TERROR AT HOME - New York, New Jersey

"Bombing suspect arrested, but New York security still elevated" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Following a shootout, New York police apprehended their suspect for Saturday's actual and attempted bombings in New York and New Jersey.  Twenty-eight-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan, was seized after being recognized sleeping in the doorway of a New Jersey bar.  Earlier in the day, a text message alert urged New Yorkers to call 911 if they saw him.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  They say they've got their man.  Now they're trying to figure out his motive.  An arrest this morning in New Jersey has ended a manhunt in a series of bombings and attempted bombings around New York City and New Jersey.

MAN:  That's definitely him.

GWEN IFILL:  Ahmad Khan Rahami was loaded into an ambulance, bloody and dazed after a gun battle with police.  The 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan was captured in Linden, New Jersey, after he was recognized sleeping in the doorway of a bar.

That was just hours after police sent text alerts to millions in the New York metro area to be on the lookout for him.  After the shoot-out, in which two police officers and the suspect were injured, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio firmly labeled the bombings terrorism.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, New York City:  We have so more much information obviously than we even had a few hours ago.  Based on the information we have now, we have every reason to believe this was an act of terror.

GWEN IFILL:  It all began on Saturday morning in a bomb attack in the beach town of Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines.  No one was injured there.

Later that night, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, another bomb went off, injuring 29 people.  Surveillance video allegedly caught Rahami planting the device.  A second device, made from a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel, was found undetonated a few blocks away.

And last night, five more pipe bombs were found at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  As robots worked to dismantle them, one exploded suddenly.  Officials linked all of the attacks to Rahami, but offered limited details about how they made that connection.

But, with Rahami as a named suspect, police descended on his family home in Elizabeth.

MAN:  He's a very friendly guy.  That's what's so scary.  It's hard when it's home.  They never seemed out of the ordinary.  They were just Americanized.  You would have never known anything.

"The challenge of recognizing radicalization before it’s too late" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The suspect behind this weekend’s bombings has been apprehended; now authorities are trying to figure out what motivated him and whether he acted alone.  Judy Woodruff talks to George Washington University’s Lorenzo Vidino and former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem about what the investigation has uncovered so far and how we can try to prevent future attacks.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Juliette, what do you make of the fact that we learned late this afternoon his family moved to the United States in 1995?  We figured he would have been 7 years old then.

TERROR IN AMERICA - President Obama on Trump

"OBAMA CONDEMNS TRUMP" by Julie Hirshfeld Davis & Matt Flegenheimer, San Diego Union-Tribune 6/15/2016

NOTE:  This is from the online version of the newspaper, therefore no article link.

President Barack Obama denounced Donald Trump on Tuesday for his remarks in the aftermath of the massacre in Orlando, Fla., warning that Trump was peddling a “dangerous” mindset that recalled the darkest and most shameful periods in U.S. history.

“We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence,” Obama said at the Treasury Department, without mentioning the Republican presidential candidate by name.

His statement, an extraordinary condemnation by a sitting President of a man who is to be the opposing party’s nominee for the White House, came after Obama met with his national security team on the status of the effort against the Islamic State.  Obama said the meeting was dominated by discussion of the Orlando rampage.

“Where does this stop?” Obama said of Trump’s approach, noting that Trump had proposed a ban on admitting Muslims into the U.S., and that the Orlando assailant, like perpetrators of previous domestic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Fort Hood, Texas, was a U.S. citizen.  “Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently?  Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance?  Are we going to start discriminating against them because of their faith?” Obama asked, his voice rising with frustration.  “Do Republican officials actually agree with this?  Because that’s not the America we want— it doesn’t reflect our democratic ideals.  It won’t make us more safe.  It will make us less safe.”

Appearing in Pittsburgh as Obama spoke, Hillary Clinton gave a denunciation of her own.  She assailed Trump’s temperament, ridiculing his proposals and arguing that he had failed to meet the gravity of the moment.

“History will remember what we do in this moment,” she told hundreds of supporters inside a union hall, asking “responsible Republican leaders” to join her in condemning Trump.  “What Donald Trump is saying is shameful.”

Trump, unbowed by the criticism, said Obama was coddling terrorists.

“President Obama claims to know our enemy, and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies and, for that matter, the American people,” he said in a statement Tuesday.  “When I am President, it will always be America first.”

Members of Trump’s party were themselves critical of the candidate’s language and proposals.  House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a news conference Tuesday that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants was not in the country’s interest, nor did it reflect the principles of his party.

“There’s a really important distinction that every American needs to keep in mind: This is a war with radical Islam.  It’s not a war with Islam,” Ryan said.  “The vast, vast majority of Muslims in this country and around the world are moderate, they’re peaceful, they’re tolerant, and so they’re among our best allies, among our best resources in this fight against radical Islamic terrorism.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has been among the most outspoken in his party about withholding his endorsement of Trump.  Flake said in a Twitter post that he was “appreciative” that Ryan had spoken out.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, declined to talk about Trump, an indication of the precarious position in which Trump has placed Republican elected officials.

Obama rejected criticism from Trump and other Republicans about his refusal to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the Islamic State.  Obama said he would not use the wording because he was unwilling to give the Islamic State the victory of acceptance of its vision that it is the leader of a holy war between Islam and the West.

“If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists’ work for them,” Obama said.

During a rally in Greensboro, N.C., hours after Obama’s remarks, Trump offered a brief response.

“I watched President Obama today, and he was more angry at me than he was at the shooter,” Trump said.  “The level of anger, that’s the kind of anger he should have for the shooter and these killers that shouldn’t be here.”

Obama is scheduled to travel to Orlando on Thursday to visit with the surviving victims and the families of those killed.  Obama spoke ominously of the stakes for the nation’s security, and its very identity, if the ideas espoused by Trump and many in the Republican Party are widely accepted.  “We’ve gone through moments in our history before where we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it,” Obama said.  We’ve seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it as been a shameful part of our history.”

Clinton, in a striking departure from her speech Monday, when she refrained from saying Trump’s name and said it was “not a day for politics,” took direct aim Tuesday at his penchant for conspiracy theory.  She reminded the crowd that he was “a leader of the birther movement” questioning Obama’s birthplace.

After the Orlando attack, she noted, Trump suggested on television that Obama sympathized with Islamic terrorists.

“Just think about that for a second,” Clinton said.  “Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for President of the United States.”

Obama staunchly defended his administration’s approach to countering terrorism, listing gains that the United States has made against the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Libya; killing the group’s top leaders, capturing more of its territory and whittling away at its financial resources.

He called on Congress to enact gun restrictions that it has so far resisted, including the resurrection of a ban on assault weapons and a measure that would bar people on “no-fly” lists because of suspected terrorist ties from buying a gun.

Davis and Flegenheimer write for The New York Times.

TERROR IN AMERICA - Orlando Shooting

"LGBT, Latino community hit hard by massacre in Orlando" PBS NewsHour 6/12/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Pres. Barack Obama said Sunday that he stands in support with the LGBT community after a gunman killed 50 people at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando.  Carlos Smith of Equality Rights, a group that advocates for LGBT rights, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what the attack means to the community.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  President Obama noted that today's mass shooting is especially painful for gay and lesbian Americans as a club where they socialized in solidarity was the target.  To discuss what the Orlando mass shooting means for the LGBT community, I am joined by Carlos Smith from Equality Florida, a group that fights for LGBT rights.  Tell us a bit about the community that was affected today.

CARLOS SMITH, EQUALITY FLORIDA:  Sure.  Well, our entire community is devastated, and Equality Florida sends its thoughts and prayers to all of those who were affected by this tragedy.  This tragedy happened at a popular nightclub, Pulse Orlando, a gay nightclub.  It happened during LGBTQ Pride Month.  It happened at a time when the club was at maximum capacity.  So it's clear that the shooter had every intent of inflicting the maximum amount of violence and damage.

And I think what's really important to understand is that the LGBTQ community has gone to gay nightclubs like Pulse Orlando and places around the country for decades, since the days of Stonewall, as a place where people can be safe, as a place where people can with who they are and have a sense of community.

So we're devastated to see this type of violence.  But I think it's also important that people understand that the central Florida LGBTQ community is standing in solidarity also with the Muslim and Islamic community.  Both of our communities have been targets of violence, of hate and of discrimination.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Is there a history of disproportionate discrimination or just any discrimination against the LGBT community in Florida, in central Florida?

CARLOS SMITH:  Well, what we've seen unfortunately in the last couple of years is there has been a rash of violence, particularly against transgender women of color.  There was a hate crime murder incident that happened actually recently in Florida that was devastating to the community that targeted a transgender black woman.

And what we're seeing now is that even in the year 2016, hate and bigotry still exists.  And we're doing what we can in our communities, at the local level, at the state level, at the national level, to eradicate all forms of hate and discrimination, and to make sure that we fight against all phobias.  Not just homophobia, not just transphobia, but also against Islamophobia.

"Orlando Sentinel editor on shooting:  ‘We joined that list'" PBS NewsHour 6/12/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The attack that killed 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando was a devastating blow to the local community.  Managing Editor of the Orlando Sentinel joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype to discuss the latest developments.

"Can the U.S. do more to prevent ISIS-inspired attacks?" PBS NewsHour 6/12/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  When a terror attack occurs in the U.S. -- often it can provoke a change in policy which may or may not be in the country's best interest.  Stephen Biddle of the Council of Foreign Affairs and Policy joins Hari Sreenivasan for some analysis on what policymakers can do to respond to these attacks.