US lawmakers warn of ‘emboldened’ terror threat

WASHINGTON — 

Top Republican lawmakers are calling for U.S. information agencies to rapidly alteration people nether President Donald Trump to amended face threats from panic groups specified arsenic the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

The House Homeland Security Committee connected Wednesday issued an update menace assessment, highlighting the New Year’s Day motortruck ramming onslaught successful New Orleans, which killed 14 people, arsenic good arsenic the June 2024 apprehension of 8 Tajik nationals with suspected Islamic State ties.

“Make nary mistake — each of the lights are inactive blinking red,” said committee seat Republican Representative Mark Green successful a statement.

“The New Orleans violent onslaught was a stark reminder that the panic menace to America is live and persistent,” said Green. “Foreign violent organizations and jihadist networks overseas stay committed to recruiting and radicalizing individuals connected U.S. soil.”

Green’s comments harken backmost to a 2023 informing from then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, made successful the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas panic onslaught connected Israel, which officials said seemed to animate panic groups astir the world.

"I've ne'er seen a clip wherever each the threats, oregon truthful galore of the threats, are each elevated, each astatine precisely the aforesaid time,” Wray said astatine the time.

Last year, Wray warned the FBI was progressively acrophobic astir a coordinated panic onslaught connected the U.S. similar the March 2024 Islamic State panic attacks connected a Moscow performance hall.

The Department of Homeland Security's 2025 yearly menace assessment, issued this past October, warned, "The coercion menace situation successful the United States implicit the adjacent twelvemonth volition stay high.”

And it attributed the biggest information to individuals who are not needfully affiliated with established panic groups.

"The menace volition proceed to beryllium characterized chiefly by lone offenders oregon tiny cells motivated to unit by a operation of racial, religious, gender, oregon anti-government grievances; conspiracy theories; and personalized factors," it said.

Green connected Wednesday blamed the accrued menace connected the medication of erstwhile President Joe Biden, saying panic groups person been “emboldened by the nationalist information blunders of the past 4 years.”

The committee’s “Terror Threat Snapshot” cited much than 50 coercion cases successful 30 U.S. states since April 2021 and 187 coercion arrests, attacks and plots successful Western Europe since the commencement of 2023.

Democrats expressed immoderate disappointment, arguing the comments person not been backed up by the committee’s actions to date.

“It’s a spot confusing,” according to 1 staffer, who spoke to VOA connected the information of anonymity successful bid to respond to the chair’s comments. “Why haven’t they had substantive hearings connected overseas coercion and homegrown convulsive extremism?”

Meanwhile, a caller study Wednesday by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies cautioned that portion determination is crushed to beryllium acrophobic astir the exploits and ambitions of groups specified arsenic the Islamic State and al-Qaida, the menace wrong the United States does not look to beryllium growing.

"Longer-term trends suggest that jihadist coercion successful the United States is not resurgent," according to the report.

"Groups specified arsenic the Islamic State and al-Qaida person filled much of an inspirational relation alternatively than straight orchestrating attacks connected the United States," it said. "The mean lethality of jihadist violent attacks has besides fallen since the highest of the [Islamic State] caliphate."

The CSIS study recovered determination were a yearly mean of 38 recorded attacks oregon plots successful the U.S. from 2020 to 2023, but lone 21 recorded plots oregon attacks during the archetypal 11 months of 2024.