Should white supremacy be added to the criminal code and crimes that the DoJ investigates?

Civil Rights Crime and Law Enforcement (e.g., Gun Laws)
Leading Against White Supremacy Act (H.R. 61)
Awaiting Vote
Bill Summary

This bill seeks to prevent and prosecute crimes and conspiracy based on white supremacist ideology. The Department of Justice will be given powers to investigate and act to mitigate and prevent the undertaking of hate-based crimes, and a section of the US criminal code will be expanded to add white supremacist motivations as an additional charge. Sponsor: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat, Texas, District 18)
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Opponents say

•   "In other words, if you go on to Twitter and you express a view that Sheila Jackson Lee or whoever is deciding, considers your view to be racist or white supremacist-even if somebody doesn’t hear you and then goes and commits a crime, even if that doesn’t happen, you are a conspirator in a hate crime," he warned. "As long as it was reasonably likely that somebody who might commit a hate crime heard you or heard your view." Greenwald scoffed at the implications of such a law. "Now, where wouldn’t that be true? It’s always the case that any ideology or any viewpoint that you express has the potential to be heard by somebody who could in the name of that ideology go and commit crimes." Source: Fox


•   "Such a move would gut the First Amendment…The bill is an almost impenetrable word salad of convoluted provisions. However, what is clear (perhaps the only clear thing) is that ‘Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023’ would gut the First Amendment and create effective thought crimes." Source: Jonathan Turley (GW law professor)

Proponents say

•   "Are you going to deny that white supremacy played a role in the Charlottesville attack when Nazi-sympathizers belched 'Jews will not replace us?' Who is 'us?' Further, are you going to deny that white supremacy played a role in the Buffalo shooting after the shooter cited 'replacement theory' as his motive to begin a murderous rampage at the closest zip code with the highest black population? … H.R. 61 simply deals with adding white supremacy to a list of reasons to be convicted of a hate crime. Why? Because it’s a major domestic terrorist threat." Source: Rep. Lee (Democrat, Texas, District 18) 


•   "This law that Congresswoman Jackson Lee proposes would put into the books what we all, as a society, know to be common sense…When people go out and incite violence when people go out and incite hate, when people go out and tell people to get locked and loaded, to take it into their own hands …the people who defend that do not stand for American values. That is un-American. We stand against that. [Response to FBI report which stated “the increasing amount of domestic terrorism was grounded on the surge of white supremacy-based crimes.]" Source: Rep. Gene Wu (Texas House Member, District 137)

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