Violent extremism, including threats from domestic militants, will top the agenda at a September 12 U.S. congressional hearing, following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul announced the hearing in a letter to the panel’s top Democrat, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
The committee once a year meets to discuss militant threats, with the focus usually on groups abroad, but a committee aide said the Charlottesville protests had raised interest in domestic threats.
“We must stand together and reject racism, bigotry and prejudice, including the hateful ideologies promoted by neo-Nazis, the KKK and all other white supremacy groups,” McCaul, a Texas Republican, wrote in response to Democrats’ request for a hearing.
The committee will invite leaders of the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center, McCaul said.
A 32-year-old woman was killed Saturday in Charlottesville when a car plowed into people who were protesting a white supremacist demonstration. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies was charged with murder.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said both sides were to blame for the violence, drawing condemnation from both fellow Republicans and Democrats for failing to single out the white nationalists.
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