Dispatch from Washington: Terrorism and Senate Reform

As the conflict to rid the world of the Islamic Republic enters its third week, several Washington DC-based think tanks provide useful data and analysis that our readers might appreciate. The Critical Threats project from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a good resource as is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Iran Desk.

Terrorism at Home

While war rages on the other side of the world, danger lurks at home. As we discussed on the Makin Sense podcast this week, there was an attempted terrorist attack in Manhattan outside Gracie Mansion, the New York City Mayor’s house. If one read the Mayor’s statement about the attack as well as the mainstream media coverage, one would have had no idea that it was perpetrated by young Muslims who were inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Perhaps this is because Mayor Mamdami, who got his start in politics by being an anti-Israel activist, frequently speaks out about “Islamophobia,” and so to have admit that Islamists were attempting to murder people outside his home might have made him uncomfortable. Thankfully the bombs that two teenagers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, threw at a group of protestors, while shouting “Allah Akbar,” did not explode. Had they done so, there might have been numerous deaths and injuries.

On Saturday 28 February, Ndiage Diange, a naturalised United States (US) citizen from Senegal, used a high-powered rifle to murder three people in Austin, Texas. Diange was wearing a t-shirt with the words “Property of Allah” written on it.

On Thursday 12March, Mohamed Jalloh went to a meeting of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Old Dominion University in Virginia and while shouting “Allah Akbar” shot one person dead and injured two others, before being neutralised himself. Jalloh, who had been a member of the Army National Guard, was a naturalised US citizen who was born in Sierra Leone. In 2017 he was convicted of providing material support to ISIS and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. It is unclear why Jalloh was released early.

Also, on Thursday, Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, armed with a rifle, drove his truck filled with explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. According to news reports, Ghazali is a naturalised US citizen from Lebanon. Temple Israel is reputed to be the largest reform synagogue in America, and the attacker targeted the Temple’s school, which at the time housed more than 140 children and staff.

It was only thanks to the quick actions of the security guards that the attacker was killed before he could injure any of the children or teachers. Ghazali came from Dearborn Heights, a heavily Muslim area that elected Rashida Tlaib to the US House of Representatives. Tlaib is a Palestinian-American who frequently claims that Israel is committing genocide, as has Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud. Dearborn’s mayor has also claimed that Israel is a racist apartheid state and that it is engaged in ethnic cleansing. In covering the incident, the Metro Detroit News pointed out that Ghazali lost family members “to an airstrike in the Middle East.”

Your correspondent is a fervent defender of free speech and of the First Amendment to the American Constitution which enshrines our rights to free expression. I believe that the answer to bad, stupid, or misguided speech, is more speech. We should answer ludicrous claims about Israel committing genocide or instituting apartheid with the clear evidence that they are false. But I also believe that words matter. When elected officials make such outrageous and incendiary claims, deranged people may well act on them, as we saw with Ayman Ghazli. And when news outlets draw a link between a war halfway across the world as motivation for killing children here, they should be roundly condemned.

Imagine a scenario where someone deeply troubled by the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uigurs takes it upon himself to go and shoot up the nearest Chinese takeaway restaurant. The scenario is almost too preposterous to entertain. But were it to happen, we would treat such a person as a dangerous and deranged lunatic. And yet when it comes to the Jews, we are somehow expected to accept that the actions of a sovereign nation in the Middle East justifies, or somehow explains, heinous crimes at home. Since the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel the Anti-Defamation League has recorded more than 10 000 antisemitic acts, including 2 000 incidents at synagogues or Jewish community centers. And we’re supposed to believe the lie that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism.

As we discuss on Makin Sense, there is a concerted effort on the political Right to rid the movement of antisemitism and to excise increasingly unhinged people like Tucker Carlson from the movement. However, the institutions of the Left, in which I would include The New York Times, CNN, and most of the Democratic Party, with some important exceptions such as Senator John Fetterman, have been airbrushing the dangers posed Islamism out of the discourse. This must stop before more antisemitic, ISIS-inspired terrorists take more lives.

Beware of Politicians Who Agree With Each Other

President Trump is having a hard time getting the US Senate to vote on the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act. Among other things the Act would require voters to present a valid form of identification before voting and would outlaw mail-in ballots in most circumstances. These are sensible provisions and almost all Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, support them. However, rules on voting and on the conduct of elections are, under the US Constitution, the preserve of the states, not the federal government.

Let’s leave aside the merits of this Act, the Senate’s rules require 60 votes to pass legislation. This threshold has always ensured that the Senate, which is supposed to be the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” passes laws that are carefully considered, with bi-partisan support. There are efforts afoot to get Republicans to act to remove the 60-vote threshold and to pass legislation with a simple majority, something that Democrats have desired for ages. It is only possible to entertain such short-term thinking as a good idea if you believe your party will be in charge in perpetuity. But we know that Republicans will lose control of the Senate, and perhaps far sooner than any think, and they will rue the day they gave up their ability to block legislation. Should there be a Democratic majority and a Democrat in the White House, they would soon use their powers in Congress to pass radical reforms to almost every institution in the land. Don’t do it Republicans!

While Trump is having a hard time getting Republican senators to bend to his will on voting, with that key 60-vote threshold still in place, they have joined with Democrats to pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a sweeping housing bill that takes aim at investors, requiring companies to sell newly built rental housing to individuals within seven years of completing them. This bill is an example of the political horseshoe in action, with left wing Democrats joining with populist Republicans to pass something that sounds like it will help the poor but will only screw them over while expanding the federal government’s footprint. The AEI’s Ed Pinto explains how destructive this Act is for the housing market and for renters.

We all want the US Congress to do its job better but be very wary of this new Left-Right populist alliance; no good can come of it.