We’ve known for a while that U.S. federal antiterrorism law has a large gap: While it has a panoply of penalties attached to the international form of terrorism, domestic terrorism is not a federal crime. Now the Biden administration is considering resolving the matter by having Congress fill the gap but there are ample and important questions about whether it should even try.
A senior official in Biden’s Justice Department told a House hearing this week that it is “actively considering” whether it should pass such legislation a question made particularly acute by the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Yet while the Democrats’ approach is manifestly more responsible than Republican denialism, obstruction, and obfuscation in dealing with the matter, passing such legislation remains fraught primarily because despite the omission, federal and local law enforcement has more than adequate ability to prosecute domestic terrorism with laws already on the books, while a n