Sponsor
Richard Joseph Durbin
Senator · D-IL
Senator · D-IL
The bill substantially strengthens federal capacity, coordination, transparency, and community support to combat domestic terrorism and related hate crimes, but does so by expanding federal authority and spending in ways that raise significant civil‑liberties, local‑control, and fiscal concerns.
Law enforcement (federal, state, and local) and prosecutors will get new dedicated offices, specialized training, field liaisons, and coordinated assessments that strengthen detection, investigation, and prosecution of domestic terrorism and terrorism-linked hate crimes.
The public and Congress will have more regular, unclassified reporting and public posting of training and assessment findings, increasing transparency and oversight of domestic terrorism trends and agency responses.
The bill requires civil‑rights/civil‑liberties compliance staff, anti-bias training, trainer qualifications, and explicitly preserves First Amendment protections, which should reduce biased policing and protect constitutional rights within new offices and activities.
Broad federal definitions and expanded domestic‑terrorism units will increase the federal investigative footprint and could be used to surveil or investigate protests, political activity, or communities of color, risking civil‑liberties intrusions.
The bill centralizes authority and expands federal roles (e.g., definitions, new offices, task forces), which can reduce local control, strain local–federal relations, and prompt personnel reviews or resource shifts that unsettle communities and local agencies.
Creating new offices, staffing liaisons, additional training, task forces, and open-ended funding authorization will raise federal costs and may divert resources from other priorities or increase pressure on taxpayers and the deficit.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates DHS/DOJ/FBI domestic‑terrorism offices, mandates recurring threat reporting, training, an interagency task force on White supremacist infiltration, and authorizes funding.
Introduced July 24, 2025 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress July 24, 2025
Creates new domestic-terrorism units inside the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice (within the National Security Division), and the FBI to investigate, analyze, and help prosecute domestic terrorism, with a particular focus on White supremacist and neo‑Nazi threats and their possible infiltration of law enforcement and the uniformed services. Requires repeated public and classified reporting, regular quantitative threat analyses, expanded training and resource review for federal/state/local/Tribal law enforcement, an interagency task force on infiltration of uniformed services and federal law enforcement, and community-support and hate‑crime liaison assignments; authorizes unspecified funding and includes a 10‑year sunset for the new offices. Mandates civil‑rights/civil‑liberties compliance personnel and anti‑bias training in each office, requires DOJ/FBI/DHS to make domestic‑terrorism training available to prosecutors and state/local/Tribal partners, directs periodic unclassified reports (with classified annexes only if necessary), and preserves First Amendment protections. Timelines include initial reviews and task‑force formation within 180 days and recurring reports every six months; the new offices expire 10 years after enactment.