Sponsor
Richard Joseph Durbin
Senator · D-IL
Senator · D-IL
Official title: Authorize dedicated domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism.
Introduced July 24, 2025 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress July 24, 2025
The bill strengthens federal capacity, coordination, transparency, and community support to detect and prosecute domestic-terrorism–linked activity, at the cost of expanding federal investigative reach, increasing taxpayer expense, concentrating authority, and creating privacy and oversight risks that could affect protesters, marginalized communities, and agency trust.
Law enforcement (federal, state, and local), prosecutors, and military personnel will gain dedicated offices, field liaisons, specialized training, and assessment mechanisms that improve coordination, detection, investigation, and prosecution of domestic terrorism and extremist infiltration.
Prosecutors and courts will have clearer statutory definitions (aligned with the federal domestic terrorism definition) and reduced legal ambiguity, making it easier to apply existing federal criminal law to domestic-terrorism–related cases.
The public, Congress, and local communities will receive more transparency through regular joint public reports, unclassified training/material postings, and required congressional briefings so trends, findings, and agency plans are more visible.
Civilians, protesters, and marginalized communities (including racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants) may face expanded federal investigative and surveillance activity because broader statutory definitions plus increased federal capacity can be applied to political activity or protests.
Taxpayers and federal/local budgets may face substantial new costs as agencies create offices, assign agents/liaisons, run trainings, and form task forces, potentially diverting funds from other priorities.
Local governments and communities could lose decisionmaking autonomy and experience reduced congressional oversight because the bill centralizes agency authorities and authorizes open‑ended funding without line-item appropriations or detailed allocation transparency.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates domestic‑terrorism offices, mandates semiannual joint reporting and analyses of White supremacist threats, expands training and hate‑crime response, and authorizes unspecified funding.
Creates new domestic-terrorism offices at DOJ, DHS, and FBI, requires regular joint reporting and quantitative analyses of domestic-terrorism activity (with special focus on White supremacist and neo‑Nazi threats), expands hate‑crime investigation capacity, mandates interagency review and training for federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement, and directs an interagency task force to assess and address infiltration of Federal law enforcement and the uniformed services. The bill authorizes staffing, civil‑rights compliance positions, anti‑bias training, community response support, and unspecified funding to carry out these activities, while preserving First Amendment protections.