Violence prompts U.S. Congress review of militants
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violent extremism, including threats from domestic militants, will top the agenda at a Sept. 12 U.S. congressional hearing, following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly.
The U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee chairman, Republican Michael McCaul, announced the hearing in a letter to the panel's top Democrat, Bennie Thompson.
The committee once a year meets to discuss militant threats, with the focus usually on abroad, but a committee aide said the Charlottesville protests had raised interest in domestic threats.
"We must stand together and reject racism, bigotry, and prejudice, including the hateful ideologies promoted by neo-Nazis, the KKK, and all other white supremacy groups," McCaul wrote in response to Democrats' request for a hearing.
The committee will invite leaders of the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center, McCaul said.
A 32-year-old woman was killed on Saturday when a car plowed into a rival protest to white supremacist demonstrators. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies was charged with murder.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said both sides were to blame for the violence, drawing condemnation from both fellow Republicans and Democrats for failing to single out the white nationalists.
(Reporting by Eric Beech and Caren Bohan; Editing by David Alexander and Howard Goller)
