RWEs are the biggest threat.

The intelligence and law enforcement communities have articulated publicly the threat posed by domestic terrorism today. That articulation draws on the comprehensive assessment of the threat that President Biden requested on his first full day in office. That assessment was conducted by appropriate elements of the U.S. Government and provided to the President. It was also released publicly in summary form on March 17, 2021 (see page 10). Today’s domestic terrorists espouse a range of violent ideological motivations, including racial or ethnic bigotry domestic terrorism and hatred as well as anti–government or anti–authority sentiment. They also take on a variety of forms, from lone actors and small groups of informally aligned individuals, to networks exhorting and targeting violence toward specific communities, to violent self–proclaimed “militias” who, despite legal prohibitions in all fifty states against certain private militia activity, assert a baseless right to take the law into their own hands. Across violent ideologies, individuals and small groups – both formal and informal – have been galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States to carry out violent attacks. Among that wide range of animating ideologies, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (principally those who promote the superiority of the white race) and militia violent extremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats.