US House panel to hold hearing on white supremacist threat

The US House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing next month about threats from extremist groups, including domestic terrorism, following a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend.

The panel’s chairman, Republican Representative Michael McCaul, announced the 12 September hearing in a letter to the panel’s top Democrat, Representative Bennie Thompson.

“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 said.

#SayNoToRacism

McCaul’s letter was in response to a request from Thompson and the other Democrats on the committee to hold a hearing on the subject. “It is past time for this Committee on Homeland Security to act,” the Democrats wrote to McCaul.

The committee will invite leaders of the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center to discuss the most serious threats the United States faces, McCaul said.

A woman died in Charlottesville on Saturday when a car was driven into a crowd during clashes between white supremacists and protesters who opposed them. The man charged in the killing is said to have harbored Nazi sympathies.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday blamed both sides for the violence, drawing condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans for failing to single out the white nationalists.

Israeli PM’s son says ‘Leftists are more dangerous than neo-Nazis’

People hold banners and chant slogans as they march from Union Square Park to Grand Central to protest the killing of 3 black men by police in 48 hours, in Manhattan, New York on July 7, 2016