House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Prioritizes Domestic Terrorism

During a speech on Tuesday, Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, highlighted that his legislative priorities include an increased focus on domestic terrorism. In his remarks, Rep. Thompson elevated the ranking of this threat as compared to global extremism, which he indicated had become the greatest focus of the federal government in recent times. “What’s on our minds a lot now is domestic terrorism. We have focused on the radical Islamist terrorist threat for a long time. It remains a threat, but by no means is it the only threat,” he said. Rep. Thompson explained statistics show the U.S. now gets more of these kinds of threats than others facing the nation from abroad, and he cited the recent arrest of a Coast Guard officer who allegedly planned a mass domestic terrorist attack targeting politicians and journalists as an example of this kind of activity. Rep. Thompson previously served as the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee from 2007 to 2011. He returned to the position last month. Read the article at Homeland Preparedness News.