Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2024

Executive Summary

• Every year, individuals with ties to different extreme causes and movements kill people in the United States; the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) tracks these murders. Extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, to further a group or gang they may belong to or even while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities.
• In 2024, domestic extremists killed at least 13 people in the U.S., in 11 separate incidents. These deaths are significantly lower than the 20 people killed by extremists in 2023 or the 28 people killed in 2022. The number of people in the U.S. killed by extremists has decreased for three years in a row, but this trend will not continue. Already, COE has documented 15 extremist-related murders in 2025 so far, 14 of them stemming from the deadly vehicular terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day.
• One of the reasons extremist murder totals have been down in recent years has been a decrease in deadly incidents connected to domestic Islamist extremists and far-left extremists. However, the New Orleans attack, committed by an American citizen who pledged himself to ISIS, raises concerns about a possible return to violent attacks by homegrown Islamist extremists.
• The 2024 murder totals are also low because, unlike in many recent years, no extremist-related mass shooting events took place.
• All the extremist-related murders in 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds, with eight of the 13 killings involving white supremacists and the remaining five having connections to far-right anti-government extremists. This is the third year in a row that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings. This trend has also been interrupted by the New Orleans attack.
• Two of the deadly incidents from 2024 involved adherents of the anti-government sovereign citizen movement, including the deliberate murder of a police officer in Dallas. This report includes a special section that explores deadly violence connected to the sovereign citizen movement, including the murder of a number of law enforcement officers.

Death and Extremism: An Introduction

Each year, people in the United States are killed by individuals with ties to extreme movements and ideologies.

These killings stem from a wide variety of causes: acts of terrorism, hate crimes, spontaneous violence (occurring during incidents such as unexpected encounters with law enforcement), extremist group dynamics (such as killing suspected informants), extremist-related organized crime and non-ideological causes (such as domestic violence or drug-related violence). Victims can include government officials and law enforcement officers; members of specific racial, ethnic, religious or immigrant communities; members of the LGBTQ+ community; members of other groups or gangs; family members or neighbors; and people simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Often, these deaths go largely unnoticed except by the families and friends of the victims, but some killings—such as mass shootings—can shock the nation.

Since 2008, the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) has worked to identify and track as many domestic extremist-related murders as possible, regardless of the motive or the ideology, and to identify past extremist-related murders dating back to 1970. Starting in 2016, COE has released annual reports detailing and analyzing the extremist-related murders of the previous year, examining long-term trends and performing deep dives into the data, such as analyzing killings connected to a specific ideology or movement. This report, assessing the extremist-related murders that occurred in the United States in 2024, is the 10th such annual assessment.

Domestic extremists of many types pose significant problems in the U.S., from incitement and harassment to hate crimes and terrorism, but reliable data is often scarce, and this can make it more difficult to assess or respond to issues related to extremism. These reports allow COE to share its data to help people understand one of the most serious threats that extremists can pose: the taking of human lives. They focus on domestic extremists—extremists who are U.S. citizens or longtime permanent residents—because killings connected to domestic extremists are common and occur every year, while murders in the United States committed by members of foreign terrorist groups are very rare.

In recent years, extremists from the far right (such as white supremacists or sovereign citizens), the far left (such as Black nationalists or anarchists), homegrown Islamist extremists and adherents of other, more obscure causes or groups have all committed murders in the United States. All such killings are included in these annual reports when they occur.

Each report also updates the statistics from previous years, where applicable, as the extremist connections to some murders can sometimes take months or years to emerge. Our report on extremist murders in 2023 initially identified 17 extremist-related killings for that year, while our report for 2022 identified 25 murders. Our most recent statistics now stand at 20 extremist-related murders for 2023 and 28 for 2022. Thus, the figures given here for 2024 are essentially preliminary and likely to increase over time. Typically, murder totals for a given year tend to stabilize after around five years.^[1]

It is important to note these statistics are just one metric of extremist violence and crime. Every year, extremists in the U.S. are involved in terrorist plots and acts, armed standoffs, shootouts with police, hate crimes, scams and cons, threats and harassment and a wide variety of other criminal acts. In late 2023, for example, ADL released a comprehensive report on right-wing extremist terrorism in the United States from 2017-2022 that includes many incidents not detailed in these annual murder-related reports because they did not result in fatalities. Similarly, in 2024, ADL published an article detailing a recent increase in Islamist terrorist incidents in the United States, including several plots to cause mass casualties, but because law enforcement successfully prevented those intended terrorist acts and any resulting casualties, they too are not included here.^[2]

ADL’s regularly updated Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism and Terrorism (H.E.A.T.) Map keeps track of some of the more serious of these extremist-related incidents, including extremist murders but also terrorist incidents and extremist-related shootouts. It also contains other important types of data related to hate or extremism, such as antisemitic incidents and white supremacist events across the United States.^[3]

Extremist-related Killings in 2024 Decrease for Third Year in a Row

Domestic extremists killed at least 13 people in the U.S. in 2024, down from 20 killings in 2023 and 28 killings in 2022. In fact, such extremist-related murders have decreased each year for the past three years. Not since the year 2000, which had 10 murders, has there been a year with fewer extremist-related deaths.

Indeed, extremist-related killings for 2024 were so low that the number of such killings in 2025 at the time of this writing (mid-January 2025) has already surpassed the entire total for 2024. At least 15 people have been killed by extremists in the United States so far in 2025, 14 of them victims of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who—after declaring his allegiance to the terrorist group ISIS—deliberately drove a rented truck into a crowd of people celebrating the New Year holiday on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Jabbar’s deadly terrorist attack killed 14 people and injured dozens more. Jabbar then opened fire on responding police, wounding two officers before law enforcement killed him with return fire. The New Orleans attack, by itself ending the four-year trend of decreasing extremist-related deaths, is a shadow that hangs over this report. Had Jabbar launched his attack just one day earlier, the number of extremist-related deaths in 2024 would have been over twice as high.^[4]

The New Orleans attack also illustrates the massive impact of mass killing events on extremist-related death totals. Whether a particular year’s murder tally is higher or lower very often depends on one question: did mass killing attacks occur that year? Extremist-related killings over the past decade have been dominated by this question. A decade ago, in 2015 and 2016, the number of extremist-related deaths was very high (71 in 2015 and 79 in 2016). One reason for those high figures is that right-wing extremists (such as white supremacists and anti-government extremists), left-wing extremists (such as Black nationalists) and domestic Islamist extremists all committed significant shooting attacks during that two-year period. In the following years, however, the number of mass killing incidents and murders by Islamist and far-left extremists dropped off considerably—though not entirely, as Sayfullo Saipov’s deadly vehicular attack in 2017 along a bike path in New York City illustrates.

Extremist-related killings in recent years have primarily been committed by far-right extremists. Mass shootings caused a substantial portion of those deaths. The white supremacist mass shooter who attacked Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, killing 23 people, was responsible by himself for almost half of the 51 extremist-related deaths that year. The lower numbers since then can substantially be attributed to fewer far-right mass killing events (with numerous planned incidents prevented by law enforcement) and fewer deaths at some that did occur. One must travel back to the year 2000, which saw nine killings committed by far-right extremists, to find a lower number of deaths from right-wing extremists than the 13 in 2024.

The 2025 New Orleans attack, the first mass killing incident by a domestic Islamist extremist since Saipov’s 2017 rampage, is a troubling development, especially if it marks the beginning of a trend of increased homegrown Islamist violence rather than a one-off event.  

The 13 extremist-related deaths in 2024 occurred in 11 separate incidents (two more than the nine deadly incidents of 2023). Extremists took two lives each in two incidents, and a single life each in nine other incidents. Firearms were the weapons of choice for seven of the 13 murders (54%). A consistent fact of extremist violence in the United States is that firearms—typically handguns or assault-style weapons—are the weapon of choice for the great majority of extremist-related murders. Many people may think of extremists employing weapons such as bombs and explosives, but firearms—plentiful, accessible and often laxly regulated in the United States—are by far the most common deadly weapon used by extremists. Over the past 10 years, 79% of all the nation’s extremist-related murders involved firearms as the murder weapon—just one of the consequences of the country’s longstanding failure to take meaningful action to combat gun violence.  

It is important to note that extremist-related killings comprise only a small number of the total homicides in the U.S. each year. However, extremist killings can have a disproportionate impact on a community or even the entire country, especially when they take the form of a hate crime, terrorist attack or mass shooting. The white supremacist mass shootings in recent years targeting Blacks, Jews, Latinos and the LGBTQ+ community stand as a grim reminder of this fact, as does the Islamist-related New Orleans attack in January 2025.^[5]

Exploring the Numbers

The ADL Center on Extremism tracks domestic extremist-related murders connected to all types of extremism, including right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism and domestic Islamist extremism, as well as less common forms.

When, as sometimes happens, extremists adhere to or are influenced by more than one extremist movement, they are categorized here by their apparent “primary” ideology, i.e., the ideology that seems most important to them, is the most recently followed or, if applicable, seems most directly related to the murders they committed. This is done not to obscure the presence of multiple belief systems but to make quantification more practical.

The trend in recent years has been for the great majority of extremist-related murders to be connected to some form of right-wing extremism. That is also true for 2024: for the third year in a row, all the murders identified were tied to right-wing extremism. Because of the deadly New Orleans attack, this trend is unlikely to be repeated in 2025.

As is often the case, white supremacists were the perpetrators in the majority of the killings—eight of 13 (62%). As expected, especially in years without a mass killing, white supremacist gang members (prison or street) were responsible for many of the murders—six of 13 (46%). Far-right anti-government extremists were responsible for five murders (38%), a higher proportion than normal, although the small number of overall murders can make it easy for even a single incident to significantly affect statistics.

The long-term trends resemble those of the short term, in that far-right extremists have committed the bulk of extremist-related murders: 328 of the 429 killings (76%) over the past decade. Domestic Islamist extremists were responsible for 79 killings (18%) over that same span, while murders from other sources made up the small remainder. Over the past 10 years, right-wing extremists have committed the majority of extremist-related murders in all years but one: 2016, the year of the shooting spree at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, conducted by a person motivated by Islamist extremism.^[6] 

The high number of murders connected to far-right extremists occurs for several reasons. It is not that only right-wing extremists are violent. Left-wing extremists, for example, engage in violence ranging from assaults to fire-bombings and arsons, but in recent decades have only occasionally targeted people with deadly violence. Extremists on the left have proven more likely to attack property than people. Domestic Islamist extremists in the U.S. have certainly been willing to engage in deadly violence—including shooting sprees and vehicular attacks—but such incidents decreased significantly after 2017, primarily due to the decline of the terrorist group ISIS, whose calls to violence inspired many plots and attacks. Arrests related to domestic Islamist extremists continue to occur in the United States but are primarily cases involving providing material support to terrorist groups abroad. However, the recent rise in Islamist-related terror incidents, as well as the New Orleans attack, may suggest an increased risk of deadly violence from that quarter in the future.^[7]

In contrast, the far-right in the United States is large, comprising many movements, from white supremacists to anti-abortion extremists to anti-government sovereign citizens and militia groups. Many of its constituent movements have grown in recent years, and most far right movements have at least some followers willing to attack human targets as well as property or infrastructure. Far-right extremists have committed assassinations, terrorist attacks, deadly hate crimes and other forms of lethal violence. Some segments of the extreme right, such as accelerationist white supremacists, explicitly urge their adherents to conduct deadly attacks.^[8] 

Another reason why more killings are connected to right-wing extremism than other forms of extremism is the fact that some types of far-right extremists frequently commit non-ideological violence as well as ideological violence. For the narrow purposes of this report, COE defines ideological murders as killings directed against perceived enemies, as well as other people, such as police or bystanders, who may get in the way of or try to stop such attacks. The Center on Extremism defines non-ideological murders as murders for which the motive is unclear, murders committed to benefit an extremist group or members thereof (such as killing internal or external rivals or suspected informants) and murders committed for traditional motives such as greed, anger or jealousy. These can include domestic violence murders as well as murders related to criminal enterprises such as drug dealing, in which many white supremacist gangs engage.

The Center on Extremism conservatively classifies all such murders, even those with unknown motive, as “non-ideological,” even though it is possible that extremism still played at least some role in many. Non-ideological murders are included in these statistics because to exclude them would give a misleadingly understated impression of the violent acts extremists commit. Moreover, there is considerable public interest in some of these subjects—such as the links between extremism and domestic violence or the links and similarities between extremism and organized crime.^[9]

Over the past decade, ideological and non-ideological killings by extremists have been roughly equivalent (217 to 212), with most of the latter coming at the hands of right-wing extremists, primarily white supremacists. One reason for this is that a major segment of the white supremacist movement, white supremacist prison gangs, are particularly violent, committing hate-related murders, murders of members of other gangs, murders related to criminal enterprises such as illegal narcotics and murders of their own gang members and associates for reasons that may include such perceived offenses as breaking rules, attempting to leave a gang or being a suspected informant. Anti-government sovereign citizens have also been responsible for numerous non-ideological killings in recent years. This is partly because, since the late 1990s, sovereign citizen ideology has increasingly spread within the nation’s jails and prisons, including to people with violent histories.

It is worth noting that the statistics in this report may unintentionally undercount the number of non-ideological killings by other types of extremists, simply because their extremist ties may be less likely to be uncovered in the criminal investigation or news coverage. The fact that someone who killed their spouse in an act of domestic violence was also a member of an anti-government militia group may simply never be revealed. However, certain types of extremism are easier to identify among murder suspects. A white supremacist who commits a non-ideological killing may often be identified as such by his or her distinctive white supremacist tattoos or perhaps by a gang association previously documented by law enforcement or corrections officials. Similarly, a sovereign citizen arrested for a murder is likely to use the distinctive pseudo-legal language and tactics of that movement, often while representing themselves in court or while making court filings, which often attracts media attention.

Non-ideological murders by extremists have outnumbered ideological murders by extremists in six of the past 10 years. In 2024, only three of the 13 murders appear clearly to have been committed in whole or in part for ideological motives. Some of the remaining killings still had ties to extremist groups, such as a pair of white supremacist prison gang members in Idaho who arranged a violent escape from custody for one of the two, an escape attempt that reportedly resulted in two deaths before the gang members were apprehended. The motives for some other killings, such as the beating death of a Montana camper allegedly at the hands of a white supremacist, simply remain unknown (see the incidents section for the details of these violent attacks). This report classifies these incidents as non-ideological. 

The Killings

Right-wing extremists commit most extremist-related murders each year, but 2024 was the third straight year in which far-right extremists committed all the documented murders. Six of the murders had reported ties to members of white supremacist gangs (prison gangs or street gangs), while a seventh was committed by someone reportedly tied to the Asatru Folk Alliance, a white supremacist Norse pagan group. Two murders were allegedly committed by members of a loosely organized religious and anti-government group called “God’s Misfits,” while a third was committed by members of a family who all shared strong religious and anti-government beliefs. The remaining killings were committed by extremists who seemingly had no ties to organized groups.

In 2023, the majority of extremist-related murders (11 of 20) were committed by white supremacists attempting mass shootings. In contrast, 2024 saw no extremist-related mass shootings, one major reason why the death totals were so low. Most extremist-related killings in 2024 involved a single victim; the highest number of victims for a single incident was only two. Unusually, none of the murders in 2024 appear to have been hate crimes.

Extremists pose a threat not only to community members but to law enforcement as well. Every year, extremists endanger the lives of police officers during standoffs, shootouts, flights from justice or even deliberate attempts to kill law enforcement. Extremists wound or injure officers every year; in most years, extremists murder at least one officer. In rare exceptions, no police officers were killed by extremists in either 2022 or 2023. That short streak ended in 2024, as extremists deliberately murdered police officers in Florida and Texas. In August in Lake County, Florida, members of a family with religious and anti-government extremist views ambushed sheriff’s deputies responding to a disturbance call, wounding two deputies and killing a third, Master Deputy Bradley Link. Link had finished his shift and was driving home to his wife when the disturbance call came through and he made the decision to respond. That same month, a sovereign citizen in Dallas, Texas, shot and killed Dallas Police Department Officer Darron Burks, who had started a law enforcement career after serving for almost 17 years as a high school teacher and coach. Officials characterized his death as an “execution.” Two other officers were wounded, one severely, in the subsequent attempt to apprehend the sovereign citizen.^[10]

Altogether, extremists have killed 23 law enforcement officers over the past 10 years.

Sovereign Citizens and Deadly Violence: A Closer Look

Two of the deadly incidents in 2024, accounting for three deaths, involved sovereign citizens. In March, members of a small and loosely organized religious and anti-government extremist group who called themselves “God’s Misfits” allegedly abducted two women in Oklahoma and murdered them over a custody dispute. At least one of the Misfits, Paul Grice, was involved with the sovereign citizen movement; he later testified at a hearing that he attended sovereign citizen training sessions led by David Straight, a prominent leader in the movement, and that he was even wearing a Straight hoodie on the day of the murders. In Dallas, Texas, in August, as mentioned above, another sovereign citizen, Corey Cobb-Bey, shot and killed a Dallas police officer and wounded two more, shooting one of the officers in the face and permanently blinding her in both eyes.^[11]

These murders were just two of the most serious among a spate of recent violent incidents involving sovereign citizens in the United States. ADL reported in September that, including the Dallas incident, sovereign citizens opened fire on police officers no fewer than five times in 2024—and threatened officers with a gun in a sixth incident. In addition to the death of Officer Burks, four police officers and one civilian were wounded in these encounters. In recent years, sovereign citizens have engaged in shootouts, armed standoffs, assaults, courtroom violence, kidnappings, wild vehicle chases and many acts of threats and intimidation, all testament to the dangers posed by this large and growing extremist movement.^[12]

The sovereign citizen movement emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s from a set of beliefs that originated with the far-right tax protest movement and the anti-government Posse Comitatus movement. Sovereign citizens believe that, long ago, an insidious conspiracy infiltrated and replaced the original “de jure” government, which followed God’s law and the common law, with a tyrannical, illegitimate de facto government that used contracts and commercial law to ensnare Americans into a modern form of slavery. Sovereigns claim that they can take certain steps, such as declarations and filings, to divorce themselves from the illegitimate government and return to the original one—after which the illegitimate government (i.e., actual government) has no more authority or jurisdiction over them. They can thereafter simply ignore its laws, regulations, court orders, taxes and other measures. Sovereign citizen ideology thus puts its adherents strongly in opposition to virtually all government, as well as many other forms of authority or power, such as the banking system and the healthcare system. A routine traffic stop or residence visit on the part of a law enforcement official or government employee can quickly turn into a dangerous—or even deadly—situation.

The first deadly incident involving a sovereign citizen occurred in 1983 when Gordon Kahl killed two U.S. marshals and a sheriff in two separate shootouts in North Dakota and Arkansas. No ordinary extremist, Kahl was a tax protester, a Posse Comitatus member and an adherent of the white supremacist religious sect Christian Identity, in addition to being involved with the nascent sovereign citizen movement. However, the early sovereign citizen movement was not particularly violent, perhaps because it was so small. In the 1990s, however, the movement grew rapidly, bringing in many thousands of new adherents and spreading to new places and new audiences. Sovereign citizen violence expanded in the 1990s as well, including five murders (three of the victims of which were law enforcement officers). In addition to these incidents, one of the Oklahoma City bombing conspirators, Terry Nichols, became a sovereign citizen in the early 1990s. The 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building committed by Nichols and Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, including five law enforcement officers.^[13]

In the 2000s, the number of people killed by sovereign citizens jumped to 14, half of whom were police officers. The following decade, sovereign-related murders more than doubled, to 35, including members of law enforcement. The 2020s, not yet half over, have seen nine more people killed by sovereigns (two of them police officers). Altogether, not counting the Oklahoma City bombing, ADL has been able to identify at least 66 murders connected to the sovereign citizen movement since its emergence, with the majority of such killings occurring in the past 15 years. The victims have included 21 law enforcement officers. These figures likely understate the true death toll.

Moreover, not only do sovereign citizens commit many murders, some murderers have become sovereign citizens. With the growth of sovereign citizen criminal activity in the 1990s, many sovereigns ended up behind bars—where they did not give up their beliefs but rather taught them to other prisoners. By the early 2000s, ADL experts noticed a growing number of sovereign citizens active behind bars. That trend has continued; sovereign citizen beliefs are now commonly spread in jails and prisons and such institutions have become a significant source of new recruits to the movement—including people charged with serious crimes such as murder. Some inmates-turned-sovereigns have even represented themselves at hearings or trials related to their murder cases, using the pseudo-legal arguments popular with the movement.^[14]

Since the 1990s, the sovereign citizen movement has steadily grown. Today, it likely has around 450,000 adherents in the United States (and has spread to many other countries). In recent years, the movement has found new audiences to recruit from, including people angry at government efforts to combat COVID-19, the anti-vaccine movement, the QAnon conspiracy movement and even hardcore MAGA adherents. The large size of the movement and the volatile nature of many of its adherents means that sovereign citizen-related killings are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Though sovereign citizens are collectively not as violent as white supremacists, and are responsible for far fewer murders, their capacity for violence—including deadly violence against law enforcement—should not be discounted.

Extremist Murders in 2024: The Incidents

• Concord, New Hampshire, January 16, 2024. Police charged Jesse James Sullivan, of Concord, New Hampshire, with the shooting death of his younger half-brother, Zackary Sullivan, on January 16, 2024. Jesse Sullivan was charged with second-degree murder and falsifying physical evidence; later, the charge was upgraded to first-degree murder. Zackary died of a single gunshot wound to the neck. Jesse Sullivan is a reported member of the Brothers of White Warriors, a New Hampshire-based white supremacist prison gang. Authorities have said Sullivan killed Zackary because he believed his half-brother had informed on him to the police.^[15]
• Levittown, Pennsylvania, January 30, 2024. Justin Mohn allegedly shot his father, then decapitated him, showing the severed head in an uploaded video in which he ranted about a variety of right-wing topics ranging from antifa to the Federal Reserve. During his rant, he issued a call for "patriots and militia" members to rise up and commit violence. In 2023, Mohn had created a group he called Mohn's Militia, which apparently was a militia of one. He had also self-published a book called "America's Coming Bloody Revolution." Although Mohn's views were broad and not always completely coherent, he seemed to lean closer to anti-government extremist ideology than any other kind. Mohn was charged with first-degree murder, two counts of terrorism and other crimes. In an interview after the incident, Mohn reportedly claimed that his father was a federal employee and had betrayed him, and that Mohn killed him after his father tried to resist a “citizen’s arrest” Mohn tried to perform.^[16]
• Livingston, Texas, February 15, 2024. Don Steven McDougal was arrested and charged with capital murder of an 11-year-old girl whose body was found in a river with a stone tied to it. McDougal, who lived on the property of the girl's father, has a lengthy criminal history, including a child enticement conviction, and is reported by law enforcement to have ties to the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. He also has at least two swastika tattoos and one SS lightning bolts tattoo on his body. In January 2025, McDougal pleaded guilty to the murder, in exchange for a sentence of life without parole.^[17]
• Olympia, Washington, February 19, 2024. On February 19, 2024, Arrin Daniel Salter allegedly assaulted a man with a baseball bat, causing serious injuries; the victim died in the hospital four days later. Salter was subsequently arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder. The attack seemed to be motivated by a dispute over an earlier incident. According to the Washington Department of Corrections, Salter is "an affiliated gang member and white supremacist."^[18]
• Orofino, Idaho, March 20, 2024. Two members of the Aryan Knights, an Idaho-based white supremacist prison gang, were charged with first-degree murder and other crimes related to a violent escape attempt. Nicholas Umphenour, one of the members, ambushed corrections officers while they were returning the second member, Skylar Meade, to prison following a hospital visit. Two corrections officers were wounded by gunfire during the ambush and escape. While at large, the escapees are believed by authorities to have killed two elderly men in two separate incidents on the same day, as they sought to steal a vehicle and find a refuge. Police captured the men the following day. Both men later pleaded guilty to charges related to the violent escape attempt and received lengthy prison sentences. They have also been charged with murder in connection with one of the two deaths; formal charges have not yet been filed in the case of the second death.^[19]
• Four Corners, Oklahoma, March 30, 2024. Oklahoma authorities arrested five people in connection with the murder of two women, Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley, who disappeared on March 30 while driving from Kansas to Oklahoma and whose bodies were subsequently found on a property some miles away. Kelley was a court-appointed supervisor who traveled with Butler to pick up Butler’s children from the home of one of their grandparents. According to authorities, the five people arrested—Tad Cullum (on whose property the bodies were found), Tifany Adams, Cole and Cora Twombly and Paul Grice—were all part of a loose religious and anti-government group whose members called themselves God’s Misfits. The social media accounts of some of the suspects reveal far right sentiments, while at least one of them, Paul Grice, was a sovereign citizen. Prosecutors have charged the five suspects with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping and conspiracy. Testimony from defendants during a December 2024 preliminary hearing indicates the women were killed with hammers and knives. The murders seem to have stemmed from a custody dispute.^[20]
• Eustis, Florida, August 2, 2024. Sheriff’s deputies responding to a disturbance call in Lake County, Florida, were met with gunfire when trying to enter the back door of a home; two deputies were injured, and a third deputy, Master Deputy Bradley Link, was killed. Three of the people inside the home, father Michael Sulpizio and daughters Savannah and Cheyenne Sulpizio, allegedly killed themselves during the standoff that followed the ambush. During that standoff, Master Deputy Link’s wife called her husband, not knowing what had transpired. One of the women in the home answered the call, saying, “So you say that you are supposedly the dead man’s wife?” The mother, Julie Sulpizio, was subsequently indicted for principal to first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree and other charges. According to law enforcement, the suspects—two parents and two adult children—had stockpiled guns and ammunition inside the home. Investigators also found anti-government propaganda and “conspiracy-theory media” inside the residence. According to Sheriff Peyton Grinnell, Julie Sulpizio also made various statements of a religious nature during the incident. Authorities said that the mother believed her neighbors were “pedophiles” and attempted to lure them into the home to be ambushed, but when law enforcement arrived, she convinced them to enter instead, where they were met with gunfire by the father.^[21]
• Santa Fe, New Mexico, August 6, 2024. Zachary Babitz allegedly shot and killed an 83-year-old man outside a big-box store in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before driving south to Las Cruces with a woman, where they allegedly robbed a fast-food restaurant and carjacked a vehicle before Babitz was apprehended. A week before the incident, Babitz had been charged with bank robbery. Babitz, who has the white supremacist numeric code “1488” tattooed on his fingers, recently joined the Asatru Folk Assembly, a white supremacist Norse pagan organization. Federal prosecutors have charged Babitz with carjacking and related crimes; state authorities also charged Babitz but later dropped those charges to participate in the federal prosecution.^[22]
• Dallas, Texas, August 29, 2024. On August 29, Corey Cobb-Bey, a sovereign citizen and adherent of the Moorish Science Temple, a longstanding religious sect with ties to the sovereign citizen movement, stopped his vehicle near a parked police cruiser in Dallas, then emerged to approach Officer Darron Burks, who was sitting in the cruiser. After a brief discussion, Cobb-Bey shot Burks at point-blank range, killing him. Cobb-Bey then took a shotgun from the cruiser, waited for other officers to respond to the incident, then opened fire on them, wounding two officers, including one who was left permanently blind. He drove off, with law enforcement in pursuit. After a 20-mile chase, Cobb-Bey exited his vehicle carrying the shotgun and pointed it at officers emerging from their own vehicles. Multiple officers fired at him, killing him. Authorities have labeled the killing of Officer Burks an “ambush” and “execution.”^[23]
• Big Sky, Montana, October 10, 2024. Authorities in Montana arrested Daren Christopher Abbey, a self-described white supremacist with multiple white supremacist tattoos, for the alleged murder of Dustin Kjersem, who was camping in a tent near Big Sky in southwestern Montana. Investigators identified Abbey as a suspect after discovering DNA on a beer can found at the crime scene. Abbey, who has claimed self-defense, allegedly told police he assaulted the victim with multiple items, including a screwdriver and an axe. Abbey also reportedly admitted to removing evidence from the crime scene, as well as items belonging to the victim. The motive for the crime is not clear. In 2011, a Montana jury convicted Abbey of a hate crime for threatening to stab a Black person at a bar; in a 2012 article on that incident, the Southern Poverty Law Center described him as a “neo-Nazi skinhead.” Prosecutors have charged Abbey with deliberate homicide and two counts of tampering with evidence.^[24]
• Fountain Valley, California, December 2, 2024. Timothy Bradford Cole II, described by law enforcement as a documented white supremacist gang member, allegedly set fire to a bush outside a relative’s house in an attempt to catch the house on fire, as retaliation for a custody-related issue. Cole reportedly drove off when police found him near the home, but crashed into another vehicle, injuring two people and killing a third, Hong Ngoc Nguyen, a foreign exchange student from Vietnam. Authorities have charged Cole with murder, evading a police officer causing death, two counts of evading a police officer causing serious injury and arson of an inhabited structure.^[25]

Every year, some murders attract speculation regarding or allegations of possible extremist connections. The Center on Extremism examines all such incidents for evidence of extremism. Some cases are confirmed as being extremist-connected and included in these statistics. In many instances, though, investigation either reveals no extremist ties or uncovers insufficient evidence to satisfactorily determine an extremist connection. Such incidents are not included in the year’s extremist murder statistics. If additional evidence is subsequently revealed for a specific murder that confirms an extremist tie, such a murder would be added to the statistics at that time.

In 2024, two high-profile murder incidents particularly invited such questions. The first was the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance provider, in New York City on December 4, 2024. Thompson was shot and killed by a masked gunman outside a hotel hosting an investors' meeting connected to UnitedHealthcare. A massive investigation led to the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in Pennsylvania several days later. Authorities have charged Mangione with Thompson’s murder. Authorities said that Mangione shot Thompson with a 3D-printed “ghost gun” using bullets that had cartridges inscribed with “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose,” believed to be related to a phrase (“delay, deny, defend”) used by critics of the health insurance industry. When arrested, Mangione allegedly had in his possession a short, handwritten document criticizing the healthcare system and UnitedHealthcare specifically. The publicity over the murder led many people to scrutinize Mangione’s limited online footprint for what clues it might hold regarding motive or ideology. However, his posts and statements, with a mix of right-leaning, left-leaning and not easily categorizable views, did not reflect any one clear ideology or belief system. A blogger who’d had a two-hour video call with Mangione in May 2024 reported, after the murder, that Mangione had no inclination towards either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but “liked some of the things Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was saying.” The blogger also noted Mangione’s interest in terrorist Ted Kaczynski, something also apparent from the suspect’s online footprint, but claimed Mangione also said that Kaczynski deserved to be behind bars. In any case, though Kaczynski himself had an ideology that might be described as neo-Luddite, he has had admirers from among a range of disparate political ideologies and beliefs. Journalists have also noted Mangione’s personal health history, his struggles with which appear to have generated much of his anger against the healthcare system in the United States. Because hostility towards the healthcare system or health insurance companies is not in itself an ideology and because a good portion of the anger on Mangione’s part may have stemmed from purely personal reasons—though it does not appear that he utilized UnitedHealthcare himself—the Center on Extremism has not categorized the murder of Thompson as an extremist-related murder, though that designation may change if more information or clarity emerges in the future.^[26]

The second incident was the December 16, 2024, school shooting committed at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, by a 15-year-old female student, Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow. Rupnow used a handgun to shoot multiple people, two fatally (a teacher and a student), before she shot and killed herself. A Center on Extremism investigation into the social media accounts of the perpetrator revealed that Rupnow belonged to an online subculture for what might be termed “death/killing obsessives.” Adherents of this subculture are fascinated by grisly deaths, as well as school shooters and other mass killers (from mass shootings to crimes against humanity). They share and collect materials related to such incidents, discuss various killers and, in extreme circumstances, may attempt to engage in deadly violence themselves, or encourage others to do so. Some adherents of this subculture can develop sympathies for far-right movements such as white supremacists or incels, but sometimes the evidence can be misleading. Because Nazi Germany perpetrated the Holocaust and other large-scale mass killings, some death/killing obsessives develop some degree of interest in such subjects, though their interest is often kindled primarily because of the killing rather than the ideology per se. Similarly, some death/killing obsessives exhibit fascination for white supremacist mass killers such as Brenton Tarrant or Dylann Roof, or other extremist killers such as Ted Kaczynski. Of these, some may have sympathies for the extremist beliefs of such killers, while others may be interested in them simply because they were mass killers. Such inclinations can make it difficult to evaluate possible evidence of extremist ties, particularly when a perpetrator may be very young.^[27]

In the case of Rupnow, it is clear the teen had contacts with white supremacists online, though the nature and extent of those contacts is often not apparent. Most disturbingly, Rupnow received an invitation to and participated in a small Telegram chat in which Arda Küçükyetim, the Turkish neo-Nazi who stabbed five people outside a mosque in August 2024, posted a manifesto shortly before his attack. Rupnow also had a TikTok account in which she shared some antisemitic and white supremacist memes created by others but posted no original white supremacist content herself. Her profile bio included the phrase “totally normal day,” a code for the racist acronym TND, which itself stands for “total n***** death,” used by white supremacists but also racists and trolls on TikTok and other platforms. A misanthropic manifesto attributed to Rupnow and shared online after the attack includes some racist language, but its authorship has not been verified by law enforcement as of this writing. Because of the lack of verifiable original content that clearly shows white supremacist sentiments, because most of the perpetrator’s content was not extremist-related and because of the shooter’s very young age, the Center on Extremism has not categorized this as an extremist-related murder at this time, choosing instead to wait to see if additional information becomes available.^[28]

Two additional murders occurred in 2024 that, while of lower profile, raised fears of extremism, hate crimes or terrorism within the Jewish community. In March 2024, a man wielding a gun, Mohammed Abdulkareem, opened fire inside a dentist’s office in El Cajon, California, wounding two employees and killing a dentist, Benjamin Harouni, who was Jewish. Authorities investigating the murder characterized Abdulkareem as a patient unhappy with his treatment who had for some time exhibited erratic and concerning behavior towards the dentist office. They also said that racial or religious hatred did not seem to be a motive. In the months since his arrest, Abdulkareem’s attorney has asked for examinations to determine if he is mentally competent to stand trial. In November 2024, Aviv Brock, a young Israeli citizen living in Memphis, Tennessee, and working as a locksmith, was robbed and shot to death while going out to do a locksmithing job. In subsequent days, two juveniles aged 16 and 17 were arrested on murder and other charges in connection with the crime; their names have not been released. ADL has been unable to confirm any connection to extremism in either of these incidents but continues to monitor them.^[29]

Notes on Methodology and Sources

The Center on Extremism has compiled a list of well over 1,000 known murders/killings perpetrated since 1970—essentially the post-Civil Rights era—by people associated with a variety of domestic extremist movements. These are primarily murders committed by American extremists on U.S. soil, though a few cases involving American extremists murdering other Americans abroad are also included (such as at Jonestown in Guyana). Fatalities in foreign terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, such as the December 2019 shootings at Naval Air Station Pensacola by a radicalized Saudi military aviation student, are not included. Such incidents are, however, very rare.

Because extremist connections to some murders can take months or years to be revealed, statistics for the most recent years will inevitably be revised upward in future years. For example, COE’s report on extremist-related murders in 2022 counted 25 murders, but as of early 2025, COE has now tallied 28 murders for that year. The chances for upward revisions drop considerably after around five years.

The incidents are derived primarily from public sources, leading to some limitations regarding cross-era or cross-movement comparisons. Regarding cross-era comparisons, it is generally more difficult to find reliable and comprehensive information on extremist-related killings from the 1970s and 1980s, so it may not be as meaningful to compare figures from earlier eras to figures from more recent decades as figures for the earlier eras are likely to undercount deaths.

The main limitation of cross-movement comparisons is that extremist connections to killings are easier to determine for some movements than for others. For example, white supremacists, who often display many racist and white supremacist tattoos or may be documented as white supremacists by gang investigators or corrections officials, are frequently easily identifiable. Sovereign citizens are also often easily identifiable because of the unique language they use in their utterances and documents. In contrast, it may be more difficult for police or media to identify other extremist associations that a suspect might have. This issue comes up more often with killings that have a non-ideological or unknown motive; in such cases, police may not necessarily be actively searching for extremist associations at all. It is likely that non-ideological murders committed by extremists other than white supremacists and sovereign citizens are underrepresented in ADL’s data.

In addition, because murders behind bars often attract little or no media attention and are typically not publicized by prison officials, incidents of prison-based deadly violence committed by adherents of all extremist movements are likely under-represented. It can also often take years for the extremist connections to murders behind bars to appear on the public record.

Jails and prisons pose another problem, specifically regarding adherents of the sovereign citizen movement, because those locations have become such a significant source of recruitment. Inmates behind bars for a variety of crimes—including murder—are recruited into the sovereign citizen movement by fellow inmates, who often promise prospective recruits that the movement’s pseudo-legal tactics can get them off the hook. Someone currently being tried for murder who attempts sovereign citizen arguments or tactics during legal proceedings may have only been exposed to such beliefs after their arrest and not been a sovereign citizen at the time of the murder. In recent years, ADL has identified a number of murder cases in which suspects did not seem to be adherents of the sovereign citizen movement at the time of their arrest but, at some later point in their legal proceedings, started to use sovereign citizen arguments. Consequently, ADL does not automatically assume that someone making sovereign citizen arguments during legal proceedings was a sovereign citizen before their arrest unless there is evidence to suggest as much or unless their sovereign arguments were made relatively soon after their arrest.^[30]

As with any such list, the inclusion or exclusion of certain borderline cases may stem from judgment calls based on the best evidence available, judgments with which others may reasonably disagree. ADL makes the best determinations it can based on the evidence available at the time.

Policy Recommendations

We need a whole-of-government approach to address the threat of violent extremism. The framework that ADL has created — the PROTECT plan — is a comprehensive, seven-part plan to mitigate the threat posed by domestic extremism and domestic terrorism while protecting civil rights and civil liberties. Together, focusing on these seven categories can have an immediate and deeply significant impact in preventing and countering domestic terrorism— more so than any one action, policy or law— and can do so while protecting civil rights and liberties and ensuring that government overreach does not harm the same vulnerable people and communities that these extremists target. Our suggestions come under these seven areas:

Prioritize Preventing and Countering Domestic Terrorism

Resource According to the Threat

Oppose Extremists in Government Service

Take Public Health and Other Domestic Terrorism Prevention Measures

End the Complicity of Social Media in Facilitating Extremism

Create an Independent Clearinghouse for Online Extremist Content

Target Foreign White Supremacist Terrorist Groups for Sanctions

Prioritize Preventing and Countering Domestic Terrorism

First, we urge Congress to adopt a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to preventing and countering domestic terrorism.

• The first Trump Administration rightly identified domestic terrorism as a key concern in its National Counterterrorism Strategy and the accompanying Department of Homeland Security Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence.
• The past strategy and the Biden Administration’s subsequent Countering Domestic Terrorism Strategy were laudable, and a step in the right direction. However, many critical details were left unaddressed. ADL worked with partners to press the previous Administration for further details into how the plan would be implemented, and the steps that should be taken to ensure protection for civil rights and civil liberties. Congress must push departments and agencies to create their own plans for the Strategy in keeping with the goals outlined by both the Trump and Biden strategy documents.
• The White House held a bipartisan United We Stand Summit to address hate-fueled violence. Bringing together impacted communities with experts on hate and extremism is a critical effort. We urge the Administration and Congress to work together to ensure that the United We Stand effort is an ongoing, fully funded and fully supported endeavor.
• The previous Administration released a National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in May 2023, which notes the connection between violent extremism, white supremacist conspiracy theories and attacks against Jewish communities and other targeted groups, specifically that “our intelligence agencies have determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy—including antisemitism—is the greatest terrorist threat to our Homeland today.”
• The Trump Administration’s recent Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism called on every federal agency and department to review and report on civil and criminal actions available to curb antisemitism. We applaud such efforts and encourage swift implementation.
• We urge robust funding for programs like the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP). Difficult funding decisions need to be made across all areas of public policy, but efforts to counter serious threats from domestic violent extremism must be top priorities. At a time of increased vulnerability to threats of hate-motivated violence by domestic extremists, Congress should significantly increase funding for non-profit religious institutions and other non-profit organizations that government and law enforcement authorities objectively determine are at high risk of attack. Funding is especially critical as swatting incidents and hoax bomb threats targeting synagogues and Jewish communal institutions have occurred over the past year.
• The NSGP provides non-profits with the capacity to increase their defense against these threats, including physical security and cybersecurity capacity and coordination. Despite recent increases in the NSGP program, as extremism threats continue to rise, the need continues to be greater than the resources provided.

Resource According to the Threat

We must ensure that the authorities and resources the government uses to address violent threats are proportionate to the risk of the lethality of those threats. In other words, allocation of resources must never be politicized but rather based on transparent and objective security concerns.

• Congress has been unable to pass the bipartisan Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA) to enhance the federal government’s efforts to prevent domestic terrorism by formally authorizing offices to address domestic terrorism and requiring law enforcement agencies to regularly report on domestic terrorist threats. Congress should reconsider the DTPA in this Congress, or at minimum, ensure that those offices are created, that they have the resources they need and that they deploy those resources in a manner proportionate to existing threats. Further, the transparency that comes with regular reporting is crucial for civil society, Congress and the public writ large to help oversee the national security process and hold leaders accountable.
• Congress must exercise careful oversight to ensure that no resources are expended on counterterrorism efforts targeting protected political speech or association. Investigations and other efforts to mitigate the threat should be data-driven and proportionate to the violent threat posed by violent extremist movements.
• Data drives policy, and as such, Congress must empower high-quality, comprehensive data to understand threats related to hate and democracy. For example, the annual FBI hate crimes statistics demonstrate a systematic gap in reporting by law enforcement agencies. This gap must be filled, including through support for hate crimes data collection resources and requirements for mandatory reporting by law enforcement agencies.

Oppose Extremists in Government Service

It is essential that we recognize the potential for harm when extremists gain positions of power, including in government, law enforcement and the military.

• To the extent permitted by law and consistent with Constitutional protections, government should take steps to ensure that individuals engaged in violent extremist activity or associated with violent extremist movements, including the white supremacist movement and the militia movement, are deemed unsuitable for employment at the federal, state and local levels (including in law enforcement) and are not given security clearances or other sensitive law enforcement credentials. Appropriate steps must also be taken to address any current employees, who, upon review, match these criteria. Law enforcement agencies nationwide should explore options for preventing extremists from being among their ranks.
• ADL has worked with Law Enforcement experts to provide tools for identifying and weeding out extremists in the recruitment process as well as within law enforcement ranks. While there is no evidence that white supremacist extremists have large numbers in our law enforcement agencies, we have seen that even a few can undermine the effectiveness and trust that is so essential. We have provided resources to law enforcement agencies with guidance on approaches that do not violate First Amendment protections.
• More must be done to address the problem of extremism within the military, train officials for how to address it and scale efforts to fully ensure that members of our armed forces are not targeted for recruitment to extremist causes.
• A 2024 independent study on extremist behavior in the Armed Forces commissioned by the Department of Defense highlighted the danger of extremism in the military, stating “the participation in violent extremist activities of even a small number of individuals with military connections and military training could present a risk to the military and to the country as a whole.” It also points out that the military’s process for giving security clearances to military and civilian personnel is outdated and inadequate, asserting that “the Department remains at risk of unknowingly permitting persons who may have engaged in violent extremist conduct to enter and encumber privileged positions as civilian employees or contractors in the military community.”
• ADL worked with Members of the Armed Services Committee to secure two provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024 to address this issue by securing two new reports that would:
  • Require the Secretary of Defense to report on the implementation and status of its training and education for DOD members and civil personnel on protecting the military from extremist recruitment and activity.
  • Identify gaps in the DOD security clearance process.
• DHS announced that it reviewed internal extremist threats, though noted that there were no mechanisms for doing so systematically or comprehensively. DHS and law enforcement agencies must have these protocols in place.

Take Domestic Terrorism Prevention Measures

We must not wait until after someone has become an extremist or a terrorist attack has happened to act. Effective and promising prevention measures exist, which should be scaled.

• Congress can provide funding to civil society and academic programs that have expertise in addressing recruitment to extremist causes and radicalization, whether online or offline. By providing funding for prevention activities, including education, counseling and off-ramping, Congress can help empower public health and civil society actors to prevent and intervene in the radicalization process and undermine extremist narratives, particularly those that spread rapidly on the internet.
• These initiatives must be accompanied by an assurance of careful oversight with civil rights and civil liberties safeguards. They must also meaningfully engage the communities that have been targeted by domestic terrorism and the civil society organizations already existing within them, and those communities which have been unfairly targeted when prior anti-terrorism authorities have been misused and/or abused. These initiatives must be transparent, responsive to community concerns, publicly demonstrate careful oversight and ensure that they do not stigmatize communities.
  • Further, DHS should not be the only agency working on prevention; ADL urges the Department to partner with Health and Human Services and other non-security Departments whenever possible.
• While Congress has funded a grant program for prevention measures domestically, the program is too small to have an impact at scale. Congress should significantly expand the Center for Prevention Programming and Partnerships (CP3) within DHS, such as through $200 million per year in grants and a proportionate increase in program evaluations, the results of which should be published for public view.
• DHS should be empowered to support research and innovation to address domestic violent extremism. However, there have been reports that research and innovation related to domestic violent extremist radicalization has been halted at DHS, which would be troubling; we urge Congress to ensure there is adequate implementation of research and innovation.

End the Complicity of Social Media in Facilitating Extremism

Congress must prioritize countering online extremism and ensuring that perpetrators who engage in unlawful activity online can be held accountable. Online platforms often lack adequate policies to mitigate extremism and hate equitably and at scale. Federal and state laws and policies require significant updating to hold online platforms and individual perpetrators accountable for enabling hate, racism and extremist violence across the internet. In March 2021, ADL announced the REPAIR Plan, which offers a comprehensive framework for platforms and policymakers to take meaningful action to decrease online hate and extremism. Like ADL’s PROTECT Plan, REPAIR addresses domestic extremism and terrorism but goes beyond these issues to address other manifestations and harms of online hate, including online harassment, antisemitism, racism and disinformation.

Create an Independent Clearinghouse for Online Extremist Content

Congress should work with the Administration to create a publicly funded, independent nonprofit center to track online extremist threat information in real-time and make referrals to social media companies and law enforcement agencies when appropriate.

• Those empowered with law enforcement and intelligence capabilities should not be tasked with new investigative and other powers that could infringe upon civil liberties such as broad internet surveillance. Scouring online sources through an independent organization will act as a buffer but will not prevent the nonprofit center from assisting law enforcement in cases where criminal behavior is suspected. This wall of separation, modeled in part on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), will help streamline national security tips and resources while preserving civil liberties.
• The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) was provided with $500,000 to investigate the feasibility of this concept in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022. NIJ should be empowered to complete its review, and Congress should quickly follow up to ensure that a clearinghouse can be authorized.

Target Foreign Terrorist Groups

Congress must recognize that extremism is a major global threat and mobilize with that mindset.

• To date, only a handful of white supremacist organization operating overseas has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Congress should review how these designation decisions are made, whether any additional racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist groups (RMVEs) outside the United States, particularly white supremacist groups, have reached the threshold for either designation, or whether such designations would help advance U.S. national interests. We welcome the recent Department of State designation of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective and its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and hope more will follow.
• We urge the Trump Administration to continue past efforts to by the Department of State to develop a strategy to counter global white supremacist extremism.
• The Department of State must mobilize a multilateral effort to address the threat of white supremacy globally. Multilateral best-practice institutions, such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum, the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund and the International Institute for Justice and Rule of Law, may be helpful mechanisms through which to channel some efforts. DHS should participate in these efforts, supporting overseas exchanges, partnerships and best practices sharing to engage in learning from other countries and sharing U.S. best practices, where applicable.
• The FBI, DHS, and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) assessed that ongoing tensions related to the conflict between Israel and Hamas likely heightened the threat of lone actor violence targeting large public gatherings. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, various foreign terrorist media organizations have called for lone actor attacks in the United States. RMVEs have also increased calls for violence and celebrated attacks on the Jewish community.
• Congress should pass the STOP HATE Act which would require social media platforms to disclose their policies and how they’re dealing with content from FTOs, such as Hamas, who use these platforms to recruit, fundraise and spread propaganda. The bill would also require the Intelligence Community to assess the threat posed to U.S. national security by FTO’s usage of social media platforms.
• The designation of Samidoun by Treasury was a significant step in combatting terror financing. We urge similar action against additional groups that have been identified as supporting designated foreign terror organizations. Any group operating under the guise of humanitarian or charitable organizations but documented to provide material support to terrorist organizations like the PFLP, Hamas and Hezbollah must be held accountable. 

Donor Acknowledgements

The work of ADL’s Center on Extremism is supported, in part, through the generosity of:

Anonymous (3)

The ADL Lewy Family Institute for Combatting Antisemitism

Lillian and Larry Goodman Foundations

Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund

MasterCard Impact Fund

The Morningstar Foundation

Quadrivium Foundation

The Charles and Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation

Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation

The Zegar Family Foundation

Rhonda and David Cohen