Senate Judiciary to hold hearing on domestic terrorism following Buffalo shooting

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next week on domestic terrorism several weeks after an 18-year-old suspect killed 10 people and wounded three others in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y.

The hearing, which is titled, “Examining the ‘Metastasizing’ Domestic Terrorism Threat After the Buffalo Attack” and will be held next Tuesday morning, will exaine “the continued threat posed by violent white supremacists and other extremists, including those who have embraced the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, as well as the federal government’s response to this threat,” according to a committee press release.

There was no immediate information regarding witnesses slated to speak at the hearing.

The development comes as close to a dozen people were killed at a supermarket earlier this month; eleven of 13 people either wounded or killed were Black. 

The suspect reportedly espoused the racist “great replacement theory,” which claims that there is an effort underway through immigration to replace white Americans with people of color. The shooting is being probed as a racially motivated hate crime by officials. 

Following the Buffalo shooting, Attorney General Merrick Garland said his department would do more to combat hate crime in the U.S.

“Unfortunately, we are gathered today in the shadow, in the wake of another horrific attack,” Garland said earlier this month. “We commit to using every resource of the Department of Justice to prevent these kinds of acts of hate, to hold accountable those who commit them and to support the communities that are damaged and terrorized by them.”