by John M. Simpson<\/p>\n
Somewhat lost in\u00a0the din of\u00a0current news reporting on the Supreme Court appointment controversy, \u00a0was the release of\u00a0the Trump administration’s\u00a0National Strategy for Counterterrorism of the United States (Strategy)<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>on October 4.\u00a0 That\u00a0document makes specific reference to “animal rights extremism” as a “persistent” domestic security threat.\u00a0 After discussing the various terrorist threats confronting the United States from abroad, the document includes the following passage:<\/p>\n “Lastly, the United States has long faced a persistent security threat from domestic terrorists who are not motivated by a radical Islamist ideology but are instead motivated by other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism,<\/strong> <\/em>environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism.\u00a0 Such extremist groups attempt to advance their agendas through acts of force or violence.\u00a0 Notably, domestic terrorism in the United States is on the rise, with an increasing number of fatalities and violent nonlethal acts committed by domestic terrorists against people and property in the United States.\u00a0 The economic harm caused by domestic terrorists has also increased sharply as domestic terrorists have continued to destroy property, disrupt business, and perpetrate financial crimes that are designed to damage certain sectors of the United States economy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Strategy<\/em>, p. 10 (emphasis added).\u00a0 The Strategy<\/em> goes on to outline several broad initiatives to combat foreign and domestic terrorist threats.<\/p>\n Lest one conclude that the inclusion of “animal rights extremism” in the Strategy<\/em> is overly broad,\u00a0consider instances recently reported\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a> of animal rights activists \u00a0invading grocery stores and disrupting operations and damaging merchandise; “rescuing” chickens from poultry growing operations; and, in one event, staging a “branding” in which “a searing hot iron heated to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit was plunged into the activists’ arms and shoulders as they grimaced in pain.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John M. Simpson Somewhat lost in\u00a0the din of\u00a0current news reporting on the Supreme Court appointment controversy, \u00a0was the release of\u00a0the Trump administration’s\u00a0National Strategy for Counterterrorism of the United States (Strategy)\u00a0on October 4.\u00a0 That\u00a0document makes specific reference to “animal rights extremism” as a “persistent” domestic security threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[44,49,21,168,169,5],"ppma_author":[697],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-animal-activist","tag-animal-law","tag-animal-rights","tag-animal-rights-extremism","tag-counterterrorism","tag-john-simpson"],"authors":[{"term_id":697,"user_id":317,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jmsimpson","display_name":"John M. Simpson","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2018\/06\/simpsonjohn-125x150.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}