House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last Friday introduced a bill that would create a new office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) squarely focused on countering radical Islamist terrorism in the United States.
“In the wake of the Orlando attack, we must step up our efforts to combat the radicalization and recruitment of citizens by ISIS,” McCarthy said in a statement, referring to the insurgent group in Iraq and Syria fighting to establish an Islamic State. “The bill introduced today will provide more tools and resources to combat the spread of dangerous radical Islamist ideology and help our law enforcement agencies prevent future attacks on our soil.”
The Homeland Safety and Security Act (H.R. 5611) would establish within DHS the Office for Partnerships to Prevent Terrorism (OPPT), which would lead efforts to “counter radical Islamist terrorist networks, and their recruiting, radicalization, and propaganda.”
The new office would also be responsible for creating a counter-messaging program against terrorist propaganda and coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to administer grants to create counter-messaging campaigns.
The DHS office currently responsible for managing the countering of violent extremist activities in the U.S. is the Office for Community Partnerships, which was created last September. The Obama administration has refrained from narrowing its focus to just radical Islamist terrorist networks, restraint that has angered congressional Republicans.
“The White House refuses to call the threat what it is, and their suffocating political correctness is putting America in danger,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday supporting McCarthy’s bill. “This bill forces the administration and the Department of Homeland Security, for the first time ever, to prioritize their efforts to focus on the surge of radical Islamist terrorism, requires DHS to direct current grant funding toward countering the threat more decisively, and mandates that the department find and close security gaps that might allow terrorists to infiltrate our country.”
On Wednesday, DHS announced a new $10 million Countering Violent Extremist Grant Program, which is the first federal grant funding available to non-governmental organizations and academia to carry out countering violent extremism programs. Congress provided the grant funding in the FY ’16 Omnibus Appropriations Act.