and Iraq. We are not there at this point, and I think this is 
an important component that you have already pushed and need to 
continue.
    So with that, I will hold my remarks and I look forward to 
the questions.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Dr. Jones, for your testimony.
    Mr. Henderson, you represent over 200 civil rights 
organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union 
(ACLU), the NAACP, Access, ADL. That means you and your members 
are basically at the forefront of the horrible and deadly 
reality that the threat of domestic terrorism presents from 
white supremacists, anti-government groups, conspiracy 
theorists and a list of violent extremists that are operating 
in our country.
    My question to you, sir, is in your view, how has this 
threat evolved for your members over the last few years?
    Mr. Henderson. Thank you for the questions, Mr. Chairman.
    This issue of domestic terrorism, hate crime violence, call 
it what you will, has been a significant problem throughout the 
history of the African American experience and many other 
communities, as I mentioned in my formal testimony, that have 
been marginalized in American society throughout the time of 
their presence in this country.
    Again, I noted, of course, the experience of African 
Americans with chattel slavery, with Jim Crow segregation, with 
the deprivation of access to the right to vote, and continued 
violence directed toward our communities by way of lynching and 
pogroms that have actually occurred in communities like Tulsa, 
Oklahoma and like the community in Florida that has been 
affected by all of this violence.
    The same is true of other groups. My colleague, John Yang, 
talked about the deprivation of liberty suffered by Japanese 
American citizens during World War II, or the experience of 
Native Americans who were forcibly relocated from their 
ancestral lands.
    All of these communities have experienced periods of 
violence directed at their members for a variety of reasons. 
But all of it stems from a source of white supremacists 
attitude toward these communities and the denial of their right 
to equal citizenship and equal protection of the law. Of 
course, the problem has been exacerbated in recent time by the 
availability of social media. Social media has contributed to 
the radicalization of individuals, to the isolation of others 
in ways that have fostered their involvement in this kind of 
white supremacist hate crime violence.
    It is an ongoing, continuing problem, one of significant 
magnitude, and needs to be addressed. Domestic terrorism is the 
number one priority of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the 
Department of Homeland Security. And so labeling does matter. 
However, it affects, of course, the allocation of resources by 
the Federal Government to address these issues.
    My main contention is that the Federal Government needs to 
do what it knows it is required to do by law with respect to 
all persons in the United States. It has the resources to 
address these issues. It does not have, at this point, the 
political will. That is what I hope these hearings will help 
provide.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    Mr. Fingerhut, the Jewish community has seen some of the 
worst acts of violence and anti-Semitism in the history of this 
country in recent years, and you mentioned some of those in 
your opening testimony.
    My question to you is how can Federal agencies, especially 
the DHS, collaborate with State and local partners to assist 
these communities? What are the things that we must be doing 
now?
    Mr. Fingerhut. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I greatly 
appreciate the question.
    Of course, as I emphasized in my testimony, the support of 
the Federal Government for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program 
is essential and critically, sir and members of the Committee, 
it is not only an increase in funding but it is ``as well, 
the'' support for the agencies that administer those programs 
at the Federal and at the State levels and the commitment for 
the technical support for all of the faith-based and nonprofit 
institutions that are eligible to apply for them.
    These are, by necessity, somewhat technical in nature and 
we do our very best through our Jewish Federation system and 
with our other religious and ethnic partners to educate all of 
the faith-based and nonprofit institutions about the method and 
the technical details of the applications. It nevertheless, 
remains an important responsibility of DHS and of the FBI to 
assist these communities.
    As I mentioned in my testimony, the Secure Community 
Network (SCN), which is an organization that we started 
together with the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish 
Organizations in the 2004 post-9/11 era, is in direct and 
regular contact with the Department of Homeland Security and is 
prepared to assist them in that effort.
    Second, as I also indicated in my testimony, Mr. Chairman, 
it is important that the faith-based and nonprofit community be 
designated as critical infrastructure, as have 16 other sectors 
of our community, of the nation's economy and communal 
infrastructure, so as to require the Department of Homeland 
Security and the other Federal law enforcement agencies to 
create a comprehensive approach to working with the faith-based 
and nonprofit communities.
    As you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, well 
know in our society, the way American society is structured, 
the partnership between government and the nonprofit and faith-
based sectors in the delivery of core and essential human 
services, as well as education and communal activities of all 
kinds, is an essential partnership. And recognizing that 
critical infrastructure, as we just evidenced during the 
pandemic, the partnership between the Federal Government and 
the nonprofit and the faith-based communities were essential to 
carrying our communities through the COVID pandemic. It will be 
so, as well, as we tackle the domestic extremism issues.
    In addition, finally, I would repeat the comment I made 
about increasing access to DHS's Cybersecurity and 
Infrastructure Security Agencies, protective security advisors 
and cybersecurity advisors to assist the nonprofits in 
navigating the grant opportunities. Again, the Secure Community 
Network would be our representative and also works with other 
of the faith-based and religious communities in that effort.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Thank you for the detailed 
answer.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are now recognized for your 
questions.
    Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of 
the witnesses for the information you provided, which was very 
helpful.
    Mr. Yang, I liked what you said, which is we need more 
facts, information, and data. I think that is absolutely true. 
We have heard today some data from some of our witnesses that 
is very concerning.
    Mr. Jones, can you discuss some of the data that you have 
compiled. One thing I thought was interesting, you said that 
there are more attacks in military and police--I think you said 
law enforcement--than any other group. Can you tell us whether 
that is historically true? Or is that just true in 2020? I 
thought you had some interesting data about other attacks, 
saying that threats and attacks are the worst they had been 
since 1994.
    But with regard to the information you provided us today, 
which is new to me, that the highest number of attacks have 
been on law enforcement, is that historically accurate? Or is 
that just a recent development?
    Mr. Jones. Excellent question.
    In response to your question about the targeting of 
government, military and police, it is primarily a recent 
phenomenon. Government, military and police have been targeted 
historically in the U.S. at various points. We certainly saw 
that in the mid-1990s in Timothy McVeigh's targeting of the 
Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. But in terms of the number of 
attacks, we have seen amongst the highest levels in terms of a 
target in 2020.
    That is a recent phenomenon. Again, as I mentioned, we are 
seeing the perpetrators from all sides of the political 
spectrum, anarchists, anti-fascists, and others as well.
    Senator Portman. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate 
the concise answer because we do not have much time here and 
there is lots of information I want to get out.
    Mr. Goldenberg, you talked a lot about your work and the 
factors contributing to the persistent threat of domestic 
terrorism and violent extremism. Can you talk a little bit 
about what you see as some of the common threads of domestic 
radicalization? You have obviously got experience both at the 
State level and at the Federal level, through the Department of 
Homeland Security. Just give us a little sense of what are the 
common threads you see?
    Mr. Goldenberg. The tactics being used by extremists and 
radicals from white supremacists to those that claim that they 
are going to attack in the name of jihad, to those even 
potentially engaged or involved, as you stated sir, eco-
terrorism. The tactics are very similar.
    About four or five years ago I had the opportunity to co-
chair the Foreign Fighter Task Force. We spent a lot of time 
studying the methodologies that ISIS was using to bring young 
men and women from different parts of the world who absolutely 
had very little in common, had very little knowledge, many of 
which were not even that hooked into any particular religion, 
making their ways across oceans to join a fight and a war in 
the deserts of some unknown place.
    We got very caught up in the cause and we did not study 
enough as to the effect. Why are these young, disaffected, 
disenchanted folks, these young people, joining these fights, 
joining these movements? Why are they being radicalized so 
quickly?
    And social media, it was all done, 95 percent of it--I may 
not be exact--of the radicalization was done through very 
effective, very savvy, social media marketing campaigns.
    Senator Portman. We talked about the investigation we did 
here in the Permanent Subcommittee, which was a bipartisan look 
at why. And so much of it came down to the digital side, both 
in terms of organization and creating this motivation with 
white supremacists, I think the same is true from everything we 
know. Then on the actual attacks themselves, the ability to 
organize quickly and the flash and bang effect we talked about 
earlier.
    I mean getting into the digital issues is really important. 
These platforms have created a bigger problem, clearly. Is that 
your understanding?
    Mr. Goldenberg. It is, but I have to state something for 
the record. I was every engaged and involved in Whitefish, 
Montana, which many people may not be aware of. It is a very 
pristine, beautiful place. On the side of a mountain, where 120 
members of a Jewish community, many of them--I cannot speak for 
all of them--literally four years ago were debating whether to 
leave their community. They were terrified. They were petrified 
because they were being attacked and trolled and threatened 
online from some very dangerous people. Some of these websites 
that were calling for attacks on this small Jewish community, 
in fact, the common denominator of these websites is the fact 
that members of those sites were involved in over 100 to 120 
murders around the world, including Breivik, including several 
other major incidents here.
    Why am I bringing up Whitefish? Because as horrific, as 
horrible as these threats were perceived, people were 
terrified. It was, in my mind, a domestic terrorism incident 
and it was very difficult to get any agency to even investigate 
it.
    I am not criticizing the agencies. I am not criticizing the 
Federal agencies or the local law enforcement agencies. They 
could not investigate it because they did not have the probable 
cause to go ahead and open up an investigation, even though we 
had members of a community ready to leave their houses in 
terror and we could not even get a criminal investigation 
initiated because we did not have the laws or the mandates to 
work on it.
    Senator Portman. Those are important points and I think 
that leads to some of the frustration out there, is that you 
have these threats that are real and yet there does not seem to 
be an easy way for law enforcement at local or State or Federal 
levels sometimes to respond.
    Mr. Henderson, we talked a little about the Nonprofit 
Security Grant Program earlier and I would like you and Mr. 
Yang to talk a little about that.
    This is an effort to provide community safety, community 
security. When we have gathered people in Ohio, it is the 
Christian community. It is the Sikh community. It is the Muslim 
community, the Jewish community, of course. But as someone who 
represents a broad coalition of these communities, how would 
you assess this program and how can we get more people to 
apply? More people to understand it and to be able to take 
advantage of it?
    Mr. Henderson. Mr. Portman, thank you for your question.
    It is an important issue and certainly the Leadership 
Conference does represent nonprofit organizations that are 
committed to protecting civil and human rights.
    The engagement of these communities in addressing the 
problems that we have with domestic terrorism are critically 
important. But as I mentioned in my testimony, we have over 50 
statutes on our Federal books that can be used to prosecute 
individuals who are engaged in these activities. I alluded to 
the fact that those who are charged today with some of the 
violence directly related to the January 6th insurrection are 
being prosecuted based on these provisions.
    I think certainly educating nonprofit groups about the 
circumstances involved with domestic violence, encouraging the 
FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to help educate 
these communities, as well, on how to apply for these grants, 
how to use them appropriately, would be a very instructive 
contribution that would help these communities better 
understand how they can be a part of the solution to the 
problem.
    But I think the biggest issue that we have before us is how 
do we encourage the Federal Government and the appropriate 
agencies to use the tools at their disposal to prosecute 
domestic terrorism in an appropriate way. That does include, of 
course, educating individuals or rather communities on the use 
of these nonprofit grant programs. I commend you for your 
support of them, and I hope they will be a part of a 
constructive, comprehensive effort to address this problem 
going forward.
    Senator Portman. Well said, Mr. Henderson.
    We have to go to our next questioner but let me say the 
Pray Safe Act also provides this information of best practices 
which, I think, is really critical. Senator Hassan is actually 
a co-author of that legislation. I know she is going to 
question next. But I think that is another place for 
information that is easily accessible online.
    I hope that this hearing, among other things, will give 
more people an understanding of the importance of that.
    Thank you.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN

    Senator Hassan [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Portman. I 
want to thank you and Chairman Peters for holding this hearing. 
I certainly want to thank all of our witnesses, not only for 
being here today but for the work that you do.
    Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Jones, I want to start off with 
following up on some of the discussion you have had with both 
Senators Peters and Portman on the issue of online 
radicalization.
    Mr. Goldenberg, in your testimony you compared some of the 
online radicalization techniques of groups like ISIS to similar 
efforts used by domestic terrorists online today. Again, adding 
to what you were talking about just now, in your view are there 
lessons learned from combating ISIS's online radicalization 
efforts that can be applied to combating domestic terrorism 
threats?
    Mr. Goldenberg. I think the primary lessons learned is it 
is almost--and I am sorry, I am going to use this as a 
comparison because I am a former police officer.
    It is when they interview the neighbor next door and the 
neighbor next door, after a horrific crime is committed by the 
other neighbor, says ``I knew nothing.'' You know, ``I knew 
nothing about this.''
    I think it is incumbent upon us to really focus on 
training, spending time with families and educators and even 
the law enforcement community to better understand how social 
media, how this space, as wonderful it is--I call it the Tale 
of Two Cities--has become a place where we have groomers and 
others that are seeking to radicalize your children, if not 
your teens, if not other adults.
    The tactics used by ISIS and al-Qaeda and other groups that 
we will call traditional foreign terrorist groups, these same 
tactics are being used right here in the United States by those 
that are asking for some to commit themselves to white 
supremacist ideology.
    It is the same tactics. It is the same tactics being used, 
the same marketing.
    Senator Hassan. What you are really saying to is educating 
the general public and families about the tactics that their 
loved ones could be subjected to online. Is that fair?
    Mr. Goldenberg. Absolutely. The old cliche, if you see 
something, say something. When I first heard it years ago, I 
come from the New York-New Jersey area, through 9/11, I rolled 
my eyes, Senator. Now, I do not roll my eyes at that. People, 
if they see something, if something is not right with a 
neighbor, with a friend, with a child--I am not talking about 
people spying on each other. I am talking about if there are 
signs and symptoms that say that someone that is close to you 
or someone that you love is now being potentially radicalized 
and these are the signs and the symbols, you need to step up 
and say something and maybe save the next life, including their 
own.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you.
    Mr. Jones, you also mentioned the role of the Internet and 
social media in contributing to the domestic terrorism threat. 
In your view, what more can the U.S. Government do to counter 
extremism and misinformation on digital platforms?
    Mr. Jones. Thanks, Senator, for bringing up this issue.
    Two comments along these lines. One is, I should point out 
at the beginning, to State the obvious, that a range of 
individuals and organizations involved in domestic terrorism 
are on multiple types of digital platforms, not just the big 
ones.
    However, some of the large platforms like Facebook, 
Twitter, and YouTube, they are capable of reaching larger 
numbers of individuals. I think one of the successful efforts, 
because I have worked with a range of these companies, they 
surged during the height of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda 
activity to identify on their platforms individuals that were 
radicalizing, both humans working for these companies as well 
as algorithms.
    They have been slower in the areas we are talking about. 
They have been slower on white supremacists, anti-government 
militias, some of the anti-fascists and anarchists. They have 
been slower to devote the resources, the individual expertise. 
I think they have started to move a little bit faster, but I 
would say more pressure on these companies--and again, I am not 
talking about free speech here. I am talking about violence. 
Taking down Facebook pages that are inciting people to 
violence.
    I think, in that sense, a number of European governments 
are ahead of the United States in and along these lines. I 
think that is one issue.
    It is also worth highlighting that a range of these 
domestic organizations are learning. They now know what they 
can get away with and what they cannot. This is a constant 
process of rejiggering algorithms and educating those that are 
analyzing digital platforms. What are the word choices they are 
using to instigate?
    But I think continual pressure on these companies is 
critical. That includes holding hearings with senior officials 
from those companies so that they are held accountable.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you.
    I want to follow up with you on another issue now. I 
previously cosponsored legislation to establish a commission 
that would review the information sharing process for both 
international and domestic terrorism. I was pleased to see that 
the first pillar of the Biden administration's new national 
strategy for counter and domestic terrorism includes a goal to 
improve information sharing.
    Mr. Jones, in your view, what specific steps can the 
Federal Government take to improve sharing terrorism threat 
information with State and local partners, including 
information regarding domestic terrorism?
    Mr. Jones. Look, I think there is an important role, the 
National Counterterrorism Center has increasingly --and I think 
this is important to recognize that we talk about domestic 
terrorism, including here. But there is a lot of overlap 
between domestic and international terrorism. I think the 
National Counterterrorism needs to continue at the Federal 
level to also focus on this interplay between domestic and 
international terrorism.
    I also think then that there is an important relationship 
between the National Counterterrorism Center and the Joint 
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), and the fusion centers, that they 
can share information that the FBI legats overseas, the legal 
attaches, and those that are embedded in JTTFs as well as the 
National Counterterrorism Center, I think there is an important 
need to continue to push information from the Federal level 
down to the State and local level and ease a little bit these 
walls between international and domestic.
    I think NCTC has been far too conservative in defining 
terms.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you, very much.
    I am running out of time so I am going to submit my last 
two questions for the record\1\ but I wanted to thank Senator 
Portman for his partnership on the Pray Safe Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The questions of Senator Hassan appear in the Appendix on page 
91.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mr. Fingerhut, I will be submitting two questions to the 
record to you about the importance of having a clearinghouse 
for faith-based organizations and houses of worship about best 
practices, as well as just trying to get your comments on ways 
we can continue to work with the nonprofit and faith-based 
community on the Nonprofit Security Grant Program so that they 
are better able to access these grants and perhaps we can 
streamline the application process for them.
    Thank you all so much for your expertise and for sharing it 
with us this morning.
    I see that the Chair is back, so I am going to hand the 
gavel back to him.
    Chairman Peters [presiding]. Thank you, Senator.
    The Chair now recognizes Senator Rosen for your questions.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen. Thank you. That was a swift move between 
Senator Hassan and thank you, Chair Peters, for recognizing me. 
I want to thank you and Ranking Member Portman for holding this 
important hearing.
    As co-chair of the first ever Senate Bipartisan Task Force 
for Combating Anti-Semitism, I am pleased to have this hearing. 
I want to welcome my friend, Eric Fingerhut from the Jewish 
Federations of North America, and thank him for being with us 
today.
    As others have touched upon, I want to talk a little bit 
about the Nonprofit Security Grant Program because over the 
past few years, particularly since this spring, we have seen a 
dangerous increase in anti-Semitism, including the deadliest 
attacks on the Jewish community in modern American history.
    Just three years ago, of course, we had the Tree of Life 
Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In May 2021 alone, the ADL recorded 
251 anti-Semitic incidents, 115 percent jump from the same 
period last year. Those were just what was reported. We know 
many things go unreported.
    So to protect synagogues, Jewish community centers, and 
other nonprofits against terrorist attacks and targeted 
violence, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program makes FEMA 
grants available to eligible nonprofit organizations for target 
hardening and other security enhancements.
    Despite the alarming rise in anti-Semitism, NSGP fulfilled 
less than half of the applications that it received for grants 
this year, far outstripping the $180 million appropriated by 
Congress in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. Mr. Fingerhut, I really want 
to thank you for speaking to the importance of doubling the 
NSGP funding from $180 million to $360 million in your opening 
statement. It is critical to meeting the growing needs of the 
program to keep all of our communities secure.
    I want to follow up on many of the discussions that we have 
had so far.
    Rural communities, suburban communities, they often 
historically experience resource gaps. They face challenges in 
accessing nonprofit security grants to protect themselves 
against anti-Semitic domestic terror attacks and targeted 
violence. Mr. Fingerhut, how do you think Congress can ensure 
that these communities received the sufficient Federal support, 
including our outreach efforts and technical assistance, to 
better access this important program?
    Mr. Fingerhut. Thank you, Senator Rosen. Thank you 
particularly for citing the statistics regarding the percentage 
of the applications for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program 
that were able to be filled by the existing funding sources. It 
is under 50 percent. I think we have to be honest and say that 
it is not that institutions are not aware of the need to take 
extraordinary measures now to secure their facilities. 
Regretfully, I think all faith-based institutions and nonprofit 
institutions in our country are becoming aware of the threats 
that they face, and particularly, regrettably, I must say it is 
true of the Jewish community which for 23 straight years has 
experienced the largest percentage of hate crimes according to 
FBI statistics of any religious based group. But it is now the 
knowledge and the skill and the ability to fulfill the 
technical requirements of the applications.
    I will again mention a couple of quick things that I have 
previously mentioned and I would be more than happy to follow 
up with the Committee and with your office for details.
    First of all, it is time that as part of the Nonprofit 
Security Grant Program that we not only have a sufficient level 
of funding consistent over time, but that we also allocate 
sufficient resources to FEMA and to the State-based 
institutional partners who administer these grants to assist 
them in developing the expertise to working with the nonprofit 
communities. They have not received the resources for them to 
be able to be in that position of expertise.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you.
    Mr. Fingerhut. As I have also mentioned, and I really 
cannot emphasize enough, I do believe that it is time, we do 
believe that it is time for the Congress to designate the 
nonprofit and the faith-based sectors as critical 
infrastructure to this country with respect to domestic 
violence, which would trigger the development of comprehensive 
strategic plans by Department of Homeland Security, by Federal 
law enforcement, FBI and others.
    Senator, you know better than anyone, as a former synagogue 
president yourself, how critical our faith-based institutions 
are to the delivery of the communal services in our great 
country. This is the freest, safest country in the history of 
the Jewish people. But regrettably, as you said, in the last 20 
years we have experienced dramatic rises in violent extremism 
and actual attacks, and we need to fill in the gaps.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you.
    I would like, in the short time I have left, I would like 
to talk about the links between domestic terrorism, anti-
Semitism, and anti-AAPI hate. The recent rise in anti-Semitism, 
of course, is also correlated with the spread of domestic 
extremist ideologies, neo-Nazis, the organization of this base. 
It is driven by ideological trafficking and conspiracies 
against Jewish control of society, the QAnon movement is out 
there. I welcome the Administration's recent joint 
comprehensive threat assessment on domestic violent and 
extremism. But I am disappointed that the report did not 
account for the nexus between anti-Semitism and violent 
extremism.
    This question to Mr. Goldenberg and Mr. Yang, can you 
describe the connection between domestic violent extremism 
ideologies and anti-Semitism, motivation, tactics, and 
recruitment? Mr. Yang, of course, we have those same issues 
happening right now with anti-AAPI conspiracy theories and 
domestic extremism.
    I know, maybe I will have to take them off the record 
because I see my time is expiring, but I will submit them to 
both of you. I really want to hear what you have to say.
    We need to be a no place for hate society and we have to 
stand together in this fight.
    I do not know who is after me, Mr. Chair, but I guess I 
will take my answers off the record.
    Chairman Peters. Senator Rosen, if you would like more time 
you can take more time. We are waiting for another member.
    Senator Rosen. That is great. I guess you can answer 
because we are waiting for another Senator to come, either 
online or in the room. I guess Mr. Goldenberg and then Mr. 
Yang, please.
    Mr. Goldenberg. There is an absolute common denominator 
between the violent extremists on the right and the violent 
extremists on the left. That common denominator, unfortunately, 
for some of these groups is their apparent hatred of the Jewish 
people.
    We have seen online, we have studied some of the rhetoric 
and the chatter. In many cases, they not agree with each other 
theoretically, politically, or any other which way. But when it 
comes to their hatred of the Jewish people, they use the same 
anti-Semitic rhetoric, the books, the Elders. I can mention a 
half a dozen different--the Protocols of Zion. They actually 
share this information with each other.
    If they completely disagree, sometimes even violently, with 
each other on many other issues, at the core it is anti-
Semitism that unfortunately does bring them together.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you for that disturbing answer.
    Mr. Yang, can you talk a little bit about the connection of 
these anti-AAPI conspiracy theories and domestic violence that 
we have seen particularly on the rise during COVID?
    Mr. Yang. Absolutely, and thank you for that.
    I think one common denominator that we have not talked 
about, both with respect to anti-Semitism and anti-Asian 
American hate, is this climate of fear, this notion that we are 
living in fear. We have to blame someone for the fear.
    Here it is with respect to COVID-19 as it applies to the 
Asian American community. What we are seeing is misinformation 
about the origins of COVID-19, if you will. The fact that Asian 
American eat bats or that Asian Americans are unsanitary, and 
that is why COVID-19 is here in the United States.
    One of the first physical attacks against an Asian American 
down in Texas was by a person against a father with two very 
little kids. At the same time he was saying ``you guys are the 
reason that COVID-19 is here.''
    What we need to do is make sure we do not sow those seeds 
of fear. That is incumbent on all of us as leaders to use the 
right words. That is not going to do the trick alone, but to 
make sure that we are not part of the problem in creating that 
climate of fear, that somehow we have to fear Chinese people or 
fear Asian countries.
    That is what we have seen also in the Jewish American 
community, as you know, is that fear is what drives some of the 
extremism that we have seen.
    Those are a distinct element that I would want to name 
right now.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you.
    Dr. Jones, I am going to follow up for the record\1\ 
because I am way over my time. But I really want to talk about 
the specific steps the Administration, that we can take to 
address this linkage between bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-AAPI 
hate, other forms of systemic racism, and with violent 
extremism, and especially white supremacy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The questions of Senator Rosen appear in the Appendix on page 
89.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Thank you for indulging me, Senator Peters, I appreciate 
it.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen, as always for 
great questions. We appreciate those and we appreciate the 
answers.
    Mr. Yang, you have talked quite a bit today about the 
increased violence against Asian Americans and we have had 
discussions related to social media and how that is really, I 
will say, furthering some of these attacks in communities 
across the country.
    I would like you to speak a little bit specifically with 
Asian Americans as to how social media and misinformation 
related to COVID-19 has particularly had a significant impact 
on your community and what we should be doing about it.
    Mr. Yang. Thank you very much for that question.
    There is a couple of things. First is, with respect to that 
misinformation, that actually has a cause and effect on the 
Asian American community with respect to COVID-19 before any 
other community, before anything else.
    Even before we had the first hint of COVID-19 here in the 
United States, Asian Americans were being discriminated 
against, especially in their businesses, because about this 
misinformation about the hygiene of Asian American businesses 
with the cause of COVID-19 and how Asian American might be 
special carriers of that.
    Then that translated into actual cases of violence against 
our community because of what we saw on social media. The 
number of times that we saw that fake picture of an Asian 
American eating a bat, that caused so many attacks against our 
community.
    Before this hearing, I took a quick look at the statistics 
with respect to anti-Asian attacks against our community from 
our own website. I recorded very quickly over a dozen cases in 
which while that person was attacking the Asian American they 
were talking about Asian American eating bats. That 
misinformation is part of the issue that we need to address.
    I do agree that it is both digital literacy, as I would 
call it, with respect to people that are consuming that 
information, as well as content moderation with respect to the 
platforms that allowing those pieces to proliferate.
    But again, I would also go the source which is who is it 
that is causing that or seeding that racism, seeding that 
extremism? Because those are also the groups, the individuals, 
that we need to address head on.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you.
    Mr. Goldenberg, as a former Vice Chair of DHS's Faith-Based 
Security Advisory Council, you made a number of recommendations 
regarding how the Department should address the rise of 
violence in faith-based communities.
    My question for you today though is, given where we are 
today, what do you think is the most important action the 
Department of Homeland Security must take?
    Mr. Goldenberg. I think it is ownership. The Department is 
vast, we all know, several hundred thousand good individuals 
are over there. The initiative really needs to have ownership, 
someone at a very senior level that can transverse across all 
the various divisions and departments and offices, that really 
focuses on this issue.
    I have to agree wholeheartedly with Eric Fingerhut, whom I 
know for several years, that this should be considered a part 
of critical infrastructure. If our houses of worship are not 
critical infrastructure, I am not sure what is. As I said 
before, it has definitely become an Achilles' heel.
    We also, one more thing we do need to be thinking about, 
and I would like to put on the record, is the fact, with First 
Amendment, with threats that are coming through social media, 
the fact that we have people in vulnerable communities that are 
deeply concerned about their safety and security and feel 
terrorized by threats vis-vis social media, where is the law 
broken? When can an investigation be opened up? Where does DOJ 
or States Attorney's office, where can they now open up an 
investigation predicated upon a person's concern that their 
safety is at stake?
    That is a great concern right now. Take a look at how many 
cases have been opened up where someone is threatened over the 
Internet and there is absolutely nowhere to go with it. You do 
not even know what agency to report it to.
    These are the things that I think we need to be very 
focused on.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you for that.
    Senator Ossoff, you are now recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF

    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our 
panelists for your invaluable contributions today.
    Mr. Henderson, I would like to begin with a question direct 
to you. You noted in your testimony that in 2017 the Department 
of Justice found that while just over 7,000 hate crimes had 
been reported, they assessed that the real number was likely in 
the range of a quarter of a million.
    What legislative action is needed to ensure we have a clear 
national accounting of hate crimes that is accurate and 
consistent over time so that we can track these trends with 
more accuracy?
    Mr. Henderson. Senator Ossoff, thank you for that question.
    As you know, there is the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which 
I believe was first enacted in 1991. It requires police 
departments around the country, law enforcement institutions, 
to report hate crimes that have been brought to their 
attention. But the information provided to the Federal 
Government is voluntary. The number of police departments 
participate in this effort has always been relatively small in 
comparison to the number of entities existing in the country. 
Most of the information provided is incredibly incomplete.
    But there is no sense of urgency, no sense of obligation on 
the part of these departments to provide that information.
    Certainly, Congress could make reporting mandatory and that 
would help. Certainly, providing departments with the technical 
skill to document and record hate crime violence reported to 
those institutions would be a huge help.
    Last, public education. Trying to educate communities about 
the existence of this violence, what constitutes a hate crime, 
and how to go about documenting it would be an additional help.
    I would argue that strengthening the Hate Crimes Statistics 
Act is the first and most compelling step to be taken, but I 
think there are other collateral efforts, as we have just 
discussed, that could be supportive of that effort, as well.
    Thank you.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Henderson. Would you kindly 
be willing to work with my office to determine how such 
legislative remedy might be most constructively drafted?
    Mr. Henderson. Senator Ossoff, we would welcome that 
opportunity and appreciate very much the invitation to do so.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Yang, I would like to check in with you on a matter of 
particular concern across the country and to many of my Asian 
American constituents in Georgia. That is these appalling 
attacks, in particular, on Asian elders across the country 
which you note in your testimony.
    Would you please provide the Committee with an update on 
the trend, the incidents of these attacks, what you are 
currently seeing and analyzing?
    Mr. Yang. Sure, thank you very much for that question, 
Senator Ossoff.
    Unfortunately, the trend has still been relatively high 
with respect to attacks against Asian Americans. Again, we have 
talked about this. One thing I should note is the attacks 
against Asian American women, in particular, is appalling. 
Women are being attacked at almost two times the rate of men. 
This is not an issue just for the Asian American community. But 
if we are talking about domestic terrorism, if we are talking 
about extremism, another thing that we need to make sure that 
we address is violence against women.
    Unfortunately, with respect to this hearing, we do not have 
a female speaker to talk about these issues. But if we dig 
deeper, that is another issue that we should address.
    The last thing that I would want to note is that we should 
also continue to think about what it means to prevent these 
types of acts from happening. We have talked a lot about 
response, how we need to harden some of our nonprofits, harden 
some of our churches. I certainly agree with that as a 
response.
    But we also need to think about how we connect with our 
communities, invest in our communities, so they feel safer 
without the need to overcriminalize, overuse law enforcement as 
the solution to all of these problems.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Yang.
    Mr. Fingerhut, I would like to talk a little bit about 
Federal policy that helps to secure places of worship as well 
as nonprofits. I would just note it is, on the one hand, a 
signal of progress, I think, that Georgia elected for the first 
time a Black man and a Jewish man to represent our State in the 
U.S. Senate. I was sworn in on the chumash that belonged to 
Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, who had been the chief rabbi at my 
child synagogue, the temple which was bombed by white 
supremacists in 1958 in retaliation for Rabbi Rothschild's 
alliance with Dr. King in support of the civil rights movement.
    It is certainly my ambition that we strengthen and sustain 
the vital and historic alliance between Blacks and Jews in 
American which was forged with such intensity during the civil 
rights movement.
    I would like to ask you, Mr. Fingerhut, about your 
assessment of the efficacy of the Nonprofit Security Grant 
Program, how it can be improved, as well as the efficacy of the 
DHS Protective Security Advisors and Cybersecurity Advisors 
which are assisting nonprofits and faith-based groups to 
protect themselves from both physical and cyber threats.
    Mr. Fingerhut. Thank you, Senator Ossoff, for the question 
and the historic significance of your election and that of 
Senator Warnock was certainly well noted within the community, 
as was the dramatic personal statement you made with regards to 
your choice of the chumash, the Hebrew bible for your swearing 
in.
    We commit to you, together of course with the Jewish 
Federations located in your home State of Georgia, 
particularly, of course, our great Atlanta Jewish Federation, 
to work as closely with you and Senator Warnock as we possibly 
can, as well as on a national basis to fulfill the vision that 
you have so beautifully laid out for us here.
    As I have addressed in this hearing, it is unfortunately 
the case that we now have a wide recognition, Senator, of the 
need to have a layer of physical security in all of our faith-
based institutions and our nonprofit institutions that we never 
thought we would have to have.
    If you travel the world, it is routine that there are 
security guards and physical security of all kinds outside of 
faith-based institutions and we regret that now that reality 
has now come to our great country.
    We are in catch-up mode, frankly sir, because there is not 
only the growing need which the Federal Government is not yet 
adequately funding. The funding levels that are currently 
available, as has already been noted, we covered roughly 50 
percent of the applications this year. But even that is only a 
reflection of the knowledge and growing capacity of 
institutions to apply. It is nowhere near where we believe all 
of the faith-based institutions and communities need to be.
    We need long-term consistent funding. We need the expertise 
of FEMA and of our State emergency institutions that partner 
with FEMA to get this done. As you suggested, our cyber 
advisors, we need to have a much closer working relationship 
between the Protective Security Advisors and Cybersecurity 
Advisors in the Department of Homeland Security Cyber and 
Infrastructure Security Agency and the nonprofit community.
    We believe all of that can come from the designation of the 
faith-based institutions and nonprofits as critical 
infrastructure.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Fingerhut.
    With the Chairman's indulgence, just one more question for 
Mr. Goldenberg. You noted in your testimony some of the 
parallels with Europe, at this increase in sectarianism, 
tribalism that we are seeing in European and North American 
societies right now.
    As we all strive to build a society and a world where the 
dignity and the human rights and human value of each individual 
is sacred and protected regardless of our race, our creed, our 
ethnicity, our faith, it is deeply troubling that we are seeing 
this increase in these levels of sectarianism and hatred.
    I would like, in closing, Mr. Goldenberg, if you might 
comment on why do you believe we are seeing these trends in 
societies on both sides of the Atlantic? What are the 
parallels?
    Mr. Goldenberg. I think the parallels--well look, I first 
started to travel abroad nearly 20 years ago at the request of 
the Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). We 
started to raise the flags back then when we started to see 
these groups that were considered once marginalized becoming 
mainstream.
    There is a total disconnect, although it has gotten much 
better in Europe, with the vulnerable communities and the 
police that are sworn to protect them, as well. But again, for 
the record, that has improved greatly.
    Social media has no borders. These ideologies seem to have 
no borders. People are sharing this information across the 
globe with a click of a finger where years ago these things 
took much longer. You heard Senator Portman mention ``Flash to 
Bang'' and what that really means is that people are being 
radicalized, they are sitting in front of computers, they are 
frustrated potentially with their own governments for whatever 
reason. They are moving from flash to operationalizing these 
targeted acts of violence. I think that social media, the 
Internet, has become a place where these ideologies and the 
methodologies for attack are being shared almost on a daily 
basis.
    Wherever you have, as we all know, a downturn in the 
economy people will look to scapegoat. In this case, I think 
COVID has accelerated much of that. For the first time in 
history, billions of people were home sitting in front of their 
computers and depending on information that they were not sure 
if factual or not factual.
    We are in a very fragile place right now. What we have seen 
10 or 15 years ago, as I stated, 20 years ago in Europe, has 
come to fruition here in the United States.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Goldenberg. Thank you to our 
panel. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thanks for the extra time.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Hawley, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY

    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you for being patient and for the witnesses. As is often the 
case, as I am sure you have figured out, there are multiple 
hearings going on at one time so I have been running back and 
forth, and I appreciate the Chairman accommodating me here so 
that I could come and ask questions. Thank you for the 
witnesses who are here remotely, as well.
    I want to start with some questions about the anti-Semitic 
violence that we have seen unfortunately in this country, and 
seen a significant uptick of it over a period of years, but 
particularly in the last few months.
    This May, during the latest conflict between Israel and 
Palestinians we saw violence abroad that spilled over here 
domestically. Jews across the United States were reportedly 
threatened or physically attacked, and at least 193 different 
instances or anti-Semitic violence or threats during the first 
week of that conflict, which is remarkable.
    For example, pro-Palestinian protesters threatened, shoved, 
punched, threw fireworks in the Diamond District of Midtown 
Manhattan, which is an area with many Jewish-owned businesses. 
That led to 27 arrests and the hospitalization of multiple 
people.
    In Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian protesters attacked a group 
of Jewish men who were eating at a restaurant. While they 
attacked them, they waved Palestinian flags and hurled anti-
Semitic slurs.
    We have even seen Members of Congress, sadly, use anti-
Semitic rhetoric. One Member of Congress called Israel an 
apartheid State, said it was committing war crimes. Another 
said after the cease-fire that Israel's ethnic cleansing 
continues. Another Congresswoman called then-Prime Minister 
Bibi Netanyahu an ethno-nationalist, a fascist basically, 
during a speech on the House floor.
    This is very concerning. The violence is very concerning. 
The rhetoric from anti-Semitic groups is very concerning. The 
anti-Semitic rhetoric from Members of Congress is very 
concerning and, frankly, in excusable.
    Mr. Fingerhut, if I could just come to you, you have 
discussed I know today, and in your testimony, some of the 
despicable attacks that have occurred against the Jewish 
community over the past few years. Can I ask you what role you 
think the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas has played 
or might play in exacerbating these violent attacks and this 
violent rhetoric that we are seeing in, unfortunately, too many 
places?
    Mr. Fingerhut. Thank you, Senator Hawley.
    I am not sure I want to use the word thank you, but I 
appreciate the fact that you did recite some of the additional 
violent incidents we have seen in this country in recent months 
that I did not mention in my initial testimony.
    I think, sir, there is no question but that we have indeed 
witnessed a rise in violent extremism against the Jewish 
community in the last couple of months that coincided with the 
recent--what was called Operation Guardian of the Walls war in 
Israel. I have no doubt that that is also being reflected not 
only in the actual physical attacks but in the threats that are 
being reported by law enforcement and the threats that are 
being tracked by organizations like ADL and others.
    I know Mr. Goldenberg spoke earlier, my friend and 
colleague, of the online threats against anti-Semitism which 
seem to unite radical extremists. Left and right seem to be 
unified in their hatred of Jews and embrace of classical anti-
Semitic tropes. There is no doubt that we have seen that grow 
and an increasing attack on all and every Jewish community as a 
result of what has occurred the last couple of months.
    I do want to emphasize however, Senator, that while I do 
think there is no question that there has been a dramatic 
increase in these last couple of months, that unfortunately it 
reflects a continuation of an increase that we have seen 
continuously over a number of years that--as I indicated 
earlier--I believe since the passage of the Hate Crimes 
Statistics Act, which Mr. Henderson spoke to knowledgeably of 
earlier in this responses to the panel's questions, that for 23 
straight years of the gathering of the statistics under the 
Hate Crimes Statistics Act by the FBI, the Jewish community was 
the religious organization singled out for the largest number 
of those reported statistical threats and attacks.
    This is indeed something that has been a rising threat. As 
I indicated also in my prepared remarks, we now have over 45 
Jewish Community Federations that have felt the need to build 
professionalized community security initiatives, to work with 
and mobilize each and every one of our synagogues and Jewish 
community centers and human services agencies. We are in the 
midst of a national campaign to extend that umbrella 
everywhere. We are continuing to build the resources of our 
Security Community Network to work with DHS and FBI.
    The increase we have seen recently builds on top of, 
unfortunately, a very significant rise over recent years.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you for that.
    What you are saying, in other words, is that sadly this is 
a trend. It is a trend of many years in the making and recent 
events have accelerated it. It is unbelievably sad that the 
security measures that you just described, that so many 
synagogues and other Jewish communities and neighborhood 
communities are taking, it is unbelievably sad that these 
measures are necessary. It is unbelievably wrong that they are 
necessary in this country.
    I want to ask you, just to come back to the events of this 
last May, this last spring, do you think that the current 
administration offered enough support for the Jewish community 
during the recent conflict? I mean American Jews, the Jewish 
community in the United States? Is there anything else, in a 
proactive sense, that you would like to see the Administration 
or Congress do?
    Here is where I am going with this, Mr. Fingerhut, it just 
simply cannot be that every time there is a conflict involving 
the State of Israel, that it therefore becomes OK to attack 
American Jews, it becomes OK to engage in anti-Semitic conduct 
publicly. It just simply cannot be the case because, as you 
say, we are dealing here with a long-term rise in anti-Semitic 
conduct. The idea that oh, well, we will just say that it is 
anti-Israel and therefore it is OK, we cannot possibly condone 
that as a way to excuse further violence, further rhetoric.
    What more can Congress and the Administration do?
    Mr. Fingerhut. Yes, Senator Hawley, first of all, I could 
not agree with you more. It cannot possibly be OK, and it is 
not OK that every time there is conflict between Israel and its 
neighbors that it results in a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in 
this country. It is unacceptable and I agree with you 
completely.
    You asked two different questions. The first was you asked 
about the response of the present Biden administration. I will 
say that they did speak out forcefully with regard to the 
increase in anti-Semitism that came about during this most 
recent conflict.
    I want to thank Mr. Henderson, Mr. Yang, and all of the 
other civil rights organizations that joined in a forceful 
statement letter to President Biden. I believe over 180 
organizations spoke out together at that time to the President, 
to the Biden administration and the President personally 
responded within 24 hours to that letter.
    I also want to acknowledge the recent nomination of 
Professor Deborah Lipstadt as the Special Envoy for anti-
Semitism, something that had been long sought by the Jewish 
Community and that we hope the Senate will take up 
expeditiously.
    I want to acknowledge, as well, again with Mr. Yang, we 
were proud to support, together with the Asian American/Pacific 
Islander community and the leadership conference, the No Hate 
Act, which recently passed, which will enhance the crime and 
statistics.
    As to your second question, Senator Hawley, with regard to 
what more Congress can do, I believe we have covered that to 
some extent. But I know that it is important to repeat because 
of the nature of this hearing, that we are nowhere near the 
funding levels necessary for the Nonprofit Security Grant 
Program. We need to enhance the ability of FEMA and the State 
agencies to work with faith-based institutions of all kinds to 
help them harden their facilities.
    We need to provide the comprehensive designation necessary 
so that we attack this problem comprehensively. Senator Hawley, 
very well and you have spoken beautifully about it on many 
occasions, the important critical role that the faith-based 
community and the nonprofit sector plays in American civil 
society. We are partners with government in every respect, in 
delivering human services, in caring for our community, in 
providing the emotional and educational well-being of our 
community.
    During the recent COVID pandemic we partnered effectively 
with this Congress repeatedly on various funding and other 
strategic measures to make sure that resources got to the 
nonprofit and faith-based communities to secure their ability 
to continue to serve their communities during this terrible 
time. Now we need to do the same thing in a much more 
comprehensive way on the issue of domestic terrorism.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you very much for that testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your generosity here.
    But I want to say in conclusion that I think it is vital 
that we are clear that anti-Semitism in any guise, whether it 
is from the right or whether it is from the right, whatever its 
excuse is, is wrong. As a person of faith, I just want to say, 
taking a stand on my faith, that it is wrong. It is morally 
wrong. And there should be, and can be, no excuse for it, 
whether it is wrapped up in a policy excuse or something else. 
But we have to be absolutely crystal clear about that.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hawley.
    I would like to thank everyone for participating in today's 
hearing. I would certainly like to say a special thanks to our 
witnesses for joining us today and providing their unique 
perspective and expertise on what is clearly a very complex 
issue.
    Our witnesses today have provided us with insight into the 
current domestic terrorism threat that we face. We have heard 
compelling details about the real world impact that domestic 
terrorism and violent extremism have on our communities and how 
related hateful rhetoric and misinformation are readily 
amplified by social media platforms.
    Importantly, we have also been reminded that although these 
threats are clearly not new, for many communities of color and 
religious groups, they are growing and an agonizing presence in 
their daily lives. And that is simply unacceptable.
    We cannot ignore this growing threat and climate of 
intimidation and the many horrific acts of violence we have 
seen in recent years. Too many families and communities have 
been shattered by extremist attacks. The Federal Government 
must urgently focus its efforts to combat the domestic 
terrorism threat and prevent future tragedies.
    On Thursday, I will convene a second hearing with 
additional experts, including former Administration officials 
to examine what reforms are needed to ensure the government's 
resources and personnel are adequately aligned to address this 
deadly threat.
    In testimony before Congress, several of our national 
security officials have called domestic terrorism and, in 
particular, white supremacist violence the greatest threat to 
our homeland security. As Chairman of this Committee, I will 
work along with my colleagues to ensure that these words are 
followed by concrete actions to actually tackle this threat 
with the seriousness that it warrants.
    As part of that effort, we will hold additional hearings in 
the fall, as well, which will include current government 
officials to discuss their work to address domestic terrorism.
    I will note that the record for this hearing will remain 
open until 5 p.m. on August 18, 2021 for the submission of 
statements and questions for the record.
    With that, this Committee hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



                     DOMESTIC TERRORISM AND VIOLENT
                   EXTREMISM: EXAMINING THE THREAT OF
 RACIALLY, ETHNICALLY, RELIGIOUSLY, AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ATTACKS 
                                PART II

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
   Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., via 
Webex and in room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. 
Gary C. Peters, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Peters, Hassan, Sinema, Rosen, Padilla, 
Ossoff, Portman, Johnson, Scott, and Hawley.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN PETERS\1\

    Chairman Peters. The Committee will come to order. Earlier 
this week, the Committee heard testimony about the serious 
threat posed by domestic terrorism and the impact it has on 
communities all across our country. Today, we will continue to 
examine this grave national security threat and hear from 
experts representing community, as well as research 
organizations, as well as former government officials, about 
the evolving nature of this threat and how the Federal 
Government can better address it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appear in the Appendix 
on page 135.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The information we gather from these two hearings will lay 
important groundwork for a September hearing with current 
government officials, including the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation (FBI) Director Wray and the Department of 
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas, about what actions 
our Federal agencies are taking to deal with the rising threat 
of domestic terrorism.
    I would like to thank each of our witnesses for joining us 
today and for their work in the public and private sectors to 
protect the American people. I look forward to hearing your 
analysis of rising domestic extremism and your recommendations 
to ensure we are effectively tackling this deadly threat.
    On Tuesday, we heard examples of horrific attacks and the 
roots of that violence from faith-based, civil rights, 
academic, and policy research organizations. The witnesses 
discussed how this rising violence has affected Asian 
Americans, Black, Latino, Arab Americans and so many other 
communities, as well as the disturbing rise in anti-Semitic and 
other faith-based violence.
    The testimony we heard made it crystal clear that too many 
Americans are living under the threat of terror, intimidation, 
physical violence, and that should cause concern for every 
American. We also heard testimony about the role social media 
has played in amplifying and spreading hateful rhetoric and 
misinformation that contributes to increased violent attacks 
motivated by ethnicity, race, religion, and politics.
    I look forward to building on that testimony today and 
continuing to dig into what domestic terrorism data the Federal 
Government tracks, whether we should be examining additional 
authorities, and how we can establish enduring Federal policies 
that will put an end to the violence that is terrorizing our 
communities.
    With that, I would normally turn it over to Ranking Member 
Portman for his opening statements, but he is engaged right now 
in some negotiations related to the infrastructure bill that is 
before us in the Senate. In fact, we will have additional votes 
on that legislation coming up at approximately 11:30. I expect 
Ranking Member Portman to join us, and he will be making his 
comments at that time, but we will move on to hear from our 
witnesses.
    As you can see, we will have Members coming in as well. So, 
very busy. Senator Hassan is here promptly, as she always is. 
Senator Portman has now arrived. So, right on cue. But we will 
see Members coming in and out given all that is happening.
    Ranking Member Portman, thank you for being here. I just 
mentioned how busy you are, running every which way on this 
infrastructure package, which we appreciate. But thank you for 
being here, and we welcome your opening comments.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\

    Senator Portman. Great. Thank you, Chairman Peters, and 
appreciate your holding this hearing and continuing our 
discussion which we began on Tuesday about the persistent 
threat of domestic terrorism and violent extremism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the 
Appendix on page 136.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As I said earlier this week, these threats are affecting 
communities all across our country, and I want to be sure that 
as we go through these hearings we recognize that. They 
transcend racial, ethnic, and religious lines and, as we heard 
on Tuesday, significantly increased threats against members of 
law enforcement, the military, and government. In fact, that 
was based on the data that had been compiled that we heard 
about on Tuesday; that was where most of the actual threats and 
acts had been committed.
    We have a problem. The Internet, as Senator Hassan and a 
lot of our experts pointed out, has exacerbated the problem, 
both in terms of spreading disinformation and creating some of 
the conditions for violent extremism but also in terms of 
organizing some of the hateful acts.
    On Tuesday, the witnesses highlighted many important points 
we will discuss today, including that virtually all domestic 
terrorists, inspired by a range of these ideological beliefs on 
the right and left, do use the Internet and social media 
platforms to release propaganda, coordinate training, raise 
funds, recruit members, and incite violence here at home.
    The Administration must be more transparent and provide the 
necessary data for us to have a comprehensive understanding of 
the current threat landscape. That is something that was talked 
about a lot by all groups is information, data, having the 
facts.
    Going forward, we need to talk about solutions and areas 
where more congressional action is needed to address these 
threats effectively. I think that was a conclusion. I think 
today we will talk more about solutions, which I think is very 
helpful.
    I also appreciated the multiple witnesses on Tuesday 
testified that the Homeland Security's Nonprofit Security Grant 
Program (NSGP) has been helpful to nonprofits who have applied 
for funds they can use to secure their facilities. We have 
worked hard in this Committee to authorize that program, to 
expand it. We are pleased that we were able to get an 
authorization signed into law last year. The data shows that 
despite the expansion of this program there are many States 
that are not taking full advantage of it and the tools that it 
provides. We are committed to ensuring that those States' 
nonprofits, religious institutions are not just aware of the 
program but using it, to utilize it to protect themselves from 
the increasing threats.
    I was also pleased to hear witnesses express on Tuesday 
support for the Pray Safe Act that I authored and introduced 
with Senator Hassan, who is here this morning. This is the 
legislation that creates the Federal clearinghouse that I think 
is as important, maybe more important than the funding is, to 
be sure people have access to information on safety, on best 
practices in the security realm, available Federal grant 
programs, including the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, and 
training opportunities. I hope we can get that legislation 
passed. It has already been reported out of this Committee.
    That said, it is clear that more does need to be done. 
Determining what solutions and tools are needed requires us to 
hear not just from the private entities but, of course, from 
Federal officials, current Federal officials responsible for 
understanding and addressing these threats.
    Next month, the Committee is planning its annual threats 
hearing, at which I expect domestic terrorism and violent 
extremism will play a significant role. Hearing from government 
officials on what the Administration is doing to combat these 
threats, I think, is something that is overdue, and I hope we 
will hear from them.
    In the interim, I am pleased that today we will be hearing 
from a former government official in addition to subject matter 
experts and some of the community leaders being most affected 
by these threats. I appreciate the witnesses being here today. 
I look forward to hearing their testimony and particularly your 
recommendations on how Congress can do a better job in 
responding to these efforts and improve our Federal efforts to 
combat terrorism and violent extremism in this country.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
    It is the practice of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) to swear in witnesses, 
so if each of you will stand and raise your right hand, 
including those online. Do you swear that the testimony that 
you will give before this Committee will be the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
    Ms. Neumann. I do.
    Ms. Berry. I do.
    Mr. Greenblatt. I do.
    Mr. Levin. I do.
    Chairman Peters. The witnesses have all answered 
affirmatively. You may be seated.
    Our first witness is Elizabeth Neumann, former Assistant 
Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention (CTP) at 
the Department of Homeland Security, and who currently serves 
as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Moonshot, a web-based 
organization that utilizes data to mitigate the effects of 
harmful online content to vulnerable populations. Ms. Neumann 
has years of experience in protecting our homeland, most 
notably her time at DHS, where she oversaw department-wide 
policy development and implementation involving terrorism 
prevention and countering transnational terrorism.
    Welcome, Ms. Neumann. You are recognized for your five 
minute opening remarks.

TESTIMONY OF ELIZABETH NEUMANN,\1\ FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY, 
  COUNTERTERRORISM AND THREAT PREVENTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 
                       HOMELAND SECURITY

    Ms. Neumann. Thank you so much, Chairman Peters, also to 
Ranking Member Portman, Senator Hassan, and the other 
distinguished Members of the Committee. I am very pleased that 
you are holding this hearing today. I am very thankful that you 
are continuing to stay engaged on this topic and appreciate 
your leadership and commitment to this challenge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Neumann appears in the Appendix 
on page 138.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The timing of this hearing prompts me to reflect on the 
spate of attacks that we had two years ago this week. It was 
Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton. Those few days in 2019 served to 
foreshadow in many ways the current spike of violence that 
started last summer and continues this year, in particular, 
that there is no singular ideology or grievance responsible for 
all of the attacks we have seen. We have some attacks targeted 
at institutions, including law enforcement. We have some 
attacks that are targeted at people, groups, particularly those 
that historically have been marginalized. Others are 
ideologically motivated or what we would consider terrorism, 
and still others we have motives that are not determined.
    Tuesday's panel spoke extensively about the importance of 
the protection mission, which is critical when you are talking 
about combating domestic, violent extremism. But today, I want 
to take a look back at the progress we have made over the past 
two years in implementing a prevention strategy even while I 
will acknowledge today we have a long way to go.
    I briefed this Committee in October 2019 about our then new 
prevention strategy, which is contained in the Strategic 
Framework to Counterterrorism and Targeted Violence. The goal 
was to partner with our State and local governments to build 
prevention frameworks which would help, first, build resilience 
in individuals that are vulnerable to radicalization these are 
individuals that are not radicalized yet, that have factors in 
their life that make them vulnerable--and, two, for those that 
have radicalized, to attempt to help them find healthier ways 
to address their grievances or problems before they cross a 
criminal threshold.
    El Paso, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the 
Nashville Christmas bombing, and the recent shooting at the 
Indianapolis FedEx facility all had a common feature, that 
there was a bystander that reported to law enforcement that 
they had concerns. And law enforcement after the fact said, 
``Yes, we had concerns about that individual, but we did not 
have the probable cause or the tools to be able to do 
anything.''
    We need to find a way to get help to those individuals 
before they cross that criminal threshold. Building local 
prevention frameworks will allow bystanders, the neighbors, 
colleagues, friends, and loved ones that notice something is 
wrong to consult with experts before they have concerns, before 
an individual has committed a criminal act. And that is the 
linchpin of what we describe when we are talking about 
prevention.
    I am very pleased that the Biden administration not only 
has taken the threat of domestic terrorism very seriously, but 
they have also continued to implement our prevention strategy. 
That said, the hardest part is always implementation. It does 
not matter who the President is or which party is in power. 
Launching new programs in government is challenging. Then you 
add to it, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the 
Presidential transition period; it predictably and 
understandably slows progress.
    In addition, the State and local partners that we are 
supposed to be building these capabilities with are facing 
significant budget shortfalls due to COVID. All of these things 
have served to slow progress, but I do hope that we can talk 
about some ways to build some momentum.
    The first thing I would encourage this Committee to 
consider is to authorize the Center for Prevention Programs and 
Partnerships (CP3) at DHS. We have discussed this with you in 
the past. I think the time is right. We know that the new 
administration is endorsing this approach and authorizing. 
Though it might just seem like a simple thing, it actually does 
have an impact in removing distractions within the bureaucracy, 
relitigating the mission. It allows the team there to just move 
forward with their mission.
    Second, I would encourage a discussion to happen about 
finding a permanent home for the Center. When we established 
what was then called the Office of Targeted Violence and 
Terrorism Prevention (OTVTP), it was with the intent that we 
knew we would likely need to incubate it at the Office of 
Policy and then move it to the appropriate location. In order 
to do that, I would encourage you to confirm the Under 
Secretary for Policy nominee, Robert Silvers, this week. Upon 
his confirmation, I would encourage a robust discussion between 
DHS and the oversight committees about where to place the 
Center in DHS so that it can perform its mission.
    Last, I would say that the initial funding provided by 
Congress for the Center and for the grants was an excellent 
start, but it is time to scale our resources. The 2019 RAND 
study that was the basis for our prevention strategy includes 
an entire chapter assessing resourcing needs, which I will 
summarize, borrowing Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase, ``An 
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' I recommend 
scaling grants from the current $20 million to over $200 
million over a multiyear period. I recommend that Congress 
authorize 50 prevention coordinators to be placed in every 
State next year and increase beyond that after a workforce 
assessment is completed. Additional explanations and 
justifications for these recommendations can be found in my 
written statement.
    In closing, I do not believe I am overstating the extreme 
challenge the security community faces at this time. The 
pandemic increased social isolation and other stress factors 
that are known to increase radicalization. It is likely part of 
the reason why we are seeing significant spikes in violence. 
The country is polarized; I do not have to tell you this. Our 
discourse is routinely dehumanizing people that hold opposing 
views.
    I am particularly concerned about the growth of 
accelerationism, a belief that individual actors should conduct 
attacks to help accelerate societal collapse. My concern, in 
particular, is that I am seeing threads of this doctrine 
discussed in the political mainstream. Acceleration is 
fundamentally anti-democratic, and it is extremely dangerous.
    The current scope of violent extremism in our country is 
simply too big for the security community to fix. We must call 
on other parts of our society to reflect on their contributions 
to our current moment, and all of us need to work toward a more 
responsible discourse that allows for disagreement without 
dehumanizing our opponents. We must always strongly and quickly 
condemn anyone that suggests violence is somehow justified to 
achieve one's goals.
    Where and how do we start? This almost sounds too simple, 
but the research has borne it out repeatedly. We start locally. 
We start with our families and with our neighbors. The greatest 
disruption to the grievance cycle that leads to violence begins 
by loving our neighbor as we would like to be loved ourselves.
    Thank you for your time and your leadership. I look forward 
to answering your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Neumann.
    Our second witness is Maya Berry. She is the Executive 
Director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a national, 
civil rights, nonprofit organization that promotes civic 
engagement and legislative advocacy on behalf of the 3.7 
million Arab Americans living in the United States. As 
Executive Director, she works to expand Arab American 
Institute's capacity to combat hate crimes and protect the 
rights of securitized communities. Ms. Berry established AAI's 
Government Relations Department and, I may proudly say as a 
Michigan native, also served as Legislative Director for U.S. 
House of Representatives Minority Whip David Bonior. During her 
time at Capitol Hill, she managed legislative strategy with a 
focus on human rights, immigration, civil rights, and liberties 
and trade.
    Welcome, Ms. Berry. You are now recognized for your five 
minute opening statement.

 TESTIMONY OF MAYA BERRY,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ARAB AMERICAN 
                           INSTITUTE

    Ms. Berry. Good morning, Chairman Peters, Ranking Member 
Portman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you 
for convening today's hearing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Berry appears in the Appendix on 
page 151.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    August is a difficult time for many communities. This week 
was the 2-year anniversary of the El Paso shooting. Next week 
marks the anniversary of the hate crime murders of Khalid 
Jabara and Heather Heyer, of whom a recent law is named after. 
Today marks the ninth year since the shooting of the Sikh 
gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
    I would like to begin my testimony by saying the names of 
those who died on this day nine years ago: Satwant Singh 
Kaleka, Paramjit Kaur, Suveg Singh Khattra, Prakash Singh, 
Ranjit Singh, Sita Singh, and just last March, Baba Punjab 
Singh, who was wounded during the attack, died from his 
injuries. These names, of course, do not include the victims 
injured, including Lieutenant Brian Murphy, who was shot 15 
times while defending those inside the gurdwara.
    I believe it is important to center victims and communities 
in these conversations, and I thank you for including the 
perspective of the Arab American community, one targeted not 
just by ethnically motivated violence but a community that 
experiences the harms of profiling and expansive, and often 
overly broad counterterrorism programs and policies. It is in 
that context that I want to emphasize three points that I hope 
inform our discussion today beyond what I provide in my written 
testimony.
    First, I believe it is imperative that we have a shared 
understanding of the threat we face. Attorney General (AG) 
Merrick Garland, Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and FBI 
Director Christopher Wray have all testified before you with 
complete clarity; white supremacist violence poses the most 
lethal threat to our safety. It may be characterized under a 
new category of ``racially motivated'' violence, but we are 
talking about violence inspired by white supremacy.
    Even before the recently joint FBI-DHS document on domestic 
terrorism provided some analysis, an FBI official in a letter 
in May 2020 to Chairman Bennie Thompson stated that, as 
recently as the first quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2021, 
approximately half of the FBI's domestic terrorism disruptions, 
quote-unquote, were arrests of racially motivated, violent 
extremists, all but one being white supremacist violence.
    Our work has often centered around the need for better data 
for both hate crimes and domestic terrorism investigations and 
prosecutions. We must have accurate data on the nature and 
extent of white supremacist violence and the political will to 
change both the policies and practices that have generally 
overlooked its growth. To be clear, the scarcity of public data 
does not stem from a lack of relevant legal authority, which 
gets me to my second point.
    As we go after white supremacist violence, we must not take 
an approach that could harm some of the very communities we 
need to protect from this violence. We do not believe that we 
need a new charge of domestic terrorism. Indeed, instead of 
expanding potentially harmful counterterrorism policies in a 
yet untransformed criminal justice system, Congress should act 
to provide additional oversight to safeguard the rights of 
individuals and communities. The considerations of policy and 
legal responses to acts of white supremacist violence, which, 
depending on the specific circumstances, might also fall in 
with the definition of a hate crime, are made exceedingly 
fragile by the fact that Americans' constitutional rights hang 
in the balance.
    Finally, the public discourse on these issues matters. 
Speaking out against hate and bigotry makes a difference. We 
must isolate this hatred that fuels this violence. We must 
shame it. And hearing it or excusing it for it emanating from 
elected officials, including the Presidential bully pulpit, did 
extraordinary harm to all of us. While I am not suggesting 
there is a direct correlation, even the universally accepted 
underreporting of the Federal hate crime statistics showed an 
increase in hate crime in the lead-up to the 2016 Presidential 
campaign and during the Trump administration.
    Words have consequences. We saw it in the immediate 
aftermath of 9/11, when then President Bush stood up and said, 
do not scapegoat an entire community. We saw the different 
impact after these most recent incidents.
    Back to where we started. Every single data point is a 
person, a family, a community. It is a core belief of the Arab 
American Institute that for our country to live up to its 
ideals we must ensure strong civil rights and civil liberties 
protections for all.
    I hope our deliberations today move us in the direction of 
enhancing the safety of all communities, especially the most 
vulnerable to this violence, while protecting the rights of 
all. Thank you again for your oversight, convening this hearing 
today.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Berry.
    Our third witness is Jonathan Greenblatt, Chief Executive 
Officer (CEO) and National Director of the Anti-Defamation 
League (ADL), an organization committed to stopping the 
defamation of Jewish people and to secure justice and fair 
treatment to all. During his tenure at ADL, he has worked to 
modernize ADL's operations and enhance its ability to counter 
hate crimes. Mr. Greenblatt oversees the ADL Center on 
Extremism, which analyzes and monitors extremists and hate 
groups, launched Never is Now, the world's largest summit 
focused on anti-Semitism and hate, and created the Center for 
Technology and Society, which targets the rising tide of online 
hate and harassment. Prior to joining ADL, Mr. Greenblatt 
served as Special Assistant to President Obama and Director of 
the Office of Social Innovation.
    Mr. Greenblatt, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed 
with your opening comments.

TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN GREENBLATT,\1\ CEO AND NATIONAL DIRECTOR, 
                     ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

    Mr. Greenblatt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 
Portman, Members of the Committee, and my fellow panelists. 
Good morning. It is an honor to appear before you today to 
discuss the dire threat posed to this country by domestic 
terrorism and violent extremism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Greenblatt appears in the 
Appendix on page 157.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For more than a century, ADL has worked to stop the 
defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair 
treatment to all. To deliver on that mission, we have done many 
things, including assemble a world-class team investigating 
extremist threats from across the ideological spectrum, but 
unfortunately, those threats are on the rise.
    At the top of the pyramid of hate are the most extreme 
incidents, like what happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 
Pittsburgh almost three years ago, the massacre of Latinos in 
El Paso, Texas, that took place two years this week, the murder 
of Heather Heyer at neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, 
Virginia, four years ago next week, the Pulse nightclub 
shooting against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer 
(LGBTQ) community over five years ago in Orlando, Florida, and 
as previously been noted, the attack on the Sikh gurdwara in 
Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that happened 9 years ago today.
    Over the last decade, 429 innocent victims were murdered at 
the hands of extremists, the overwhelming majority of whom were 
far, far right extremists and white supremacists. But we also 
know full well that you do not have to be an official card-
carrying extremist to cause harm. The problem we see is that 
violence motivated by hate and anti-Semitism and other forms of 
bigotry increasingly has been normalized.
    ADL researchers found that 2020 was the third highest year 
on record for anti-Semitic incidents since we began tracking 
this data in the 1970s. Of these, known extremist groups or 
individuals, inspired by extremist ideology, were responsible 
for 16 percent of the total number of incidents. That is a lot, 
but as I said, anti-Semitism clearly is not the sole domain of 
extremists.
    We saw this past May, as the violence between Israel and 
Hamas escalated, a drastic and disturbing rise in anti-Semitic 
activity across America, including almost a dozen anti-Semitic 
assaults in public places like Times Square or on a boulevard 
in Los Angeles, where people are eating dinner, or a main 
thoroughfare in Las Vegas, and attacks on Jews simply walking 
down the street. This is not Germany in 1931. We are talking 
about the United States in the year 2021.
    But this matters not just because of what is happening to 
the Jewish community. As I have said before, and I will say it 
here again, very often a hate might start with the Jews, but it 
never ends there. Bigotry begets more bigotry. Hate leads to 
more hate. For example, between March 2020 and this past 
February, the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) 
community experienced nearly 3,800 incidents of hate, 11 
percent of which were physical assaults. In 2019, The FBI 
showed anti-Latino hate crime rose nearly 9 percent.
    Why is the threat on the rise? To boil it down, we believe 
that this movement has been fueled by two catalysts. The first 
are leaders who have repeated extremist rhetoric, called to 
their conspiracies, and knowingly or not have given them the 
green light. And make no mistake; this is coming from some who 
have had highest levels of office and also from people in 
positions of authority across the ideological spectrum. Neither 
side is exempt from intolerance.
    Second, social media. It is a super spreader of hate. You 
can find it with a few clicks right from your phone. 
Intolerance is increased and amplified by algorithms that 
invisibly induce users further down the rabbit hole of 
radicalism. It is all unacceptable.
    We have been urging at ADL, pushing the tech urgency to 
take meaningful actions for years, simply to enforce their own 
terms of service, but they have failed to do so. That is why we 
have also called on policymakers like you to finally hold them 
accountable for their role in enabling the spread of extremism. 
Deep and dramatic reform of Section 230 is essential to this 
process because the law should not exempt them from 
accountability from their products and services.
    The time for action against the extremists is now. We need 
an all-hands-on-deck approach from government and really a 
whole-of-society strategy to combating domestic terrorism and 
violent extremism. That is why ADL has created a framework--we 
call it the PROTECT Plan--to mitigate these threats while 
safeguarding civil liberties. There is a lot more detail on 
this in my written testimony. I am happy to speak to it during 
the question-and-answer session. But we believe these steps can 
have an immediate and significant impact in countering domestic 
terrorism, more so than any single action or policy or law. 
There is simply no silver bullet.
    Now we were glad to see that the Administration recently 
released the first ever National Strategy to Counter Domestic 
Terrorism, which closely, actually tracks to our plan. But 
today, I am here to urge you to do your part in implementing 
these strategies and to meet the moment. As part of this, you 
need to rethink DHS for the modern era, making sure it is best 
prepared and organized to address the threat of domestic 
terrorism.
    I know it is somewhat beyond this Committee's jurisdiction, 
but again I would implore you to strive for Congress to take 
serious action against the social media companies.
    Members of the Committee, as you work to address the 
concerns around domestic terrorism and violent extremism, we 
urge you to remember the way these threats tear at the very 
fabric of our communities and our country. Ultimately, this is 
not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem; it is an 
American problem.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Greenblatt.
    Our next witness is Brian Levin, a professor of criminal 
justice and Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and 
Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernadino 
(CSUSB), a nonpartisan, independent research and policy 
institution. As the Director of the Center, Mr. Levin leads the 
organization's efforts to examine and analyze hate crimes, 
terrorism, and legal issues. Mr. Levin is a court-certified 
expert on extremism in the United States and in England. He is 
the author of ``The Limits of Dissent,'' which is about the 
Constitution and domestic terrorism.
    Mr. Levin, welcome to the Committee. You may proceed with 
your opening comments.

TESTIMONY OF BRIAN LEVIN,\1\ DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF 
 HATE AND EXTREMISM, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN BERNADINO

    Mr. Levin. Chair Peters, Ranking Member Portman, Senator 
Hassan, Senator Padilla, California's own if I may, and other 
Members of the Committee, as well as the heroes of the U.S. 
Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan Police Departments (MPD)--and as 
a former New York Police Department (NYPD) officer, God bless 
every one of them--thank each of you for your service to our 
nation and for another special opportunity to present some of 
my latest analysis and findings on hate and extremism, which 
Congress has used since 1987, when I was 10.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Levin appears in the Appendix on 
page 182.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I am, as you have heard, with Cal State, San Bernadino 
Center and the Criminal Justice Department there, but my 
testimony today will address material trends related to the 
threat posed by racially, religiously, and politically 
motivated extremism.
    The extremist threat today, both domestically and 
internationally, is in a state of significant realignment 
across several fronts, and it is also severe. As I have noted 
for several years, white supremacists and far right extremists 
continue to pose the most lethal domestic terror threat facing 
the United States, but they do so in an increasingly 
diversifying landscape that impacts not only these malefactors 
but various emerging actors across the entirety of the 
extremism spectrum.
    Indeed, we are seeing an era of the democratization of 
hate. Recent headlines across North America illustrate this: A 
189 percent spike in anti-Asian hate crime in major U.S. cities 
that we found in the first quarter of 2021, a diverse group of 
over 550 defendants in the Capitol siege, violent 
confrontations at the local level around hot-button issues, 
including at school board meetings and at congressional home 
town conferences, also, increasing activities of militias of 
various stripes, bomb plots and hoaxes by incel misogynists, an 
anti-Semitic attack previously referenced in Times Square, and 
the emergence of a years-old Ku Klux Klan (KKK) plot against a 
Black man by Florida corrections officers, just to name a few.
    It is occurring elsewhere in North America. In Canada, 
anti-Asian hate crime also rose amidst another mass homicide 
against a Muslim family and a spate of church arsons.
    Unfortunately, our 2020 data is not looking good. 
California, Texas, New Jersey are up, for example. But the 
increases vary by location. Extremist homicides, while down--
and I think that was a temporary anomaly with respect to the 
various COVID restrictions--still showed a diversification 
going on. Indeed, the first hard left homicides we saw were 
last year, in many years: 2021, New York City up 135 percent, 
L.A. up 53 percent, just year to date.
    Anti-Semitic hate crimes up significantly. For instance, in 
New York City, we saw more anti-Semitic hate crimes, or just 
about as many rather, in three weeks in May than the whole 
first quarter. Indeed, New York City and L.A. look like they 
may be heading for records. Serially, anti-Asian hate crimes up 
triple-digit percentages both last year and the first quarter 
of this year.
    2020, according to the FBI Director Wray, hate crime 
investigations up 63 percent, 370 alone just with the FBI. 
2019, record hate homicides by the FBI. By the way, it would 
still be a record even without the horrifying El Paso massacre 
of just two years ago.
    As we have seen with respect to El Paso and others, we are 
seeing confluence of folks, mass killers, some very young, who 
have access to weaponry. There is an overlap between hate crime 
and terrorism, but we are seeing violent conflict also rising 
around conflictual political events, which I documented in the 
appendix.
    Indeed, extremism is a carnival mirror reflection of 
mainstream stressors, and we have seen this again and again and 
again, not just on January 6 but in October 2018, when we saw a 
cluster of extremist homicides right around the election. 
August 2017 was the third worst month of the decade for hate 
crime. It peaked in the 6 days of, and after, the ``very fine 
people'' statement by the President. But November 2016 was the 
worst month for hate crime in 14 years, and the day after the 
election was the worst month since June 2003.
    Online invective around this is up, too. We see this 
feedback loop of invective on the Internet, some influential 
political leaders, and then hate crime rises, and sometimes 
terrorist plots and attacks around these events, these 
convergences.
    I have a litany of suggestions which I would be happy to 
talk to later as my time ending, but I want you to understand 
that today's terrorist is increasingly less ideological and 
organizationally rigid. We have an elastic reservoir of 
grievance, and targeted violence and hate crimes often overlap. 
We need data that is timely and deep, and we have not had that 
in many years. I hope the Senate acts on these various 
proposals that I have at the end of my testimony.
    But again, we are seeing a very disturbing change, and the 
risk is severe, not just from the leaderless resistance that I 
warned about to Congress back in 1995, but this dissemination 
of extremism that is becoming more regional and more 
idiosyncratic in its manifestations.
    I want to thank the Committee so much for the privilege of 
once again sharing our important data and highlighting the 
severe risk that our nation is facing with respect to domestic 
terrorism. Thank you so much.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Mr. Levin.
    Ms. Berry, your organization has been at the forefront of 
protecting the Arab American community and navigating the 
domestic terrorism threat in the post-9/11 world. You have 
voiced your opposition to the creation of a new domestic 
terrorism statute during your opening statement here today, and 
you noted your concern that additional authorities could 
potentially adversely impact civil rights and further harm 
communities of color. My question to you is: If additional 
authorities are not the right approach in your estimation, what 
should the Federal Government be doing to counter this threat 
while at the same time balancing civil liberty concerns?
    Ms. Berry. Thank you, Chairman Peters, for the question in 
the way you framed it because I think that is the key question. 
The reason we believe that a new charge is not necessary is 
that there are existing 57 different statutes that apply to 
crimes that meet the definition of terrorism. Of those, 51 
apply to both domestic and international terrorism. From our 
perspective, there needs to be a different approach that 
understands the threat that we face today.
    I think one of the most important things that has happened, 
frankly, is the change during the recent election, is that we 
are actually discussing it as the problem that it is. The Biden 
administration did release a strategy. While there is a lot 
there to think about and address--and I think congressional 
oversight will be key to talk about its implementation. The 
fact that we are now taking it seriously enough for a strategy 
to be issued is important.
    The FBI had not released data on domestic terrorism since 
2005 until the report that they released recently in May 2021, 
just this year. I think we do see an uptick now in what is 
happening, and that is looking at this threat that is posed and 
trying to determine how to best address it.
    I think that 20 years after the horrific attacks of 9/11 is 
a good time for us to reevaluate what was passed with the 
Patriot Act, look at the sunset provisions that were put in 
place, and say, does it make sense for us to sort of double-
down on the counterterrorism approach that we have taken?
    I will share with you, Mr. Chairman, that I was doing a 
press interview once about this very topic, and the reporter 
kept saying, ``I do not understand. You oppose a new charge?''
    And I said, ``Yes, sir,'' and I explained why.
    He came back to, ``What you are saying is doing to white 
supremacists what was done to your community, that is not 
something you want?''
    My answer was ``Sir, our approach is about dealing with the 
violence that puts us at risk, our country and all of our 
communities.''
    I saw a community, both Arab Americans, American Muslims, 
and others whose rights were violated under this setup. From 
our perspective, no, I do not want other Americans' rights 
violated. I want the violence addressed. I want our First 
Amendment protected in that process. I want our Fourth 
Amendment protected in that process. I want to hold 
constitutional protections while we go after the very real 
threat that communities are facing.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Ms. Neumann, in your opening 
comments, you suggested that we do need additional authorities. 
After listening to Ms. Berry's comments, I hope you take those 
into consideration as you answer this question is: Why are the 
government's current tools not enough to combat this threat in 
your estimation?
    Ms. Neumann. Thank you for the question. I imagine that Ms. 
Berry and I actually agree on a lot more than where we vary. I, 
too, believe 20 years post-9/11 it would be a really great idea 
for us to reflect. A lot of mistakes were made. In my written 
remarks, I note that we have more terrorists today than we did 
on 9/11. That is very sobering, as a counterterrorism person. I 
thank the Lord that we have not had another 9/11. That is a 
success that we should all be proud of.
    But there are some costs to that, and one of those is that 
I found it really jarring in recent months to hear from people 
like Ms. Berry and the Brennan Center and other communities, a 
panelist on Tuesday, who basically said--this is how I 
interpret it: ``I do not trust the government to not abuse any 
new tools we give them.'' That should cause us all to pause.
    I am not in government right now, but I associate with it. 
I think that means that we need to reflect. We did not get some 
things right in the last 20 years. I fully agree that we should 
reassess.
    At the same time, I look at the way the law currently 
treats similar crimes. If done in the name of a white 
supremacist ideology versus in the name of Islamic Syaye of 
Iraq and Syria (ISIS), those crimes are treated differently.
    Now my former colleagues in the government, they are doing 
their darnedest the way the laws are written to go after the 
threat. They take the threat seriously. They recognize the 
perils of what it would like to try to open up this 
conversation and talk about changing the law. They recognize 
that that is very difficult. They are doing the best they can 
with the tools that they have.
    I would think that it would behoove us as a people to have 
a commission that looks at this problem, looks at our mistakes, 
updates the law on all sides, not just for domestic terrorism, 
but we have to do counterterrorism better. I think from an 
``equal justice under the law'' principle the laws need to be 
rightsized so we are treating the same crimes the same 
regardless of the ideology.
    The second thing I would point out is that domestic 
terrorism ideologies are increasingly global in nature, and 
that gray area is posing challenges for our colleagues in the 
Executive Branch, trying to know where that line is. Having 
Congress say, ``Here is where the line is'' would be better 
than them guessing.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Mr. Levin, you have warned 
about political rhetoric from our leaders, noting in a Time 
Magazine article that I am going to quote you here, ``Leaders 
must be aware of the impact of their position on civic and 
social cohesion. Otherwise, terrorists will gain strength in 
the cracks that divide us.'' Could you describe the correlation 
between political rhetoric and spikes in violent incidents 
against racial, ethnic, and religious groups to the Committee?
    Mr. Levin. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the 
opportunity. It hearkens back to President Lincoln's first 
inaugural address where, trying to keep a country together, he 
said, to appeal to the ``better angels of our nature.'' And you 
know what? He was right. He might not have been effective at 
that time, but his words have sustenance. Let me give you an 
example.
    Six days after 9/11, President Bush, a conservative person 
of good will, went to the Islamic Center of D.C. at 3:40 in the 
afternoon and decried the violence against our Muslim American 
brothers and sisters. You know what? Hate crimes dropped 
precipitously the next day, according to FBI day-by-day ticks, 
and it dropped precipitously into the new year. We went from 
481 to just over 100 in those two years. But, the very next day 
and into the next week.
    Conversely, our community was attacked in San Bernadino. 
Everybody got together. Everybody. The Muslim community raised 
money. We had interfaith. Do you know what? We had zero hate 
crimes in the city of San Bernadino.
    But that was not the case for the rest of the country. We 
saw a significant increase from about 0.67 per day to about 2.5 
per day. Then five days later candidate Trump made the terrible 
proposal of a Muslim ban, and hate crimes against Muslims 
increased another 23 percent.
    Let me just add, by the way, Arabophobic hate crimes went 
up, too, in both instances.
    The issue is words matter, particularly when it is coming 
from leaders. Interestingly enough, when President Trump 
launched his campaign and spoke derisively about Latinos, 
during a very tight news cycle, where major candidates were 
about to launch and we had the Mother Emanuel massacre, hate 
crimes against Latinos did not go up. But once he became first 
in the polls and he made statements with respect to various 
communities, we saw absolute correlations. We saw it again last 
year with regard to anti-Asian hate crime.
    One thing, though, that I think is important to note, we 
often have a catalytic event, then a feedback loop that is fed 
online, then certain influencers take this bigotry, and then 
when you have it from the top, boom! We saw that in three 
distinct clusters last February and March with anti-Asian hate 
crime. It is something that we see demonstrably again and 
again.
    I gave you the figures with regard to these election times, 
a clustering of extremist homicides around the conflictual 
midterms as well as an increase in hate crime. Indeed, the 
first worst month of the decade, November 2016, and the day 
after was the worst day for hate crime going back to June 2003. 
Second worst month, October 2018. And then tied for the third 
worst month was August 2017, the month of Charlottesville. But, 
the hate crimes peaked on the 6 days of and after the ``very 
fine people'' statement.
    Chairman Peters. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Levin.
    Ranking Member Portman, you are recognized for your 
questions.
    Senator Portman. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate 
all the testimony today.
    Ms. Berry, I understand your view on laws that can be 
misused, but one thing I just want to be sure that we are 
connecting the dots on here. This is the Committee that is 
supposed to do the oversight over homeland security, Department 
of Homeland Security. We had a lot of discussion today from Ms. 
Neumann about what was called the Office for Targeted Violence 
and Terrorism Prevention, that you were with previously, and 
now it is called the Center for Prevention Programs and 
Partnerships. In your written testimony, you talked about the 
fact you thought that was an ineffective and even 
discriminatory office. You did not talk about that today, and 
you guys have not had a dialog on that, maybe on purpose.
    But again, our job, as I said earlier, if we can get more 
to solutions in this round of testimony, that would be great. 
Can you guys have a discussion about that? Like, what is wrong 
with having an office or a center that focuses on that? Ms. 
Neumann, you were there, so I will let you respond to Ms. 
Berry.
    But, Ms. Berry, if you could just give me your views on 
that, what are your current views on that Office or the Center?
    Ms. Berry. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman, for the 
question. The comments in my statement refer to programs 
primarily under the Obama Administration and into some of the 
time under the Trump administration, known as Countering 
Violent Extremism (CVE) Programs. We take a very cautious 
approach to approaching prevention programs because what we 
have seen in practice to be primarily ineffective approaches.
    I did not take the position of directly opposing in my 
statement the CP3 programming or the new TVTP. I will tell you 
that, Senator, that is because it is early in the process. We 
have had two briefings. They have talked a great deal about the 
new Colorado model. I am interested in hearing more about it.
    But what we have found historically is there is two reasons 
for us to be concerned. The first is the efficacy of these 
programs. Frankly, as an American taxpayer, as someone who has 
concerns about how we spend our tax dollars, where those 
efforts are, and in times when there is great deal for a need 
to appropriately fund good programs, I worry about 
radicalization theories and the ideas that we can step in and 
prevent this type of violence. I will leave that to the 
experts, but I do think that there is a lot of healthy 
skepticism about what is possible.
    The second part of the concern that relates directly to the 
CVE program previously--and as I said, we will cautiously ask 
for congressional oversight over these programs and look at 
them--is that they were highly discriminatory in targeting 
specific communities. We were led to believe that a young 
American Muslim teenager, who was probably going through some 
issues, needed to be, for example, referred to their school 
counselor on a different track and different oversight. We had 
the FBI create a web site called Don't be a Puppet. That was 
really problematic for many reasons.
    There is a lot of the CVE programming that was highly, I 
think, irregular and discriminatory, and it did not stop with 
targeting the American Muslim community. We went from 
countering violent extremism to this concept known as Black 
Identity Extremism (BIE), which is a completely fabricated 
issue. We have real concerns about what prevention programs 
have looked like and are willing to see where they are going, 
but the reality is there needs to be a great deal of oversight.
    Senator Portman. We will get to your response, Ms. Neumann, 
because we need to have that, and thanks for doing it in an 
expedited way because there are so many issues to get into 
here. It sounds like you are saying we should not reauthorize 
it or authorize the CP3 program without adequate oversight, but 
are you saying that we should not authorize it all? Just yes or 
no.
    Ms. Berry. At this time, I would say no.
    Senator Portman. OK. Ms. Neumann, what is your response to 
that?
    Ms. Neumann. Again, I probably agree with more than people 
might think of what Ms. Berry said. The early iterations of CVE 
there were multiple instances where in my view it was abused, 
that it was at times--and I do not know that those that set it 
up intended it to be this way, but at times, in certain 
locations in the country, it basically became a tips-and-leads 
program for the FBI.
    If you know anything about radicalization processes and how 
you might move somebody to build resilience so that they are 
not vulnerable to radicalization, or you are trying to move 
somebody off of a radicalization pathway, inserting law 
enforcement into that dialog usually does not help. It closes 
off--and we saw this. Right? The very communities that we 
needed to be partnering with did not trust the FBI because of 
other factors that had nothing to do with CVE. You add CVE to 
the mix, and it just did not work in multiple locations.
    There were other places where they piloted efforts, not 
necessarily coming from the Federal Government, and over time 
they figured out what worked.
    When I came back into government in 2017, it was the thing 
that everybody loved to hate. Republicans thought that it was 
based on pseudoscience and that it did not work, and Democrats 
thought it was a tool to target the Muslim community.
    We were kind of left, when you are new in the job, trying 
to figure out what is the ground truth here. We had some extra 
money, so we punted. We asked RAND, our Federally Funded 
Research Development Corporation (FFRDC), to study it for us. 
They produced a 300-page report. They talked to experts all 
around the world and other countries who have been doing 
prevention.
    The bottom line is I think what we have produced now, 
learned from the mistakes that we made, and is based on 
evidence that it does work. That said, I have been very clear--
and when I briefed you guys two years ago--we are trying 
something new. We are innovating because what we have tried for 
20 years has not worked. We are going to make mistakes. We need 
to be transparent about those mistakes. We need civil 
libertarians at the table, helping us do this.
    Two main differences from the past: It is not law 
enforcement-led, and it is locally based. It is not driven out 
of Washington.
    Senator Portman. OK. Thank you. I know this is a 
complicated area, and I do not mean to rush the discussion, but 
I am getting close to the end of my time.
    You quoted Ben Franklin earlier. Afterwards, Mr. Levin 
quoted Abraham Lincoln. But Franklin's admonition is correct. I 
hope everybody agrees with that, that you know, prevention is 
the best approach or if it would work; in other words, trying 
to avoid these hateful acts, avoid what is happening online, as 
we talked about earlier, through prevention.
    What you are saying is it is the social science around that 
has been difficult. And you say the RAND study validates the 
fact that this prevention effort was somewhat successful but it 
could be more successful if you use different kinds of tools, 
including different kinds of leadership and different roles for 
law enforcement.
    But I think prevention is absolutely critical and we have 
to figure this out. Again, this is the Committee that is 
supposed to be providing the oversight over not just that 
program but the entire department's effort in this realm, and 
we have the lead on it, our homeland security. I really want to 
work with the people on this panel today and with the Chairman 
and others to be sure that we have an effective prevention 
program.
    We have talked about the international terrorism issue more 
than we have the domestic terrorism issue relative to 
prevention, but obviously both are incredibly important. I 
think, to Ms. Berry's point, it can be money very well spent if 
it is spent effectively.
    By the way, to the law enforcement point--and again, I want 
to hear Mr. Levin later. My guess is he will have to get it for 
the record now because I am over my time. Give me your data on 
your law enforcement and government officials generally being 
subject to these attacks because the data we have from Tuesday 
is that the single highest number of attacks are actually on 
government officials and law enforcement.
    It is a broad issue, and with one final point. In the 
Somali community in Columbus, Ohio, law enforcement developed a 
good relationship, and particularly one officer, and they were 
able as a result to prevent an attack from happening. I mean, 
literally, someone had the steps in place to initiate a 
terrible attack that would have killed a number of people. 
Because of a tip and because of working with the Somali 
community, the community stepped forward. Obviously, the 
leaders in the community were adamant about not having this 
kind of activity, certainly terrorist activity, in their midst, 
and so they worked with law enforcement to provide the 
information.
    It is one of the few examples we can point to in America 
where we actually know that law enforcement worked with a 
community, the community responded, and we were able to avert a 
terrible attack. I do think law enforcement can play a very 
effective role at the local level in an appropriate way, in 
this case, by developing those relationships. I think that may 
be one of the single most important, effective things that we 
can do.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ranking Member Portman.
    Senator Hassan, you are recognized for your questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN

    Senator Hassan. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member 
Portman, for your leadership and holding this hearing. And to 
all of our witnesses today, thank you for the work you do; 
thank you for your testimony today.
    I want to start with a question to you, Ms. Neumann. The 
testimony we have heard this week illustrates the clear threat 
posed by different types of domestic terrorist movements. 
However, we cannot lose sight of international terrorist 
threats, and I want to ensure that DHS has the personnel and 
resources needed to address both types of threats. Based on 
your time with the Department of Homeland Security, how should 
the Department think about resource allocation to ensure that 
it is positioned to analyze and confront all types of evolving 
threats, including threats from domestic terrorists, foreign 
terrorist organization, and homegrown violent extremists (HVE)?
    Ms. Neumann. Thank you for the question, Senator. That was 
certainly a struggle for us in the past three ears that I 
served and during the Trump administration, but let me break 
the question down into two areas.
    There is the work that we do at DHS that is about 
empowering our partners or helping our partners, usually State 
and local governments and the private sector, to perform their 
preparedness function missions. That is prevention, protection, 
response, recovery. We give grant funds for that. We set 
baseline capabilities for that. I spent most of my comments 
talking about prevention today because that was really a weak 
area when we look at the preparedness space. It is so much less 
mature than the other mission areas.
    When it comes to prevention and protection, the way DHS 
looks at it is capability-based. It is not based on ideology. 
If you establish a local prevention capability in a State or in 
a city, regardless of the ideology----
    Senator Hassan. Yes.
    Ms. Neumann [continuing]. It will serve whatever tomorrow's 
threat might be because we know enough about why people go to 
commit violent acts. There is, now 30, 40 years of studies on 
people that conduct these mass attacks. That we can make sure 
that we provide services to help people before they cross that 
criminal threshold. It is not ideology-based.
    That said, I would say one of the biggest gaps at DHS has 
been on the intelligence side. It is still not clear to me who 
in the Federal Government is responsible for producing a 
strategic threat picture as it pertains to domestic terrorism.
    On the foreign terrorism side, you made it very clear that 
Congress passed a law and the National Counterterrorism Center 
(NCTC) is responsible for collating and producing those 
national strategic threat pictures.
    Senator Hassan. Right.
    Ms. Neumann. Nobody could do that when I was in government 
for the domestic terrorism space, and NCTC does not currently 
have the authorities to work on that type of picture. It is 
either the FBI or DHS, and I am not sure that either one of 
them is able to do that today, in part because of a lack of 
data.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you. I appreciate that very much, and 
we will follow up with you I think with some additional 
questions.
    I want to turn to Mr. Greenblatt now. I want to thank you, 
Mr. Greenblatt, for the Anti-Defamation League's support for 
the Pray Safe Act, bipartisan legislation that Senator Portman 
and I introduced and that, as he mentioned, this Committee 
passed last month. As we work to pass this bill in the full 
Senate, could you please elaborate on the unique need for a 
clearinghouse specifically for faith-based organizations and 
houses of worship?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Thank you very much for the question, 
Senator Hassan. First of all, I would say we think the Pray 
Safe Act is incredibly important. Data that would create a best 
practices portal for faith-based organizations from all 
religions, that would benefit from DHS's understanding of 
security protocols that they could take on themselves, what has 
worked for other organizations in terms of best practices, and 
how they can apply for Federal grants.
    We know that this issue in particular is a big problem. The 
Nonprofit Security Grants Program, which we would like to see 
dramatically increased, still is underutilized by the vast 
majority of houses of worship and faith-based organizations. 
Getting more of them to apply and access the program is 
critical. We know, as mentioned in my opening remarks, today is 
the anniversary of the attack on the Sikh gurdwara. Right? We 
know that the Nonprofit Security Grants Program is not utilized 
by many religious denominations despite the attacks on mosques, 
gurdwaras, Black churches, as well as synagogues.
    So more needs to be done, and we believe that the Pray Safe 
Act is an important step in that process. We work actively, not 
just with synagogues I would say, but also with mosques and 
Islamic centers, to help them understand what resources are 
available to them, but much more needs to be done.
    Senator Hassan. I appreciate that. Are there specific steps 
that you think Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could 
take to make the application process for the grants in the 
Nonprofit Security Grants Program more accessible to houses of 
worship and faith-based organizations?
    Mr. Greenblatt. First and foremost, it starts with more 
effective outreach. We need to be able to let these 
organizations and these communities understand and know what is 
available to them, and I think FEMA and DHS in general can do a 
better job of reaching out to faith-based communities to make 
them aware. I would start there.
    I would also say, very important, we need to think about 
that outreach in multiple languages because again there can be 
cultural barriers as communities are not familiar with, or may 
be even uncomfortable to work with, the Federal Government. 
Language-focused outreach can help overcome some of those 
cultural impediments.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you. I want to turn now to the issue 
of online disinformation and radicalization, Mr. Greenblatt. 
Individuals involved in domestic terrorism are frequently 
involved in the consumption and propagation of extremist 
content and disinformation online. Mr. Greenblatt, in your 
view, what role can the Federal Government play when it comes 
to combating online extremist content and disinformation while 
also protecting First Amendment liberties?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Thank you very much for the question. In 
the time remaining, I will try to be brief. So you know, the 
ADL, we have been defending the First Amendment for over 100 
years.
    Senator Hassan. Yes.
    Mr. Greenblatt. We take freedom of speech very seriously. 
But the freedom of speech is not the freedom to slander, nor is 
the freedom of expression the freedom to incite violence. First 
and foremost, we think it is crucial that the Federal 
Government look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency 
Act, which literally exempts the social media companies from 
any responsibility, from any accountability for the content 
that they publish.
    Senator, there is literally no other sector of business 
which benefits from this broad immunity for its very products 
and services. It is high time for this Congress to look very 
seriously at dramatic and deep reform of Section 230 because 
these companies, from the algorithmic amplification of hate 
that drives clicks to monetizing that content because it drives 
revenue, none of that should be acceptable. I do not think it 
is to Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. 
Section 230 needs a serious overhaul, and you can lead on that 
process.
    Senator Hassan. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I 
appreciate all of our witnesses and your testimony today.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Hassan.
    The Chair recognizes Senator Rosen for your questions.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN

    Senator Rosen. Thank you, Chairman Peters and Ranking 
Member Portman, for holding this important hearing, of course, 
and so many others. As Co-Chair of the Senate Bipartisan 
Taskforce for Combating Anti-Semitism, I really want to welcome 
my friend, Jonathan Greenblatt, from ADL, and of course all the 
witnesses here today: Maya Berry, Elizabeth Neumann, and Brian 
Levin. Thank you for being here today, for the work that you 
do, and for the thoughtful testimony that you have given so 
far.
    Mr. Chairman, I would also like to ask for unanimous 
consent that Radicalization's Exodus--this is a recently 
published report on white supremacists' use of Holocaust denial 
and how they do that. It is authored by the American Jewish 
Congress. I would like to have that entered into the record if 
I may.\1\
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    \1\ The information submitted by Senator Rosen appears in the 
Appenidx on page 214
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    Chairman Peters. Without objection.
    Senator Rosen. I would also like to thank Senators Hassan 
and Portman for the Pray Safe Act. I am proud to be a co-
sponsor. We need to do that. We need to bolster up our 
nonprofit Homeland Security grants, all of that.
    As I mentioned, I am Co-Chair of that Bipartisan Taskforce 
for Combating Anti-Semitism, which my HSGAC colleague, Senator 
Lankford, and I co-founded in 2019. I do not have to tell 
anyone here how alarmed I am, and I know we all are, at 
statistics that show that anti-Semitic hate crimes in the 
United States are at the highest level in recorded history. In 
May 2021 alone, ADL recorded 251 anti-Semitic incidents. That 
is a 115 percent jump. And might I say that is the only ones 
that were reported. I am sure there are many that were not 
reported.
    It is nothing new. Anti-Semitism, nothing new. It is the 
canary in the coal mine of hatred for thousands of years. It 
does not only affect Jews, and it just affects everybody, all 
Americans, particularly underrepresented minorities. History 
teaches us that when the flames of anti-Semitism spread 
democracy itself is set ablaze.
    Mr. Greenblatt, could you explain why anti-Semitism, it 
just does not pose a danger to Jews but to all Americans?
    Mr. Greenblatt. Thank you very much, Madam Senator, for the 
question, and I would really salute you for your leadership on 
the caucus and the taskforce on anti-Semitism.
    Look, I think anti-Semitism is a bit of a barometric 
reading on society. It is often described, as you said, as the 
``canary in the coal mine.'' Sometimes it is called the 
``oldest hatred.''
    But as Emory professor Deborah Lipstadt has written--and I 
will note that she has recently been nominated by the White 
House to be the next Special Envoy for Global Anti-Semitism in 
the State Department: Anti-Semitism starts with the Jews, but 
it never ends with the Jews. It may be the conspiracy that is 
at the beating heart of white supremacy, but from that springs 
forth a series of other forms of intolerance. Right?
    We mentioned earlier the massacre at the Tree of Life 
Synagogue. While that was a protest against that shul, the 
reality was it was an attack really motivated by a hatred of 
immigrants because this individual, the shooter, whose name I 
will not dignify by mentioning, believed that a kabala of Jews 
was plotting to overrun the United States with people, with 
Muslims, and immigrants from other countries.
    From an anti-immigrant hatred to anti-Muslim bias to anti-
Black racism, literally, all of it can be often connected to 
anti-Jewish hate. And appreciating the intersectional nature of 
all these forms of oppression means we should be committed to 
fighting all of them with intensity and vigor. We do that work 
at ADL. I know a number of my colleagues do that work as well. 
I think it is just incredibly important.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you for that. I am glad to have 
founded, with Senators Tim Scott and Cory Booker, the new 
Taskforce on Black-Jewish Relations.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Bravo.
    Senator Rosen. Of course, we signed the Anti-Asian Hate 
Crimes bill. And you are right; we have to be working on this 
on all fronts.
    I would like to build on what some of my colleagues have 
talked about, an online radicalization. These tools of 
extremism, the theories, the disinformation, we know that they 
are beginning and spreading quickly online. They just can morph 
overnight. Right?
    I am relieved to see, like we spoke, companies like 
Facebook and Twitter taking some long overdue steps to curb the 
rise of hate, like prohibiting Holocaust denial content. 
However, we are seeing extremism resurface on alternative 
social media platforms, like Gab, which we know is a 
recruitment tool for neo-Nazis and was the web site where we 
mentioned the Tree of Life shooter posted right before that 
massacre.
    Mr. Greenblatt, again all too often, what enables extremist 
groups and individuals is the hate messaging to the American 
public and the algorithms, like you said, that are on social 
media. What specific steps do you think platforms should take 
to ensure that the hateful content does not escalate to 
violence, and what checks should we put in place to ensure that 
this violence is not celebrated and amplified on these 
platforms?
    Mr. Greenblatt. First and foremost, thank you very much for 
the question. I mentioned Section 230 reform. It is really 
critical. We need to do it in such a way that protects the 
targets of harassment and has transparency, push the companies 
for independent audits, and we really need to deal with the 
overall problematic business model, Senator, and the anti-
competitive marketplace that we have.
    So you mention alternative platforms. There is Gab, and 
there is Discord, and there is Gettr, and Parler is trying to 
reemerge, et cetera. But let us be clear. Facebook is literally 
a trillion-dollar corporation that earned $80 billion in 
revenue last year, $24 billion in profit. They have more users 
than any country on the planet has citizens. This is one of the 
most innovative businesses in the history of capitalism. They, 
if they chose to, could apply their resources to solve this 
problem tomorrow. It simply requires them enforcing their own 
terms of service.
    But the reason why ADL, along with the National Association 
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Color of Change, 
LULAC, Common Sense Media, and others launched the Stop Hate 
for Profit campaign last year was the company's failure to deal 
with anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate 
on the platform. It was only when they came under severe 
reputational pressure that they company finally made a series 
of concessions.
    I cannot understate enough the power that you have because 
while they may be immune from revenue pressure because of their 
size and fiduciary pressure because of their governance, these 
companies are not immune to reputational pressure and 
regulatory pressure. It is Facebook that is first and foremost, 
and our own studies show us that three times the number of 
people who are literally targeted and harassed online, it 
happens on Facebook more than anywhere else.
    But again, TikTok and Twitter, Clubhouse and Google, and so 
many of these other companies, they all have challenges, and 
they all merit our attention.
    Senator Rosen. Thank you. Like I said, I appreciate the 
work that ADL does, that everyone here on the panel, the panels 
that we have had in the past, everything you all are doing to 
make sure that we have all the information that we need here in 
Washington to partner with our communities, all across this 
country and across the globe, to do the right thing, to stop 
hate.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time is up.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Rosen.
    Ms. Neumann, you said here today that you are seeing 
threads of acceleration enter mainstream political discourse. I 
am curious about that and your thoughts on that. Could you give 
me an example and explain why you think this is so harmful and 
why it is so dangerous and we need to pay particular attention 
to?
    Ms. Neumann. Sure. Accelerationism is mostly associated 
with white supremacist ideology though it is really more of a 
doctrine that could apply to any ideology, and increasingly, we 
are seeing other ideologies pick it up and this basic idea that 
whatever your goal is the best way to get there is to usher 
societal collapse so that you can--and maybe it is a race war 
or a civil war--just make everything break down so that on the 
other side you can rebirth or have this utopia and make it the 
way you want it to be. If you are a white supremacist, you want 
it to be a white nation-state, not the United States, but a 
white nation in the territory of what we call the United 
States.
    But there are other anarchists. Boogaloo Bois, which one of 
your panelists at Center for Strategic and International 
Studies (CSIS) from Tuesday, Seth Jones, talks about, some of 
these groups that hold to this accelerationist ideology. 
Boogaloo Bois being one of them, they are not easily 
categorized. There are experts that call these extremists 
fluid. They pick and choose the ideology that they are looking 
for.
    It makes it hard. I think Mr. Levin even referred to this, 
the democratization of extremist ideology. It makes it hard 
because we want to bucket individuals, and we want to be able 
to say like, the white supremacists believe this and the 
anarchists believe this and the anti-government extremists 
believe that.
    I think the thing that I find concerning about the fluidity 
between these groups and the fact that this accelerationist 
doctrine is starting to pop up is that it creates a lot of 
volatility for exactly what Mr. Levin was describing. It just 
takes one catalyst, and then you have this social media 
feedback loop, and you know, perhaps one or two leaders kind of 
sanctioning whatever that catalyst and the response was, to 
lead us to a moment where a mass group of people show up and 
believe that violence is justified to achieve their ends.
    You are hearing in political discourse, like regularly on 
cable news, conversations that imply that, yes, we might need 
to take up arms. There have been a number of polls done in the 
last six months, and there is a significant percentage of 
people in the country at this point that believe that a civil 
war is likely to happen and that maybe we need to help it 
happen sooner. Those are very concerning themes that are being 
discussed in certain parts of our country, and I think it is 
complex.
    When you dig underneath why people feel like a civil war is 
coming or why they feel violence might be justified, some of it 
is based on different understandings of what facts are. There 
are people, in my opinion, that are believing a series of lies 
about the election in November. If you believe that the 
election was stolen from you, there is a logic trail of why you 
might think that violence is justified.
    It is really incumbent that we go back to actual facts are. 
This is not to say that we will have a problem with violent 
extremists for, I believe, at least the next generation based 
on where we are today. But the biggest problem that we have in 
this particular moment is that it is the traditional violent 
extremists and a mass political movement that is talking about 
how violence might be justified in certain circumstances. Those 
numbers, when you start looking at those percentages, we are 
talking millions of people, that we do not have a security 
forces. We do not have enough money to hire security forces to 
deescalate if a group of people in the political context decide 
they want to take up arms.
    The only thing I know to do is to call upon all of us in 
society to check ourselves. How are we contributing to that 
dynamic? What can we do to try to deescalate some of the 
tension? Now it, in my view, is a bit better than it was three 
months ago and certainly better than it was six months ago, but 
I do not think we are out of the woods yet.
    If there is a way to convince the media, the tech 
companies, and elected officials to take this threat seriously, 
that your words, as Mr. Levin pointed out--there is strong 
research now. It is not somebody's opinion. There is research 
that directly shows when people with a platform say certain 
things hate crimes go up. That means people get hurt, 
physically, in the real world, when somebody says something 
virtually.
    Those that have larger platforms bear more responsibility. 
Yes, you have a First Amendment, but I would hope that anybody 
that swears an oath to the Constitution or decides that they 
are going to take on a larger platform recognizes they have a 
responsibility to first do no harm. We need to treat this 
seriously and be careful with the words that we choose to use 
on the platforms that we have.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Ms. Neumann. As I heard your 
answer, other panelists were shaking their heads. I believe 
others would like to weigh in as well. I am going to open it up 
to our other panelists, anyone who would like to weigh in.
    I know, Mr. Levin, you were definitely shaking your head 
related to some of the data associated with this. What are your 
thoughts?
    Mr. Levin. Thank you. That is my thought. 2014, I did a TED 
Talk about the disinformation online at a time when Facebook 
was considered the be-all and end-all of all things good. Dr. 
James Nolan and Andrew Thompson, myself, Kevin Grisham, John 
Reitzel, we put these things together. We overlaid invective 
that was online. I do not want to say the words because I have 
my son here, but the invective online in that time, 4chan, and 
hate crime into the election. It became one line.
    Facebook, also. Wonderful things can happen when we are 
interconnected. But guess what else? We put out a conflict 
advisory on April 17th, when we saw ``Liberate'' groups go 
throughout the country, and I stopped counting at 200. Devin 
Burghart, a wonderful researcher, found that by the time it was 
booted off of Facebook, which they did do, there were just 
under three million people. QAnon, Boogaloo Bois, Civil Guard, 
they all had a decent presence on Facebook.
    The bottom line is if I develop something where I said that 
Jews are biologically inferior or that drinking mercury was a 
health salve, no one would listen to me. But today on social 
media, you can have people connected across, and we are seeing 
that.
    In California, we are looking to do two things. I do not 
mean to insult the wonderful folks who invited me. But the 
legislature in California is thinking, hey, our national 
government is not doing the job, so a couple of things we are 
looking at: Creating a State of Hate Commission, Assembly 
Member Bloom. What else? With regard to specifically, 
specifically, the online space, AB-587, where the tech 
companies, these social media platforms, would at least come 
out with every year, annually, a report telling us what their 
terms of service are and what they are doing to make sure this 
stuff is being enforced. The bottom line is we are at the point 
where these platforms really affect things.
    One last point that is really important. Extremists are on 
multiple platforms. Up until recently, a Holocaust denier was 
making over 60 grand on VLIVE. We are seeing a cascade from 
larger platforms to more affinity-based, encrypted platforms. 
Additionally, as Ms. Neumann said, we are now seeing almost an 
idiosyncratic a la carte type of extremism, where sometimes we 
can see, OK, we know where this is coming from and other times 
it is mixed. We have a category called ``mixed.''
    The bottom line is social media is a big problem with this, 
and particularly a trillion-dollar company like Facebook needs 
to do more. It is Whac-a-Mole. It seems to me that they do a 
good job after the horses have left the barn.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Any other panelists?
    Ms. Berry. Mr. Chairman, I would offer, listening to Ms. 
Neumann's comment about the threat to our democracy by actors 
who have chosen that violence is a legitimate route, I was 
reminded of the recent Max Weber--I recently read a Max Weber 
quote about government being the sole source of legitimate 
violence. This is what is happening here, which is that there 
are parties who have decided that that is not the case and they 
are choosing to take on the kind of societal fiber that keeps 
it together. We saw this on January 6th, and before January 
6th, we saw it in the data that Mr. Levin has been citing. The 
very vulnerable communities have been targeted by hate. We see 
it in terms of the surge we have seen in anti-Semitism, anti-
Black. The data is there, and it shows that, and I think that 
is absolutely something to think about.
    I want to read this one quote, and I think it comes from 
the perspective that we bring to these conversations. ``In our 
country, espousing an extremist ideology is not a crime. Nor is 
expressing hateful views or associating with hateful groups.'' 
That was Attorney General Merrick Garland in his testimony 
before Congress.
    I think the focus ought to remain on the violence and not 
the ideology. I understand why those who want to engage in 
prevention programs and address this idea of a theory of 
radicalization off-ramping--I know why that comes into the 
conversation, but the focus has to be on the violence that is 
literally tearing our country apart.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Mr. Greenblatt, I am going to 
ask you to weigh in, but I am going to ask you to hold off on 
that just a moment because we have Senator Ossoff who is up.
    Senator Ossoff, I would like to recognize you for your 
questions.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR OSSOFF

    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
convening this hearing. Thank you to our panel for your 
contributions.
    Ms. Berry, I have been refreshed to hear the caution that 
you have advised in rushing to implement policies with 
potentially profound implications for civil liberties without 
having thought through the implications with great care and 
reflecting on the post 9/11 dynamics you referred, the mass, 
rapid growth of domestic surveillance, very intrusive and very 
broad monitoring of mosques and Muslim communities.
    We have focused much of this discussion on whether 
additional charging authorities are prudent or necessary, but 
what are your concerns regarding other proposed increases in 
counterterrorism, policing authorities, investigative 
authorities?
    I would like you to also weigh in, Ms. Neumann. You 
suggested--I thought it was a great suggestion--that there be 
some more formal review of those post-9/11 policies in order to 
draw lessons that can be applied as we consider policy today. I 
would like for you both, please, to weigh in on how we might 
structure that kind of thing.
    Ms. Berry. Thank you so much, Senator, for your comments 
and your question. Even during our hearing today, part of the 
conversation when we were talking about this would suggest that 
my community is a partner in the War on Terror. Right? We are 
not a partner in the War on Terror. We are not the front line 
of counterterrorism policies. We are community that have been 
targeted by hate crimes. We are a community that has been 
targeted by government policies that have had a disparate 
impact on us. If we see a crime, we report it because we want 
to be safe. We want our children to be safe. That goes without 
question. That is not different in any other way.
    In terms of the oversight piece, two decades later, I think 
one of the most important pieces--I was a congressional staffer 
on 9/11, and I was in the room because I worked for a member of 
the Democratic leadership, Congressman David Bonior. I was in 
the room when then Attorney General John Ashcroft brought up 
the Patriot Act. I know that it passed; members have admitted 
it passed, without a full reading. The idea was that we would 
put in sunset provisions and revisit those and look at what 
kind of impact that they have had.
    Regrettably, when we talk about these issues through a 
national security frame, it suspends our ability to understand 
and process the civil rights and civil liberties concerns. It 
is regrettable that that takes place, but that is what takes 
place. Historically, it has been Arab Americans or American 
Muslims. More recently, we have seen the Asian American 
community being subject to some pretty unfortunate national 
security, discriminatory policies as well. It expands to the 
South Asian community.
    One of the recommendations I mentioned specifically in 
terms of Department of Homeland Security oversight, that your 
Committee has, that we look at requiring a mapping program of 
the type of data that the Department of Homeland Security 
collects on all of us. How does it retain it? Who does it share 
it with? What does it do with it? We do not know that 
information, and I think it is critical if we are going to have 
community trust.
    The reason we have to take a skeptical approach to all of 
this is because of the practices and the abuses that our 
community has seen. We have to do better to keep all of us 
safe, and that requires trust in government. We do not have 
that for good reason. The oversight that you all can provide is 
a critical piece of that.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Berry.
    Ms. Neumann, if you might concisely on what such a review 
of those policies might look like. With due respect, I just 
want to make sure I can get a question to Mr. Levin as well.
    Ms. Neumann. Of course. It was in February 2020 I was 
testifying over on the House, and I actually called for a 
bipartisan commission to look at both the past as well as what 
do we need to do about domestic terrorism. It was before the 
present experience that we have all gone through of January 6th 
and, quite frankly, the spike that we kind of knew was coming. 
But COVID had not happened yet. We did not know how bad it was 
going to get.
    But part of the reason I called for that is because we 
could see, to borrow the phrase, the system blinking red and we 
could see that the current structure of the authorities impeded 
our ability to go after the threat with equal measure. And 
there was, I believe, a bill that was put into the National 
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and made it all the way, to my 
understanding, the December conversation where you were trying 
to get things out the door, and then it was removed from the 
bill. It did not pass, and I believe that was unfortunate.
    I had hopes that a January 6th commission might be able to 
do something similar. It looks like we are not going to have a 
January 6th commission.
    I still think it would be wise. This is extremely complex, 
as Ms. Berry has pointed out. You need experts from the 
intelligence community (IC), from the operators that do 
counterterrorism. You need experts from communities that are on 
the receiving end of the effects of these policies.
    Nobody in the Executive Branch ever has enough time to be 
thoughtful and to dig into all of the whys. A lot of things are 
under-resourced, and that is part of the reason you do not see 
transparency because nobody has time to be able to be 
transparent.
    So there are absolutely, in my view, without getting into 
anything classified, ways in which we could improve the way the 
government functions on the international terrorism side, and I 
think we fundamentally need to fix that because clearly we have 
lost the trust of our citizens. Then maybe that gives us an 
opportunity to also look at how do we right-size and deal with 
the domestic terrorism measures as well.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Neumann.
    Mr. Levin, you have spent some of your testimony today and 
answered questions about underlying factors, the conditions 
that have emerged that have increased the level of threat, both 
of hate crimes and violence that may be committed by domestic 
violent extremists (DVE). We have talked about social media, 
and social media is often discussed. Is social media really 
more of an accelerant and a vector, or do you see it as a 
cause?
    Given that we have seen these dynamics emerge 
simultaneously in Europe and in North America, what in your 
view are the underlying social and political and cultural 
conditions that are driving radicalization and sectarianism in 
diverse societies, in which we can only flourish and co-exist 
when we cohere?
    Mr. Levin. Excellent question. Thank you so much, Senator. 
First, I do not believe that we need a new, broadly applicable, 
domestic terrorism law. I just want to go on the record with 
that.
    We can improve certain things, and I am going to tie it to 
your question. For instance, 18 U.S. Code 231 at sequence 
punishes only trainers in violent skills to foment a civil 
disorder but not trainees. In your home State, Atlanta counted 
one hate crime in 2019. The head of the clan in Maryland and 
Delaware just started a militia in your State, and he has taken 
photographs of people running for office.
    What we have seen is a broad reservoir of grievance, and 
what social media does--I think it is a combination of cause 
and accelerant. Let me tell you what I mean. Pew has found we 
are the most polarized we have been in decades, and now we are 
seeing other surveys showing we are even fragmented within that 
polarization.
    What social media allows is these subcultures. You have 
this big grievance, whatever it is. It ends up going to the 
lowest common denominator. For instance, people who are in 
favor of gun rights, nothing wrong with that. But what is 
created is a category of villains who are demonized within a 
subculture. Then you have that cascade down to people who not 
only believe I have a right to own a firearm if I am a law-
abiding citizen to one that says the insurrectionist doctrine, 
the Second Amendment, which even Scalia and Heller said is not 
good, which says that I have the right to armed rebellion with 
those weapons.
    What happens is you see these bubbles that start off, and 
it might be a person in a community or a county or a region, 
and he gets no support, or she would get no support. But 
online, these big social media platforms allow it, and then it 
cascades down.
    We need to have some serious recognition about the role of 
social media. I think, at the very least, we all can agree upon 
if they put up certain requirements for themselves I think they 
need to report on it annually, as our Bill 587 says in 
California, how are they doing.
    Another thing, transparency. Facebook, just this week said, 
cutoff NYU from doing research. You know what? If you want to 
use the information superhighway that was created by our tax 
dollars, you better make sure that you are applying the rules 
of the road.
    I think it is both a cause and an accelerant, particularly 
because, one last point, the declining trust in the communal 
institutions that hold us together. My son did a beautiful 
chart that is in the appendices about all that going down. 
Guess what? Congress is at the lowest.
    Senator Ossoff. On that note, I yield.
    Mr. Levin. I did not mean that rudely. My mom wants me to 
be civil.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you, Senator Ossoff, for your 
questions.
    Mr. Greenblatt, I want to go back to you to give you an 
opportunity to weigh in on the discussion that we had prior to 
Senator Ossoff's questions on what we are seeing in terms of 
acceleration, but I also wanted to ask you about data. The ADL 
does a fabulous job in collecting data.
    I introduced legislation that was signed into law, 
requiring the FBI, the DHS, and the Director of National 
Intelligence (ODNI) to track and publically report data related 
to domestic terrorism, and unfortunately, their response is 
late and woefully inadequate. In addition to your thoughts on 
the previous discussion, if you could speak to the importance 
of having the Federal Government capture comprehensive and 
reliable data on domestic terrorism, I would appreciate if you 
could handle or tackle both of those questions, please.
    Mr. Greenblatt. Sure. Why don't I start with the question 
as it relates to, again, social media, and I think there are 
just a couple things. I have talked about this already. There 
are just a couple things to note.
    I think, first and foremost, the First Amendment, as we 
have talked about it, does not apply to commercial 
environments. There is plenty of precedent in Supreme Court 
decisions which make that very clear.
    Even that being said, in public spaces, in State-controlled 
spaces, all speech is not permitted. You cannot yell ``Fire!'' 
in a crowded theater. As I said before, slander, incitement to 
violence, that is not permitted.
    All that being said, we need to be willing to tolerate 
hateful speech online, but the trick is to keep fringe ideas on 
the fringe and not to elevate them algorithmically, not to 
monetize them with advertising, and to take down threats to 
persons based on their sexual orientation or their faith or 
their religion or their gender. ADL released a report card 
literally last week that noted the failure of the big tech 
companies to do this consistently and in a timely manner, and 
it is absolutely untenable.
    One of the steps that I think we could see, that Congress 
could take, would be the creation of a clearinghouse, a bit 
like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 
(NCMEC), an independent clearinghouse where extremist content 
could be stored, if you will, so that the companies see 
extremism. As mentioned by my fellow panelists, they move from 
platform to platform to platform. We can better manage that 
threat and mitigate it if we have an independent clearinghouse 
who is collecting this data so it is all being shared.
    I would also just say, to the issue of transparency that 
Professor Levin just mentioned, the failure of the companies--
we will talk about the government in a minute. But the failure 
of the companies, particularly Facebook, to provide any 
transparency into their data is unconscionable. No other 
industry, literally no other industry, behaves this way. We do 
not even know about the content that gets taken down. There is 
no independent verification of their data. Organizations like 
mine and others are unable to track it effectively. This is 
just a very big problem.
    I would say, specifically as it relates to data on domestic 
terror and violent extremism, indeed, we need the Federal 
Government to be more forthright and to seek coordination from 
the agencies, the likes of which you mentioned, Senator Peters, 
in sharing data about acts of domestic terrorism and violent 
extremism.
    There are academic centers like Professor Levin's at UCSB, 
and there are, organizations like ADL and the Southern Poverty 
Law Center (SPLC) and others that try to collect this 
information. What we have done is created tools, like on our 
website you can see the ADL heat map, which stands for Hate, 
Extremism, Anti-Semitism, and Terror. We are using data 
visualization to make it easier for individuals and scholars 
and journalists and experts, ultimately, policymakers to 
understand the patterns of extremist activity and hate crimes 
so you can drive better policy.
    But we would so well served if the ODNI and DHS and the FBI 
would do more to make it easier for us to understand the 
threat. I think some of the content, Senator Peters, in the 
Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA) literally tries to get 
at this problem.
    Chairman Peters. Thank you. Thank you for that.
    I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our 
witnesses for joining us here today, for providing us your 
expertise. I will say that your testimony has been both 
alarming but clearly essential for us to hear, and we need to 
be focused on this issue. It is my commitment, and I think 
Members of the Committee here, that we will continue to be 
focused on this issue in the months and years ahead.
    Both of this week's hearings have contributed pertinent 
information for our Committee to better understand what needs 
to be done to combat this most lethal and serious national 
security threat. I look forward to continuing to examine the 
terrorism threat and the actions that need to be taken to 
ensure that we have a comprehensive and enduring 
counterterrorism policy that effectively takes on white 
supremacists, anti-government, and anti-Semitic violence here 
in the United States. That effort will continue, as I mentioned 
earlier, in September, with our annual threats hearing before 
this Committee.
    I will note that the record for this hearing will remain 
open for 15 days, until 5 p.m. on August 20, 2021, for the 
submission of statements and questions for the record.
    This hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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